Club Corner: Porsche Club of New Zealand

21 July, 2016

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The Porsche Club of New Zealand was established in December 1975 and had its 40th-anniversary celebrations in 2015. The club is number 54 of nearly 700 official Porsche clubs recognized in the world and has a strong relationship with the Porsche factory and Porsche in New Zealand.

The Porsche Club of New Zealand has members in all regions of the country and has a membership of around 700, with all the family welcome to participate in a wide range of events. Members share a passion, and Porsche ownership is not required; all are welcome: members share a strong camaraderie as well as experience and knowledge.

The benefits of membership include picnics, winery and café lunch and brunch drives, weekend social events, gymkhanas, and autocross — low-speed competitive driving and driver training — learning to safely exploit the performance of your Porsche on the track, competitive sprint events, the club race series, technical evenings, an annual picnic and Christmas function, a Concours d’Elegance annual dinner and awards evening, membership of an exclusive Facebook group, the bimonthly high-quality club magazine Spiel, and much more.

The club is for all Porsche enthusiasts — even if you are yet to purchase or are for any reason in between Porsches, you are welcome. It is about having a passion for all things Porsche.

This article originally appeared in the April 2016 issue (304) of New Zealand Classic Car. Grab a print copy or a digital copy of the mag now:

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Lunch with … Cary Taylor

11 September, 2024

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

6 September, 2024

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”

Club Corner: Porsche Club of New Zealand

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