New Zealand Classic Car takes on the BMW Alpine X-Drive Event

17 October, 2016

The day with BMW for its Alpine X-Drive Event began with a helicopter transfer over the magnificent Crown Range to the SHPG (Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds). It’s hard not to be excited when arriving to a line-up of well over a million dollars’ worth of gleaming Bavarian metal.

Under the guidance of BMW’s Driver Training team, led by Mike Eady, we were run through the dos and don’ts for the day.

Once into the swing of things, we were fed to the lion, Lars Mysliwietz — a famed German rally driver — who was our tutor for the drifting part of the syllabus.

We’ve put together a gallery for you to get an idea about just how beautiful the conditions were for our drive:

Check out our full story in the November issue of New Zealand Classic Car (Issue No. 311).


To finish first, first, you must build a winner

Can-Am royalty
Only three M20s were built, including the car that was destroyed at Road Atlanta. This car was later rebuilt. All three cars were sold at the end of the 1972 season. One of the cars would score another Can-Am victory in 1974, driven by a privateer, but the M20’s day was done. Can-Am racing faded away at the end of that season and was replaced by Formula 5000.
These days the cars are valued in the millions. It was unlikely that I would ever have seen one in the flesh if it hadn’t been that one day my editor asked me if I would mind popping over to Taranaki and having a look at a pretty McLaren M20 that somebody had built in their shed.
That is how I came to be standing by the car owned and built by truck driver Leon Macdonald.

Lunch with … Roly Levis

Lunching was not allowed during Covid 19 Lockdowns so our correspondent recalled a lunch he had with legendary New Zealand racing driver Rollo Athol Levis shortly before he died on 1 October 2013 at the age of 88. Michael Clark caught up with Roly and members of his family over vegetable soup