SUBSCRIBE TO THE
MAGAZINE NOW
Facebook-f Instagram

A jumbo-sized toy shed celebration

6 June, 2016

Rotorua’s well-known performance workshop, The Toy Shed, has recently moved to larger premises at 106/112 Riri Street, to be shared with parts supply business Proparts. With both businesses belonging to well-known Rotorua petrolhead and drag racer Russell Lowe, the move to combine them made sense and offered the opportunity to increase workshop size at the same time. 

Part of that increase in space was required due to Russell also acquiring Carburettor Motors, which has been incorporated into The Toy Shed. The result is a massive 1700-square-metre complex housing all three related businesses under the one roof. With more workshop space, a dedicated dyno area, and parts supply all at the same place, the business has become the perfect one-stop shop. 

To celebrate the move, The Toy Shed is hosting an open day on July 16, the day before the annual Rotorua swap meet. The event will run from 9am through till 5pm and will feature top doorslammer and funny car fire-ups throughout the day. 

Apart from the address, all contact details for the business remain the same — phone: 07 348 5314; email: [email protected].

NZ Classic Car magazine, March/April 2025 issue 398, on sale now

23 February, 2025

An HQ to die for
Mention the acronym HQ and most people in the northern hemisphere will assume this is an abbreviation for Head Quarters. However, for those born before the mid-’80s in Australia and New Zealand, the same two letters only mean one thing – HQ Holden!
Christchurch enthusiast Ed Beattie has a beautiful collection of Holden and Chevrolet cars. He loves the bowtie and its Aussie cousin and has a stable of beautiful, powerful cars. His collection includes everything from a modern GTSR W507 HSV through the decades to a 1960s Camaro muscle car and much in between.
In the last two Holden Nationals (run biennially in 2021 and 2023), Ed won trophies for the Best Monaro and Best Decade with his amazing 1972 Holden Monaro GTS 350 with manual transmission.
Ed is a perfectionist and loves his cars to reflect precisely how they were on ‘Day 1,’ meaning when the dealer released them to the first customer, including any extras the dealer may have added or changed.

You’re the one that I want – 1973 Datsun 240K GT

21 February, 2025

In the early 1970s, Clark Caldow was a young sales rep travelling the North Island and doing big miles annually. He loved driving. In 1975 the firm he worked for asked Clark what he wanted for his new car, and Clark chose a brand-new Datsun 240K GT. The two-door car arrived, and Clark was smitten, or in his own words, he was “pole vaulting.”
Clark drove it all over the country, racking up thousands of miles. “It had quite a bit of pep with its SOHC 128 hp (96kW) of power mated to a four-speed manual gearbox,” he says. Weighing in at 1240kg meant the power to weight ratio was good for the time and its length at almost 4.5 metres meant it had good street presence.
Clark has been a car enthusiast all his life, and decided around nine years ago to look for one of these coupes. By sheer luck he very quickly found a mint example refurbished by an aircraft engineer, but it was in Perth.