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Dean Foster’s Mini love affair

8 December, 2016

In New Zealand Classic Car Issue No. 313 Dean Foster shares his story of how he came to love and cherish the Mini marque, and became involved in keeping them alive all these years.

His first car was a 1974 Leyland Mini, which he bought through good old Trade & Exchange back in 1996, with money he’d saved up from his first job. It had been fully customized and souped up with a worked 1330cc engine, a lumpy cam, and a 28/36 down-draught Weber. It had been painted red, with a white roof and Cooper stripes.

Fast forward 12 years to 2008, and Dean decided to work towards the goal of attending the Mini 50th celebrations, in October 2009. This was a good excuse to get his current Mini out of storage for a quick strip-down and repaint. The strip-down turned into a slightly larger job when he made the call to get the shell acid dipped, and a full restoration ensued.

Have a look at a few additional photos that didn’t make it into the feature in the January issue of New Zealand Classic Car (Issue No. 313) — grab your copy here to read the full story.  

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Almost mythical pony

25 July, 2024

The Shelby came to our shores in 2003. It went from the original New Zealand owner to an owner in Auckland. Malcolm just happened to be in the right place with the right amount of money in 2018 and a deal was done. Since then, plenty of people have tried to buy it off him. The odometer reads 92,300 miles. From the condition of the car that seems to be correct and only the first time around.
Malcolm’s car is an automatic. It has the 1966 dashboard, the back seat, the rear quarter windows and the scoops funnelling air to the rear brakes.
He even has the original bill of sale from October 1965 in California.

Becoming fond of Fords part two – happy times with Escorts

17 July, 2024

In part one of this Ford-flavoured trip down memory lane I recalled a sad and instructive episode when I learned my shortcomings as a car tuner, something that tainted my appreciation of Mk2 Ford Escort vans in particular. Prior to that I had a couple of other Ford entanglements of slightly more redeeming merit. There were two Mk1 Escorts I had got my hands on: a 1972 1300 XL belonging to my father and a later, end-of-line, English-assembled 1974 1100, which my partner and I bought from Panmure Motors Ford in Auckland in 1980. Both those cars were the high water mark of my relationship with the Ford Motor Co. I liked the Mk1 Escorts. They were nice, nippy, small cars, particularly the 1300, which handled really well, and had a very precise gearbox for the time.
Images of Jim Richards in the Carney Racing Williment-built Twin Cam Escort and Paul Fahey in the Alan Mann–built Escort FVA often loomed in my imagination when I was driving these Mk1 Escorts — not that I was under any illusion of comparable driving skills, but they had to be having just as much fun as I was steering the basic versions of these projectiles.