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Car lover’s dream job up for grabs

10 July, 2016

We all know working at an insurance company is boring, right? You’d be just another nameless employee stuck wearing a suit in an ivory tower … or would you?

The car lover’s insurance company, Classic Cover, couldn’t be further removed from that stereotype. They’re small, they don’t wear suits, and certainly don’t occupy a 20-story tower in the heart of the city.

They’re actually car lovers like you and I, except they work in the insurance industry — after all, it doesn’t pay that badly.

And now, due to their ever-increasing popularity with other car and motorbike lovers, they’re looking for staff.

The job that they’ve got up for grabs is a Client Support role, in which you’d be responsible for providing effective client service and support through all aspects of the role, including claims, solving client queries, processing of renewals, endorsements, and new business. 

It’s a busy role as you’ll spend the bulk of your time dealing directly with clients, so obviously you’ll not only have to be a great communicator, you’ll also need to know your way around developing and maintaining relationships with clients, providing quotes, and processing policies and claims, so experience in the insurance industry would be an advantage, but isn’t essential. 

What is essential is that you know your cars, love your cars, can work hard, and are willing to learn. Excellent time management and the ability to provide the highest standard of client service, with a focus on quality outcomes, are also necessary, along with an exceptional phone manner and proven ability to build rapport with clients. Essentially you need to be the person that, if you were the customer, you’d love to deal with. 

There’s plenty of hard work involved, but you’ll be working with a great team who also enjoy cars as well as a good laugh, and there’s great potential for career progression.

If this role sounds like something you would be interested in, fire through a CV and cover letter to [email protected]z. 

Roadside relics

24 July, 2025

There’s been a proliferation of ‘barn find’ and ‘junkyard relic’ type books hitting the market, over the last 10 years or so. Writer Tom Cotter has been a major culprit with titles like Barn Find Road Trip, The Cobra in the Barn, Route 66 — Barn Find Road Trip and many others. In the same vein are: Lost Muscle Cars and a swath by Jerry Heasley, such as Jerry Heasley’s Rare Finds: Mustangs and Fords. They are almost exclusively American titles.
It got me thinking of all the road trips I’d charted around this country over 40 plus years hunting out and photographing what I thought of as roadside jewels — diamonds in the rough if you like, captured in all their glory, ensnared by time and weeds out in the back blocks. Interestingly, most of those cars have disappeared with the passage of yet more time.
Mulling on this point prompted me to go through scenes that had captivated me over 45 years on the road, an epitaph of sorts of earlier times, when these cars arrived at their final resting spot. I’d also capture those on their last legs, supposedly still operational and snapped curbside. I’ll also include a few snaps from my overseas junkets in Cuba, Buenos Aires and other locales.

Grand Routier — in the french tradition

10 July, 2025

Sitting in Paddy and Patsy Williams’ Dunedin garage is a stunning example of one of these rare French grand routier sedans. It is a 1949 four-door Lago-Record Factory Berline sedan, to give its full name. Daughter Cath let us know how proud she was of her dad, who had been tinkering away in his garage on this car for so many years.
Without exaggeration, it has been a mammoth task. I first saw this Talbot-Lago in mid 2019. The long-nosed, sweeping, curved four-door saloon, clothed in its misty green metallic paint, was quite breathtaking. There’s more than a little English influence in it, too, harking back to company owner Tony Lago’s involvement in the Clement-Talbot-Darracq era. The long front wings and bonnet, usually multi-louvred, highlighted with artful touches of chrome bling, are typical of the era, but these were indeed luxury length. Interiors provided leather-clad, armchair-style seating and ample legroom, with touches of wood and surprising details such as dainty childproof interior locks — a far cry from today’s lozenge boxes.
Paddy, a retired civil and structural engineer, knows his way around a lathe. He has a well-equipped garage-workshop to assist in any machining tasks along with his other passion for restoring classic motorcycles.