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

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.