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The Jensen Interceptor story

30 May, 2019


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The cover car of New Zealand Classic Car issue 341 is a gorgeous NZ-new example of one of the most likeable of great English classics, the Jensen Interceptor III. Famous for its audacious glass hatch, the Interceptor’s long bonnet and outrageous (by UK standards) six or seven litre engines, it was undoubtedly for the well-heeled, but it avoided the snobbery attached to Aston-Martin, Bentley and their ilk.


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It retained the same shape throughout its life giving it a kind of purity, and its clean and distinctive lines appeal as much today as they ever did. It appeared in the top tier almost out of nowhere, and then it was gone. Ashley Webb’s story gives us the curiously not-well known background to a car that’s among the absolute best of British.


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Someone else agreed with us, before we even knew it. They had written a coffee table book on the history of the Jensen, and have sent us a copy for review. We’ll publish the review in an upcoming issue of NZ Classic Car.

You can buy a copy of New Zealand Classic Car issue 341 now by clicking the cover below.


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Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.

Lancia Stratos – building a winner

12 March, 2025

On his own, and later with his wife Suzie, Craig Tickle has built and raced many rally cars. Starting in 1988, Craig went half shares in a Mk1 Escort and took it rallying. Apart from a few years in the US studying how to be a nuclear engineer, he has always had a rally car in the garage. When he is not playing with cars, he works as an engineer for his design consulting company.
Naturally, anybody interested in rallying has heard of the Lancia Stratos, the poster child and winner of the World Rally circuit in 1974, ’75, and ’76. Just as the Lamborghini Countach rebranded the world of supercars, so, too, did the Lancia Stratos when it came to getting down and dirty in the rally world.