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Three-day North Island Targa: Day one

16 June, 2014

 


Photo : Fast Company / Ben Hughes

Subaru-driver Leigh Hopper and co-driver Simon Kirkpatrick headed the field after the first day of competition in this year’s three-day Targa North Island event.

The Orewa pair won three of the day’s six completed stages and take a 28 second lead in both categories over Auckland Mitsubishi Evo pair Jason Gill and Mark Robinson, with Patumahoe’s Glenn Inkster and his co-driver Spencer Winn a further 43 seconds back in their Mitsubishi Evo.

Last year’s Targa New Zealand event winners Martin Dippie and Jona Grant from Dunedin dominated the Modern 2WD category, topping the time sheets in all six stages to take a minute-and-a-half advantage over fellow Porsche pair Richard Krogh and Glenn Sharratt into the second day of competition on the Coromandel Peninsula and into the Waikato tomorrow.

Husband and wife Ross and Carmel Graham (Holden Torana A9X V8) caused an upset, meanwhile, in the Metalman Classic 2WD class by turning the tables on long-time class pace-setters, Barry Kirk-Burnnand and Dave O’Carroll (BMW M3), and Barry’s son Carl and his co-driver Sam Gordon (BMW 325i)

The Grahams claimed their first class scalp in the day’s first stage – Koheroa east of Pukekohe – and went on to top the class time sheets in three of the other stages and equal the time set by the winners of a fourth, another husband and wife pairing, Tony and Jo Butler in their Holden-based Cheetah V8.

Targa newcomers Ian Power and Shamus Kay had a good start to their day, setting the third quickest Metalman Classic 2WD time through the first stage in their BMW 320i only to overshoot a corner at the end of the second stage and end up in a ditch, where they were joined a few minutes later by the Nissan Skyline of Greg and Jackson Fowles.

Design accord

28 March, 2025

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

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.