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Need a project?

1 June, 2017

As the story of Bruce McLaren hits cinemas, we’re all looking at the legacy that he created. His name is now synonymous with some of the best sports cars being built today. Near the top of the list is the McLaren 650S.

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Of course, with a list price of $399,000, 650S ownership will remain a dream for many of us. There must be a better way? If you’re willing to take a practical view and take a punt on being able to source parts and an able handed supercar mechanic, this might be right up your alley.

Set to go to auction later in the month — hosted by Manheim — there was there was plenty of coverage a few weeks ago of a McLaren being totalled on Auckland’s North Western motorway. Without throwing too much caution to the wind, we’d suggest there aren’t all that many of these being written off around the place so we connect this car with that crash.

Fortune favours the bold we’re told!

Source: NZ Herald

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.