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The ultimate North vs South enduro-battle

7 February, 2017

 

New Zealand’s largest automotive distributor, Nichibo, is set to continue its support of the North Island Endurance Series into the 2017/2018 season. Nichibo currently holds the naming rights sponsor with their Mahindra brand, and it will now switch to Eneos — Japan’s top oil brand, with a strong heritage in Super GT and World Superbike racing in the motherland — for the new season. 

The Mahindra North Island Endurance series has been a massive success since its inception in 2013, and in conjunction with the Carters Tyres South Island Endurance Series and MotorSport New Zealand, the top 20 cars from both series will go head to head for winner-take-all New Zealand Championship titles at Christchurch’s Mike Pero Motorsport Park on March 18, 2017.

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The joint agreement will see the event run annually, alternating islands — it was hosted by the north at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park in March 2016.

It features a unique format, a one-off race for the Championship titles — to qualify you must finish within the top 20 in each series, and to eliminate trophy hunters, there are no allowances for wildcard entries. 

With some of the fastest cars in the country expected each year, and absolutely no championship strategy in play, it will make for an even more interesting new season of the North Island Endurance Series as the drivers no doubt fight their way into a qualifying place to try claim the title on home soil again in 2018. 

The 2017–’18 Eneos North Island Endurance Series will kick off at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park Taupo, on May 20, 2017

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.

Range Rover CSK — the original SUV

5 June, 2026

The Range Rover, thanks to Charles Spencer King, went into production in 1970 boasting an iconic shape that would last until 1996. The vehicle that would create the SUV moniker came about because Rover decided it was time to add a bigger four-wheel-drive vehicle, one with a 100-inch wheelbase, to the model range. Land Rover made a 109-inch wheelbase model but the standard vehicle had a 88-inch wheelbase.
The new model would be more suitable for road use than the existing Land Rover, which was considered to be predominantly for rural use. To make sure it could cope on any road it came standard with the Rover 3.5-litre V8 engine. The body design was originally sketched by King and went into production with only a few minor touch-ups by the Rover styling team.
According to King, “The idea was to combine the comfort and on-road ability of a Rover saloon with the off-road ability of a Land Rover. Nobody was doing it.”