How to tailor your garage door to suit your classic-steel

23 May, 2017

 

A classic car owner can find joy in two areas of what they do with their machines. First, the process of buying/restoring/owning their dream classic; and two, building/tailoring a garage to suit their taste. So when you have both of those pieces of the puzzle, there is one aspect to form the cherry on top — the perfectly suited garage door choice.

Auckland-based Prestige Doors and Gates has been designing, manufacturing and installing the very best options possible for clients since 1992. However the latest garage door product is something truly special for anyone looking for a garage door to both protect and highlight their vehicles — the plexiglass garage door.

Plexiglass is not only stronger and more durable than glass, it also offers a variety of colour options (including transparent) so you can enjoy viewing your vehicles outside the garage/workshop as well as inside. It also has the additional benefit of allowing in heat and light, but still offering privacy options.

The Prestige team can match your door with its laser-cut aluminium design for your aesthetic preferences, and any full custom design is possible. The aluminium sheet with the plexiglass backing is durable, strong and looks fantastic. 

You can also select from any number of options within the Prestige Doors and Gates range, with multiple flushmount, aluminum, steel, and timber configurations available.

For more information, contact Prestige on 09 638 9474, [email protected], or head to prestigedoors.co.nz.
 

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

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

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.”