NZV8 — the remedy for your back-to-work blues

30 January, 2015

You might be back to work, but we’ve crammed NZV8 Issue No. 117 full of top-shelf content that should help you feel like you’re back on holiday. Grab your copy now. 

Headlining the feature cars is this stunning Dodge Challenger, powered by a 600hp fuel-injected Hemi, and with no stone left unturned in the owner’s quest to build the ultimate grand tourer. If tough is more your thing, how about a twin-turbo Ford Pop that runs wheel-standing nine-second passes? There’s also a super clean and supercharged GMC pickup, a show-quality CMC Torana packing a 700hp LSX, and an immaculate traditional ’32 Ford Highboy.

We also got out and about — checking out the skid-fest that was Supercheap Auto Powercruise 52, relaxing at Cruise Martinborough, and the infamous Burgerfuel Port Road Drags, which is now in its 48th year without a rain date!

If you’re planning on getting your hands dirty during the rest of the summer, we’ve also got a tutorial on how to convert your hydraulic fork-type clutch to a modern hydraulic-release bearing, as well as the latest and greatest trends from SEMA — just the last minute inspiration your Beach Hop-build needs!

Of course we’ve also got the exciting columns, a truly amazing feature shed (well, garage) filled with America’s finest, and all of the content that will keep you counting down the hours until lunch or home time. All you need to do is to pick up a copy, and pop the top off a beer (optional).

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”