SUBSCRIBE TO THE
MAGAZINE NOW
Facebook-f Instagram

The golden days: traffic jams with classic Japanese tin

9 July, 2017

There’s so much classic Japanese tin slammed by traffic in this one we can’t even name them all. Cedrics, Celicas, Soarers, Corollas, Crowns, Citys, and everything else we’ve missed — all in pristine condition. Yep, this footage is pure bliss. But why are the roads so rammed? Well, it took place during Golden Week — one of the biggest tourism holidays in Japan — back in 1985, where crowds were flooding to the newly opened Tokyo Disneyland.

Surely there is some kind of irony that almost 35 years later we’re sitting here pining over what would have otherwise been everyday family haulers whisking mum, dad and the kids off to the theme park. If the same were to occur today, we can’t say we’d even make it inside Disneyland as we’d be too busy lurking the parking lot …

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.

Lancia Stratos – building a winner

12 March, 2025

On his own, and later with his wife Suzie, Craig Tickle has built and raced many rally cars. Starting in 1988, Craig went half shares in a Mk1 Escort and took it rallying. Apart from a few years in the US studying how to be a nuclear engineer, he has always had a rally car in the garage. When he is not playing with cars, he works as an engineer for his design consulting company.
Naturally, anybody interested in rallying has heard of the Lancia Stratos, the poster child and winner of the World Rally circuit in 1974, ’75, and ’76. Just as the Lamborghini Countach rebranded the world of supercars, so, too, did the Lancia Stratos when it came to getting down and dirty in the rally world.