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NZ Classic Car #342 (June) on sale now

21 May, 2019

 


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The Falcon GT dominates the cover of the latest issue of New Zealand Classic Car (#342) much as its GTHO siblings did at Bathurst from 67-72.


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Also in this issue a beautiful Bora, a pristine Porsche 356 Type 1 that’s so much part of the family it lives in the lounge, and a Plymouth Road Runner that occasionally gets to flex its muscles at the drags.


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Michael Clark moves onto the coffee in the second part of his Lunch With Graeme Lawrence, we look at a stately and stylish 41 Caddy , with an engine that literally pushed tanks around in the Second World War and, in our technical feature, we look at how to avoid heartache when prepping your car for painting.


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You can purchase a copy of New Zealand Classic Car #342 now by clicking the cover below


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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.”