Pukekohe Swap Meet approaching

22 February, 2016

The 39th annual Pukekohe Swap Meet is set to take over the Franklin A&P Showgrounds, Station Road, Pukekohe, on March 5 and 6, 2016.

The event, which is hosted by the Auckland branch of the Chevrolet Enthusiasts Car Club always attracts a huge crowd and offers a great variety of stalls, making for one of the last true swap meets still around. Also, this year’s Targa Rally will be using part of the grounds for their service base, and this will be open to the public to see!

Swap sites are just $40 including entry for the driver, or $15 including driver for Sunday only, with $5 entry on the gate for the public. Entry is free for classics or hot rods on both days.

For those intending on making a weekend of it, remember there are no bar facilities, but you are more than welcome to bring your own refreshments.

Call Rob on 0274 955 567, or email [email protected] for more info. There are a limited number of powered sites available, which need to be booked in advance. 

Design accord

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.