Cars Archives | New Zealand Classic Car

Rural delivery

11 April, 2025

Lew’s initial assessment of the derelict Jeep was that it was pretty rusty but it looked complete and he thought it would make a pretty nifty and fun town car for Ann.
“That was about six years ago. It took me about four or five months to restore it; there’s not much to it. I don’t know a lot about the history of this Jeep, although I do know they made a lot of them. There are only a few in New Zealand and since I got it here, I’ve heard that there are one or two more in the country, but none of them on the road.” He believes one might be near Omarama and another in Christchurch.
Lew and Ann decided to put the Jeep back into its original distinctive US Postal Service livery and the result is impressive. Hours of sanding, grinding, and welding have produced a Jeep looking like it is fresh from the production line. The chassis was media blasted and repainted in a gleaming black, and all components were overhauled.

Performance art

4 April, 2025

Shelby’s targets were Superformance — a South African company that wanted to sell its versions of these cars in the US — and the US-based Factory Five. Their defence was that the name and shape of the Cobra car were abandoned when Shelby American ceased production of these particular models back in the 1960s.
Shelby countered with: “We spent millions of dollars creating the name and the car and winning the world championship. These knock-off-car guys don’t deserve the credit or the profit for what my team and Ford accomplished in the ’60s.”
Superformance painted an even bigger target on its back by also producing a version of Shelby’s Daytona coupé. Other cars in its production stable were Mk1 GT40 and 1962 Corvette Grand Sport replicas, but we’ll focus here on the Daytona.

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.

Lancia Stratos – building a winner

12 March, 2025

On his own, and later with his wife Suzie, Craig Tickle has built and raced many rally cars. Starting in 1988, Craig went half shares in a Mk1 Escort and took it rallying. Apart from a few years in the US studying how to be a nuclear engineer, he has always had a rally car in the garage. When he is not playing with cars, he works as an engineer for his design consulting company.
Naturally, anybody interested in rallying has heard of the Lancia Stratos, the poster child and winner of the World Rally circuit in 1974, ’75, and ’76. Just as the Lamborghini Countach rebranded the world of supercars, so, too, did the Lancia Stratos when it came to getting down and dirty in the rally world.

1959 Sunbeam Alpine: A road trip with Lady P

28 February, 2025

The romance of the road
The South Island begins to reveal its unbelievable beauty and clarity of light as we weave and bend past mountain peaks, blue flowing rivers, and bright green forests. Today, while the cutlery wheel continues to chime, there are no morbid rattles, and we are still alive. The road moves beneath us and I start to really understand what a road trip is all about: the warm analogue hum of the engine, the sensory overload of wind and sun, the dreamy pageant of shapes and colour that glides by like a movie set, not a cloud in the sky.

You’re the one that I want – 1973 Datsun 240K GT

21 February, 2025

In the early 1970s, Clark Caldow was a young sales rep travelling the North Island and doing big miles annually. He loved driving. In 1975 the firm he worked for asked Clark what he wanted for his new car, and Clark chose a brand-new Datsun 240K GT. The two-door car arrived, and Clark was smitten, or in his own words, he was “pole vaulting.”
Clark drove it all over the country, racking up thousands of miles. “It had quite a bit of pep with its SOHC 128 hp (96kW) of power mated to a four-speed manual gearbox,” he says. Weighing in at 1240kg meant the power to weight ratio was good for the time and its length at almost 4.5 metres meant it had good street presence.
Clark has been a car enthusiast all his life, and decided around nine years ago to look for one of these coupes. By sheer luck he very quickly found a mint example refurbished by an aircraft engineer, but it was in Perth.

The originals – the Ledgerwood Collection

14 February, 2025

Thanks to Central Otago’s dry climate, it’s no surprise to find that Wanaka couple Jim and Daphne Ledgerwood are steadily developing an incredible collection of amazing coupes. ‘The Originals’ they have are as per factory new condition, and their aim is to keep them for everyone to see how it was done back in the day—pure nostalgia.
An occasional email from Jim usually reveals another gleaming addition. The collectors also have an impressive display of American pickups. It’s our gain and US enthusiasts’ loss, as car agent’s adverts proclaim, “Sorry you missed out. Gone to New Zealand!” Some of Jim and Daphne’s cars are almost part of the family, hence their nicknames.

