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Dub day afternoon

27 April, 2023

VWs’ annual gathering in der Kapital attracts more each year
By Christopher Moor

 A Volkswagen show happened on Sunday December 11, exactly a fortnight before Christmas. Wellington’s fifth annual biggest little VW show again took over the car park for the day at the Parrotdog bar, Lyall Bay, in 2022. Classics from the greater Wellington region and beyond graced the concourse.
Organiser Andy Bray was very happy with the numbers, estimating 38 had parked up – my total was 40 including the Type 2 Kombi and a camper, the welcoming crew at the gate. There appeared to be more Kombis — the generic type 2 vans – and campers taking part in 2022 than in 2021.
He didn’t mention the weather, which was fair enough as it was nothing to complain about; the show’s history of fine days continued uninterrupted.

A 1985 Audi Quattro and two 1969 Porsches, including Andy’s 911E, represented other Volkswagen divisions in their little own area, prompting someone to ask if this was the naughty boys’ corner.
The oldest two cars I saw were two 1956 saloons with oval rear windows and I remembered the pale green one from previous years. Its roof rack was packed with luggage, so we could only hope this was for a summer holiday the owner might soon be enjoying. A venetian blind over the rear window took me back to when the VW was a new kid on New Zealand roads in the 1950s.
Eye catching personalised plates on head turning cars are something I look out for at shows. I achieved both with a 1969 purple metallic Beetle that told me IM BUGED. Another happy memory for me from last year was a 1966 VW Kombi with the registration HIS VW.
Parrotdog is a dog-friendly venue. Some car owners brought their dogs with them, and several families included theirs in their visit to the VWs.  It was a fun outing for everyone and their best friends, made more enjoyable by the free entry.

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.