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See what’s inside our 1000hp garages

16 August, 2016

You’ve got 1000hp and an unlimited budget to play with. You can buy as many or as few cars as you like. One custom R32 GTR or 10 one-litre original Minis at 98hp a piece. What’s in your 1000hp garage? A few of us here in the office did some math (gasp), and made our selections that would feature in our garage:

Lachlan Jones, staff writer at New Zealand Classic Car

Aston Martin DB4 Zagato: 314hp

£9.45 million. That’s what it’ll cost as of the most recent sale in December, and I’ve got a blank cheque here so that’s not an issue. Not only that, but the Zagato is a very cool car. The DB4 was enough of an icon. Now that it’s been race-prepped and limited to a manufacture run of just 19 cars, it makes this another animal.

Renault Megane RS275 Trophy: 275hp

Renault make magic hot hatches, and this is the King of them all. Extremely quick, amazing handling via the best-balanced chassis around.

Range Rover Vogue SDV8: 335hp

And 740nm of torque from as low as 1700rpm. The Range Rover is fast, huge, imposing, and as luxurious as anything on the road. And because it’s a Range Rover, it’ll leave the remaining 76hp available as a tip.

Todd Wylie, editor of NZV8

1966 Chev Chevelle: 620hp

Traction control, stability control, and comfort be damned, if you want a car with power, it needs to be raw, uneconomical, and antisocial, so I’d grab myself a Chevelle, and drop in a  GM Performance ZZ572 crate motor to give 620hp of eco-unfriendly fun.

1963 Dodge 440: 380hp

A nice sensible family-friendly station wagon … with a 392 Hemi under the hood of course. We’re talking old school here, so a power output of 345hp is stock, but with a change to EFI we should be able to hit 380 no problem.

Connal Grace, deputy editor of NZV8

1968 Holden Monaro HK: 800hp

As far as Aussie muscle goes, it’s hard for me to look past a first-gen Monaro. And why not go all-out properly, with a Nascar-sourced dry-sumped Chev R07 and Jerico four-speed dog box? Add adjustable remote-reservoir coilovers, tubular control arms, and rack-and-pinion steering up front, with a Watt’s linkage and custom four-link rear, and you’ve got the ultimate white-knuckle pig of a car to drive — one that goes like shit off a shovel, but with the handling to hopefully stop it from being an all-out death trap.

1993 Daihatsu Mira: 197hp

You’ll need to get to work every day to pay off a 1000hp garage, so let’s opt for something sensible — a Daihatsu Mira with a Honda B18CR engine swap. A 1.8-litre four banger pumping out 197hp at 8000rpm should make for a fun and economical daily-driver that’ll chop everyone at the lights. What XR6 turbo? What Clubsport R8?

Marcus Gibson, editor of NZ Performance Car

1986 Toyota AE86: 230hp

The older they get the more my love for a super-low and super-simple AE86 Trueno grows. I have a tendency to overcomplicate everything, but this would be simple — the engine a 4A-GE with Toyota 4A-GE 16-valve, modified SR pistons/crank, AE111 head gasket, ported cylinder head, upgraded valves, TRD cams, Toda cam gears, custom intake manifold with Keihin FCR41 carburettors, carbon trumpets, and super-wild stainless headers. Stripped, caged, slammed on 15-inch TE37Vs — simple but effective.

1992 BMW E30 M3: 355hp

There are few cars that look as awesome as an E30 M3 in my opinion. Built as a daily-driver, the E30 would run a 2.5-litre BMW S143 from a DTM car, complete with carbon intake and highly modified head with big lift cams — no one said I like fuel-efficient or practical daily-drivers. Bodykit would be M3 Motorsport carbon everything and the wheels 18×9-inch / 18×10-inch BBS LMS with sizable dish and proper touring-car low.

1973 Katayama RX-3: 450hp

An all-out circuit car, the RX-3 would be completely carbon-bodied and sitting on a frame I glued together in my shed. Suspension will be inboard Penski dampers with IndyCar uprights, carbon brakes, and centre-locking magnesium BBS wheels 13×10-inch / 13×13-inch. The engine would be a Green Brothers 20B PP with Cosmo plates, Cosmo 20B crank, Series 5 RX-7 housings, Series 5 RX-7 NA rotors, peripheral porting, lightened and balanced rotating assembly, blueprinted internals, Mazdaspeed dry-sump front cover, EFI 55mm Hardware Pro Race throttle bodykit, and custom carbon air-box backed by Holinger six-speed transaxle.    

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.”