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Behind the garage door: XJS Jag restoration

12 December, 2018

When an ‘oops’ needs serious attention

Not all Behind The Garage Door projects are major, body-off-type restorations. Sometimes a small accident is just as annoying as something major. If your classic car has already undergone a major restoration or has never needed one because it is already in pristine condition, a minor-damage accident is not something to be taken in a minor way.

Ace Panel and Paint in Whitianga has just such a situation to deal with now. The pictured XJS has only done 22,000km, and, recently, the owner managed to run into the back of another XJS on an outing. A touch embarrassing to say the least.

The car has needed bonnet, headlight, and other front-end repairs. Repairing that and getting everything to align again is not a job for someone who doesn’t understand the concept of repairing rather than just replacing parts. Getting everything back into line and making the repaired car look as good as a new car takes time, often more time than a small and specialist panel shop can charge for.

Bruce Hayes, of Ace Panel and Paint, says that, on a job like this, when an insurance company would be looking to, “just bolt the parts on”, he would rather take the time to sit down and do it carefully, using the correct parts. He enjoys doing it and enjoys the challenge of repairing rather than replacing, and says that frequently he’ll have spent more time than he can charge for, simply because he wants the repair to be faultless. Fortunate the owner of this XJS then.

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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.”