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The twists and turns of crowdfunding

3 July, 2017

It seems every second article you read has a crowdfunding appeal attached. Of course, some are to help cure disease or help out those in need — and we tip our hats to those noble causes — but this one seems so pure and ridiculous in its simplicity, we can’t help but applaud the team behind it.

In 2011, Dominik Farnbacher drove a 2010 Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR around the main 12.9-mile circuit at Nurburg in just 7:12.13, breaking the road car track record in the process.

But a lot of water and horsepower has flowed under the bridge since then with the Lamborghini Huracán LP 640-4 Performante, the Porsche 918 Spyder, the Lamborghini Aventador SV, the Nissan GT-R Nismo and the Mercedes-AMG GT R having walloped the Viper’s time. But since the 5th generation Viper was introduced, staunch Viper fans have been desperate to get the newest generation ACR back to The Ring for another crack at the title.

With no appetite from the factory to break the record again, a few hardy souls led by Russ Oasis took a truly 2017 approach, started a GoFundMe account and threw their hat on the pavement. They had managed to convince Viper Exchange (a Viper dealer in Texas) to stump up a couple of 2016 ACRs should they raise enough money.

The fund was to cover the costs of getting the cars to Germany as well as a whole lot of gear and a couple of reputable drivers capable of taking the Viper back to number one (Farnbacher is back alongside Luca Stolz). The US$156,000 target was hit last month, and now an extra few grand sits in the account which should keep the Vipers on track for an extra half a lap or so.

Given that the Lamborghini Huracan Performante managed to knock around 20 seconds off the 2010 Viper’s lap time, we wish the newer Vipers godspeed and look forward to hearing the result later this month.

The butterfly effect

18 June, 2026

The man on the mountain bike pedalled over, taking it all in. Gazing in wonderment at this small Japanese coupe with butterfly doors, he said, “Wow, I have never seen one of these before. What is it?” When I told him it was a Toyota, he nearly fell off his bike.
The Toyota Sera is unique amongst ’90s Japanese coupes. The Sera, which is Italian for ‘evening’, can trace its roots back to Toyota’s AXV-II concept car. Launched as part of a trio of Toyota concept cars at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, it shared its underpinnings with the P70 Toyota Starlet. The similarities ended there, thanks to the AXV-II’s low-slung and rounded coupe styling with butterfly doors. These doors were held upright by gas struts when fully open. Glass covered the upper section of the doors and the rear hatchback.
These features, much to everyone’s surprise, were carried over to the production Sera in 1990. Toyota marketed the Sera, which means ‘will be’ in Spanish and ‘princess’ in Hebrew, as a funky alternative to the much-loved MR2.

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.