Repco Beach Hop 16 day two: Waihi

6 April, 2016

The second day of Repco Beach Hop 16 (March 30), was what most would have associated with previous years’ day one — the Go Waihi Warm Up Party. As always, entrants assembled their cars outside the Ford NZ Reserve (Williamson Park) in Whangamata, before departing Waihi-bound at 10am.

The bulk of Waihi’s Main Street, as well as myriad side streets, was taken over by ‘Beach Hoppers’ in their classic vehicles, as well as the uphill Cornish Pump House reserve. A bonus was the live band — Tim & the Rockets — playing inside the old Cornish Pump House, providing some very welcome entertainment.

Not only are there enough cars to take up a whole day’s worth of browsing, but the Waihi day is pretty well known for the ‘drag race’, which is “something you don’t want to miss” according to the official Beach Hop programme. This is where a team of usually very hairy blokes dressed in drag have a race down the street.

It’s not pretty, but it sure is a barrel of laughs, and a fine way to unwind from what was actually a very hot and sunny day. Of course, knowing how the weather would turn out over the remainder of Repco Beach Hop 16, that great atmosphere helped make our memories of Waihi even fonder.

We’ll have full coverage in our NZV8 Beach Hop Annual 2016, which will be out in mid May — or you can pre-order a copy here.

Click here to see Repco Beach Hop 16 day three coverage

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.”

Repco Beach Hop 16 day two: Waihi

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