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A place to call home: Caffeine & Gasoline

14 October, 2018

 

 

As many car enthusiasts from the upper part of the country are likely to be aware, the organizers of Caffeine & Classics, a free monthly car meet at Smales Farm Business Park in Auckland, have had to implement some changes to keep things viable. Due to the massive numbers the event was pulling, a general cut-off was introduced — cars either older than 30 years, or that are scratch-built, an obscure or exotic model, or one that wouldn’t generally be seen used as a daily driver.

But the news we’re writing about here concerns an all-new event, catering towards those vehicles that may have been displaced by these updates.

“We have made some changes to our current Caffeine & Classics meeting and it has created a lot of discussion,” explained Colin Marshall, from Protecta Insurance. “There was already a need and desire from the Caffeine & Classics faithful for another event south of Auckland City. The time is now right for another event to start at Hampton Downs.”

The event in question is the new Caffeine & Gasoline meeting, following the same formula as Caffeine & Classics — held on the morning of the last Sunday of every month, beginning 28 October.

As Colin mentioned, the location for Caffeine & Gasoline is Hampton Downs Motorsport Park, and features extra coffee and food vendors, in addition to the Hampton Downs café.

The event will be managed on the day by Hampton Downs staff, and is open from 10am to all special-interest vehicles of any origin or style. Even better, being located where it is, the track attractions are right there for anyone keen to make the most of the Sunday!

Keep an eye on facebook.com/CaffAndGas to stay up to date.

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.

Range Rover CSK — the original SUV

5 June, 2026

The Range Rover, thanks to Charles Spencer King, went into production in 1970 boasting an iconic shape that would last until 1996. The vehicle that would create the SUV moniker came about because Rover decided it was time to add a bigger four-wheel-drive vehicle, one with a 100-inch wheelbase, to the model range. Land Rover made a 109-inch wheelbase model but the standard vehicle had a 88-inch wheelbase.
The new model would be more suitable for road use than the existing Land Rover, which was considered to be predominantly for rural use. To make sure it could cope on any road it came standard with the Rover 3.5-litre V8 engine. The body design was originally sketched by King and went into production with only a few minor touch-ups by the Rover styling team.
According to King, “The idea was to combine the comfort and on-road ability of a Rover saloon with the off-road ability of a Land Rover. Nobody was doing it.”