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Black Belt Battle: Masterton Motorplex comp season kicking off

27 November, 2018

 

 

The weekend of 8–9 December will see round one of the Masterton Motorplex comp season kick off, and regulars to the track will not only be greeted by the welcome sight of absolutely gigantic timing boards, which where installed over winter, but also round one of the newly formed Outlaw 71 class,we mentioned in Issue No. 162. A full field of 16 racers are expected to run the five-round nationwide series, vying for their share of the $15,000 prize pool, which begins and ends at Masterton.

Outlaw 71 is the brain child of Gavin Doughty and Tod Aitken, and as the name suggests, welcomes any type of race car as long as it runs a belt-driven roots or screw blower with a dial-in between 6.5 and 7.9 seconds. Unique to the class is the reaction-time qualification system to ensure that it’s not always the fastest car nabbing the top qualifying spot. Organizer Gavin Doughty explains: “It’s all about putting on a show!” This is why the class has also adopted another unique aspect in its racer-return format, which means that the full field of 16 cars will contest each of the four rounds during a meeting, and a very tight points format will mean that the competition will go down to the wire.

Clearly it has excited racers, with the likes of Brent Whittingham’s Camaro, Mark Gapp’s Willys, Craig Griffith’s rear-engined dragster, Kendal Smith’s Altered, JD Shepherd’s FED, and Murray Hartley’s brand-new Mustang imported from Australia, all signed up to race.

Chrysler’s classy cruiser

22 May, 2026

I first saw our feature car, a 1970 V8-powered Regal 770 hardtop, towing a trailer carrying the tidy Ford Anglia classic racing saloon in Broadspeed racing colours that has featured in these pages. The coupe is comparatively rare here, which means anyone contemplating purchasing one of these big two-doors is sure to see prices continue to climb. The latter Charger has claimed much of the Aussie Chrysler limelight, but the simpler and classier lines of this car, which appeared dated soon after its introduction, now have a more timeless appeal.
Former owner, Balclutha motor engineer, Mike Verdoner, remembers the car well. He believes it came from Dunedin originally.
“I’m not sure about the car’s history, but I bought it off its owner at Kaitangata. Unusually, it was advertised in the local newspaper, the Clutha Leader, which was a surprise as these usually go for a lot more money on the internet. I had it for quite a few years. It needed a little bit of work to tidy it up, so I had to decide whether to spend the money on it to do it up, which could have been twenty grand. Its value at the time was not like it is now, so I sold it to Ewan. It’s probably now worth three or four times what I sold it for.”

The Pininfarina 230 SL

14 May, 2026

It’s October 1964, and imagine you’re an automotive journalist covering that year’s Paris Auto Show (Mondial de l’Automobile). As you approach the Pininfarina booth, you come across a car that looks a bit like the Mercedes-Benz 230 SL introduced the previous year at the Geneva Auto Show, a car then arriving at Mercedes-Benz dealerships around the world.
But looking closely, its styling and proportions seem to be a bit different. And it has a fixed roof, unlike the Pagoda-style greenhouse of the removable hardtop seen on the production 230 SL. While today, the styling of the W113, under the supervision of Head of Styling Friedrich Geiger, with lead designers Paul Bracq and Bela Barenyi, is considered a mid-century modern masterpiece, acceptance in-period was not universal. Some critics called out the concave design of its removable roof, which ultimately gave the car its “Pagoda” nickname.