Bay display: 25 years of the Marineland Hot Rod & Classic Car Festival

12 May, 2017

For those who don’t count duck shooting among their list of hobbies, the Sunday of May 7 may still have held a reason to load the boys into the car and go for a drive. Marineland Street Rod & Kustom Klub hold their Marineland Hot Rod & Classic Car Festival annually at the Meeanee Speedway just out of Napier, and it’s a show that is well worth your time. 

Marking 25 years since the first ever Marineland show, this year’s show was a bit of a special one, which also paid tribute to the Ford Model T with a dedicated display to the original people’s car and hot rod base. 

As soon as the gates opened at 7am, over 100 cars were ready to pass through the gates, with another 600 soon to join them. In fact, the gates had to be shut at 10am due to the Meeanee Speedway grounds being full to capacity! 

In addition to the massive show and shine, the show also hosts its famous swap meet at which bargains abound for the keen treasure hunter, and a number of other entertaining side shows serve to keep everyone entertained. From engine fire-ups through to the spectacular crane-drops, and kids’ entertainment that also kept some of the bigger kids enthralled, the Marineland Hot Rod & Classic Car Festival is always a good time. 

Just have a look through the photo gallery below to see what went on, or what you missed out on, and keep your eyes peeled for a full event report in an upcoming issue of NZV8 magazine. 

The actual Formula One

Seeing, in a shed in Hamilton, New Zealand, the Darracq 120 racer that Louis Wagner, also a pioneer aviator, drove to victory in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race felt a little like finding a Rembrandt at a garage sale.
For historical significance, I’d say this car ranks with Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp, the first Indianapolis 500 winner. Unlike Harroun’s Wasp, which has been lovingly cared for at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum over the years, this historically pivotal machine wound up half a world away from its home in France and, to most of the motoring world, largely forgotten. Sadly, so is the story of how the car got to Aotearoa in the first place.
More often than not, a racing car that is a few years old is regarded as obsolete and relegated to a shed somewhere. As far as racing drivers and team owners at the cutting edge of the sport are concerned, the cars are virtually worthless at that point. They can’t be driven on the street; at best they can be reconfigured for lower levels of the sport, so few people care about them until their historical significance becomes more apparent.

Dad will love this!

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