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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.

1986 Pontiac Firebird

9 October, 2025

Seeing the car with his own eyes already had Scott fizzing, but when the curator of the car let Scott sit in the driver’s seat it became a truly unforgettable day. There was no way Bo and Duke’s orange stunt jumper could compete with this. To top it off, a photograph of him sitting in the car turned up in the local paper, so he started a new school with an added aura as the kid in the Knight Rider car.
Scott still thought about the Knight Rider car from time to time, but if he had not gone with his wife Abbey to the Selwyn Motor Fest in 2018, it may have remained just a treasured memory. At the show, Abbey asked Scott what his favourite car was as they ambled round. The man she had married instantly connected with his nine-year-old self, but in a deeper voice he said, “KITT from Knight Rider”. Had she just said, “That’s nice dear,” and left it at that, life might have continued as normal. However, unaware of the hole she was about to start digging, she said that she had never heard of it.

Blueprinting basics

3 October, 2025

You occasionally hear petrol heads tossing around the term ‘blueprinting’ when referring to an engine they have assembled, and have sometimes altered significantly. What they are probably trying to say is that their engine was carefully machined to optimum tolerances and balanced — probably for racing. But that isn’t what the term meant originally. You see, in the 1950s, when US stock car race cars really had to be stock, the racing teams would go to the factories and rummage through the parts bins until they found components that were closest in tolerance to the original blueprint developed by the engine’s designers.