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Are you installing your car audio wrong?

27 July, 2016

Think about it for a minute. When you go to a concert, even if you’re sitting too far away to see who’s on stage, you still know exactly where they’re standing.

The reason for this is that the sound has been set up in such a way to make it sound as if it’s coming from the front and centre, despite the speakers very clearly being placed to the side of the stage. Same goes with your home-theatre system — chances are that when you set it up, you followed the instructions and placed the front speakers at the front, and the rear speakers at the rear, right? Again, the theory is to make it sound as if what you’re watching is coming from the screen. That’s not to mention the way our bodies are created, with our ears pointing forwards, designed so that our best hearing is from the front.

With this simple knowledge, it’s surprising how many people get it so wrong when it comes to choosing or installing their car-audio components.

Check out the cheap and easy way to fix this common mistake in the September issue of NZV8 (Issue No. 136). Grab your copy now:




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Roadside relics

24 July, 2025

There’s been a proliferation of ‘barn find’ and ‘junkyard relic’ type books hitting the market, over the last 10 years or so. Writer Tom Cotter has been a major culprit with titles like Barn Find Road Trip, The Cobra in the Barn, Route 66 — Barn Find Road Trip and many others. In the same vein are: Lost Muscle Cars and a swath by Jerry Heasley, such as Jerry Heasley’s Rare Finds: Mustangs and Fords. They are almost exclusively American titles.
It got me thinking of all the road trips I’d charted around this country over 40 plus years hunting out and photographing what I thought of as roadside jewels — diamonds in the rough if you like, captured in all their glory, ensnared by time and weeds out in the back blocks. Interestingly, most of those cars have disappeared with the passage of yet more time.
Mulling on this point prompted me to go through scenes that had captivated me over 45 years on the road, an epitaph of sorts of earlier times, when these cars arrived at their final resting spot. I’d also capture those on their last legs, supposedly still operational and snapped curbside. I’ll also include a few snaps from my overseas junkets in Cuba, Buenos Aires and other locales.

Grand Routier — in the french tradition

10 July, 2025

Sitting in Paddy and Patsy Williams’ Dunedin garage is a stunning example of one of these rare French grand routier sedans. It is a 1949 four-door Lago-Record Factory Berline sedan, to give its full name. Daughter Cath let us know how proud she was of her dad, who had been tinkering away in his garage on this car for so many years.
Without exaggeration, it has been a mammoth task. I first saw this Talbot-Lago in mid 2019. The long-nosed, sweeping, curved four-door saloon, clothed in its misty green metallic paint, was quite breathtaking. There’s more than a little English influence in it, too, harking back to company owner Tony Lago’s involvement in the Clement-Talbot-Darracq era. The long front wings and bonnet, usually multi-louvred, highlighted with artful touches of chrome bling, are typical of the era, but these were indeed luxury length. Interiors provided leather-clad, armchair-style seating and ample legroom, with touches of wood and surprising details such as dainty childproof interior locks — a far cry from today’s lozenge boxes.
Paddy, a retired civil and structural engineer, knows his way around a lathe. He has a well-equipped garage-workshop to assist in any machining tasks along with his other passion for restoring classic motorcycles.