Event guide: Caffeine and Classics

2 July, 2018

 


 

When: 29 July, 10am
Where: Smales Farm, Auckland

Just because it’s officially winter doesn’t mean that you can’t get your fix of cool cars. Brought to us by Protecta Insurance, Caffeine and Classics has easily become New Zealand’s largest monthly vehicle gathering.

And it doesn’t discriminate either, so all cars are welcome, as long as they can fit that all-important description of ‘classic’ — that means whether you’re taking your motorcycle, hot rod, muscle car, vintage, or classic, there’s always a massive and diverse line-up of cars just waiting to be checked out. The coffee’s not half bad, either, and it’s just the ticket for those chilly mornings.

Caffeine and Classics starts at 10am at Smales Farm in Auckland, and you don’t want to miss it!

Westside story

For the young Dave Blyth, the Sandman was always the coolest car and he finally got one when he was 50. “I have always had a rule. When you turn 50, you buy or can afford to buy the car you lusted after when you were 20. I was 20 in 1979 and the HZ Sandman came out in 1978. It was the coolest of the cool — I just wanted one,” he says. “Back then a Sandman cost $4500 new and a house was worth about $20,000. I made about $30 a week so it was an impossible dream then.”
Dave was heavily influenced by the panel van culture of the time. “I started with an Escort panel van and upgraded to a Holden HD panel van with a 186ci six cylinder. I started a van club, Avon City Vans.

NZ Classic Car magazine, November/December 2024 issue 396, on sale now

It took 19 years for Steve Radich to achieve his dream of owning a Skyline Hakosuka, but what he ended up with is perfection in an extremely low-kilometre example which is our cover feature in this issue.
Back in 2005, Steve hatched a plan to one day own his dream Skyline: the legendary Hakosuka. Over the next 15 years, the list of Skylines Steve bought and sold went as follows. First was a 1998 Nissan Skyline GT, with two doors too many. It was replaced with a red GTT of the same year, but with the correct number of doors! Finally, in 2020, Steve found himself looking at a white 1999 GTR sitting in his shed.
“I was well down the path of getting to the dream of trading my way to owning a Hakosuka,” he says.”
Don’t forget that this edition also comes with our FREE huge wall poster. This issue features a fully restored 1968 Ford Cortina GT Mark II.