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Keeping it in the family

21 August, 2019

 

 

Some cars inspire so much affection that their value soars way beyond their guide price. ‘Geraldine’ is one of those priceless classics.

After Chris Steele sold his grandmother’s Hillman Super Minx, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, after more than a decade, he launched a mission to find it and then restore it. 

Whenever he saw a Hillman Super Minx in red with a white flash, he’d be looking for the plate or other clues to see if it was Nana’s old ‘Geraldine’.


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Eventually, as Hillman Super Minx sightings dropped away, Chris decided he had to try to find Geraldine. The people he had sold it to had passed it on. He discovered the registration was on hold, but it was already past the time when you could look up owners online from a car’s rego plates. Chris contacted the New Zealand Transport Authority, explaining that he wanted to buy the car back and asking to contact the current owner. He was told the authority couldn’t provide details because of the Privacy Act. Chris was quite persistent and, in the end, spoke to a senior executive, who agreed to send the owner a letter on Chris’s behalf. A few days later, the person who had owned it for the past 11 years contacted Chris.


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Chris Steele’s grandmother owned the Mark IV Super Minx from 1967 through to 2000, kept it garaged every night, and kept detailed notes of everything done to the car, in tiny writing in tiny notebooks. In one of them, she recorded that she had paid 1165 pounds for it.

“If the car got rained on, it was always dried down,” says Chris.

This attention to the details is clearly in the genes. When restoring the car, Chris sourced, among many other parts, a mint-condition steering wheel. It’s still in its packaging. The one in the car bears the scars of his grandmother’s rings.

“I’ve got a near concours condition wheel but I couldn’t bear to change it,” Chris explains. “It’s a special feeling that comes from knowing that’s the same wheel they held.”


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The car underwent a bare metal rebuild and the result is a triumph of passion and dedication and the full story is in September’s New Zealand Classic Car, on sale now.


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Pinnacle Porsche

15 May, 2025

We were stopped at the side of the road, setting up the next photograph, when a faded Toyota slowed alongside and stopped. The window was already down to give the driver a good look.
“That’s my dream car,” he said, speaking for more than a few of us.
He drank in the gleaming red paint, shining in the sun, and the car’s purposeful swoops and curves. He exhaled half a lungful of cigarette smoke, gave a hang 10–style thumbs up and drove off.
On the side of the road, against a clear blue background, the Porsche stood out in all its stark red glory. It’s the classic 911 shape on steroids. It has the fat, even pouty, front lip of the G series 911s, added to comply with 5mph bumper restrictions in the US. It also has the oversized haunches to accommodate the wider rear wheels and tyres – a first for Porsche, which also confirmed its supercar credentials – and, most noticeably of all, that enormous whale-tail spoiler. They made it look as if Porsche had abandoned its restraint.

Motorman: When the top trio took to the road

9 May, 2025

What sort of cars did Chris Amon, Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme drive when they weren’t on the race track? Motorman knows
Most top racing drivers do care about safety levels of road-going cars for everyday motorists and their all-round abilities behind the wheel. Jackie Stewart for one denied finding everyday driving boring. He took pride in giving his passengers the smoothest possible ride, and encouraged all drivers to actively engage in the task. They also make interesting choices for their transport away from competitive motoring.
Thirty years ago I spent a day with Chris Amon driving on lower North Island roads and I can remember those informative few hours as vividly as if they were yesterday. In 1983 Chris accepted a challenge from Toyota New Zealand to improve its locally assembled cars in a relationship that extended well beyond the end of New Zealand-built Toyota vehicles in 1997.