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Barry Butterworth Classic takes racing back to the good ol’ days

7 February, 2017

 

If you’re unfamiliar with the name Barry Butterworth, that might just be set to change, with some of the most hotly anticipated events on the local speedway calendar approaching. February 11 will see the Barry Butterworth Classic held at Vodafone Western Springs Speedway, in memory of one of the greatest legends on local dirt — a race meeting that takes racing back to the good old days with Sprint Cars, F2 Midgets, Midgets, and TQ Midgets in contention.

In this event, the classes race “like they did in the old days”, with the fastest qualifier starting last, and they then select who they would like to have start back beside them. With the fastest drivers thus positioned at the rear of the pack, exciting racing is guaranteed with a fight to get to the front — just as it was done in Barry’s heyday. 

Find out more information at springsspeedway.com.

Design accord

28 March, 2025

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.