Garage ornament heaven auction to take place in July

12 June, 2017

Calling all petrolheads — R.A. Proctor Auctioneers will be hosting the auction to cure your winter blues. The automotive, garagenalia, associated memorabilia, and vehicle auction will take place at the corner of Humber and Nen streets in Oamaru, at 12pm on Saturday, July 1, and includes a huge array of all sorts of automotive goodness. 

Among the items for sale is a collection of more than 40 rare and vintage petrol pumps, such as American, Bowser, and Lighthouse, as well as signs, bottles, racks, stationary engines, number plates, and more. Larger objects include a 1939 Ford hot rod with current WOF and rego, a 1957 Ford Fairlane convertible with current WOF and rego, a 1939 Ford body suitable for placement as a very cool piece of garden art, a ’60s Concord 20-foot caravan in excellent condition, and a 1945 Field Marshall tractor that was restored around 40 years ago and still starts first pop! 

For more information and photos, keep an eye on proctorauctions.co.nz; phone
03 467 9368, 027 432 2907, or 021 477 682; or email [email protected]

Design accord

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

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.