Variety Trillian Bash: drama before the start

16 March, 2016

As vehicles slowly arrived for scrutineering at the start of the Variety Trillian Bash on March 11, it was uncertain whether the full line-up would make it. The 1981 Beststart V8 fire truck was towed off the Desert Road and the NZAF mechanical team was trying to get it going as we were writing this article, the Powerparts Thunderbirds 2 holed a flux capacitor at Matamata. Parker said, “That’s what you get when you have 425,000km on the instrument cluster.”

Still, Ohakune’s Seuss Subbus had picked up some of the Beststart crew, and were snapped heading through Taihape en route to Bulls.

The Subbus Crew launched the Bash when team captain Kandy Mott handed over a cheque for $4668 to Bulls School principal Kim Gordon for a basket swing. Ms Gordon said, “The teachers suspect that some of their students suffer from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Studies show that rhythmic patterning calms the brainstem and allows children to be better focused in the classroom. The school has already noticed an improvement by using rocking horses in the classrooms, and believe that a swing will bring a significant change.”

Not everyone passes scrutineering, which is not a surprise given the age of these vehicles. Stu’s Crew needed attention on the 1963 V8 Fairlane from the Royal New Zealand Air Force boys, who use the Variety Trillian Bash as a training exercise.

Meanwhile the rest of the teams slowly arrived at Tatum Park on the Friday evening to sign in before the Levin start and the drive to Blenheim. They entertained children from the Child Cancer Foundation on the Bluebridge dock from noon.

Photos: Jacqui Madelin

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”

Variety Trillian Bash: drama before the start

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