To finish first, first, you must build a winner

5 February, 2025

Can-Am royalty
Only three M20s were built, including the car that was destroyed at Road Atlanta. This car was later rebuilt. All three cars were sold at the end of the 1972 season. One of the cars would score another Can-Am victory in 1974, driven by a privateer, but the M20’s day was done. Can-Am racing faded away at the end of that season and was replaced by Formula 5000.
These days the cars are valued in the millions. It was unlikely that I would ever have seen one in the flesh if it hadn’t been that one day my editor asked me if I would mind popping over to Taranaki and having a look at a pretty McLaren M20 that somebody had built in their shed.
That is how I came to be standing by the car owned and built by truck driver Leon Macdonald.

Hiroshima Express

21 January, 2025

One of the rarest Mazdas,and amongst one of the rarest production cars in the World, a 1967 Series 1, Cosmo made its public debut at the 2025 Cromwell Classic and Hot Rod Car Show on Saturday January 18 this year.
After a challenging 5-year restoration, its proud Cromwell owner, Mike Elford celebrated its appearance along with Dunedin specialist, Mazda rotary engine builder, Cory Wilson who trallered the car through to the show.
“There are a number of details still to attend to and fine-tune the engine and then it will at last be finished. I’m very pleased with the result,” Cory said.
Mike is extremely pleased with the end now in sight of what has been a very challenging project. The tiny jewel of Japanese motoring engenuity attracted many on-lookers at the show as it sat glistening in the sun on an appropriately brilliant Central Otago summer’s day.

Two engines instead of one?

13 December, 2024

Popping two motors into a car is not only complicated, it doesn’t always end well. Donn Anderson recalls early attempts, including John Cooper’s ill-fated original Twini Mini built 58 years ago

For a boost in performance, better traction, and perhaps improved handling to some, two motors seems an obvious solution. It would also eliminate the need to develop a larger engine replacement from scratch, but would that outweigh the not inconsiderable technical difficulties?
The idea of using a pair of engines dates back at least 86 years to the Alfa Romeo Bimotor single seater racing car that was officially timed at 335km/h, or 208mph. Taking a lengthened Alfa P3 chassis, the Italians fitted two supercharged straight eight 2.9-litre and 3.2-litre engines, one in front of the cockpit, and the other behind the cockpit.

A star in their eyes – 1968 Ford Galaxie 500

6 December, 2024

“Everyone asks that until they take a closer look,” says its owner today, Brent Harris of Auckland. “They also ask if I’ve done the restoration myself, and I have to tell them no, it is 100 per cent original. It’s the paint listed in the handbook.”
It was the original condition of the car that won Brent over from the moment he first saw it — that and the fact “it just looks stunning”.
Brent had owned a 1968 Mark II Cortina for four years. It was in need of some work and the question arose whether to spend the money or get something different. You don’t get much more divergent than Ford’s different approaches to its markets in the UK and the USA.

Bob’s Bambina video

3 December, 2024

Bob McMurray has spent a lifetime inside Formula 1, including 33 years he and wife, Shaune, spent working for McLaren from his earliest days as a mechanic through to watching Scott Dixon’s first Kiwi win at Indianapolis. Bob is now one of our top motorsport commentators and Toyota Racing New Zealand’s ambassador, a role he relishes.
Bob now owns this restored Fiat 500 F. The story of how he became its owner almost by accident and of its restoration is one of those that has ended well, and it was a bit of a laugh getting there. Bob’s Fiat actually has a distant McLaren connection.
This is a short video of Bob’s Fiat Bambina shot by Classic Car magazine

Back from the brink – 1968 MGB GT

15 November, 2024

Auckland classic car enthusiast Kerry Bowman soon realised he had a massive job on his hands in restoring his classic 1968 MGB GT. When Kerry and his MGB first appeared in New Zealand Classic Car in March 2021, in “Behind The Garage Door”, the stripped-out shell had revealed some nasty surprises. Once the true extent of the hidden damage was discovered, the work would normally have been handed over to a professional fabricator. However, with the assistance of experts such as MG specialist restorer, Paul Walbran, Kerry has completed an impressive restoration and saved this car from the scrapheap.

Westside story

25 October, 2024

For the young Dave Blyth, the Sandman was always the coolest car and he finally got one when he was 50. “I have always had a rule. When you turn 50, you buy or can afford to buy the car you lusted after when you were 20. I was 20 in 1979 and the HZ Sandman came out in 1978. It was the coolest of the cool — I just wanted one,” he says. “Back then a Sandman cost $4500 new and a house was worth about $20,000. I made about $30 a week so it was an impossible dream then.”
Dave was heavily influenced by the panel van culture of the time. “I started with an Escort panel van and upgraded to a Holden HD panel van with a 186ci six cylinder. I started a van club, Avon City Vans.

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