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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.

Mararn – New Zealand’s only production McLaren

15 August, 2025

I met Andrew Farrow in the little South Island town of Rangiora, where he introduced me to the then current version of his constantly changing car collection. He owns the Eyrewell Forest Motor Company. Not having a forecourt, his sales generally occur online where he buys and sells cars to add to his fluid collection. An example of what I mean by fluid is the F-Type Jaguar which he purchased recently and enjoys driving. It is advertised on his website and will eventually sell, at which point it will be replaced by another exotic he would like to own such as a Ferrari 599. Consequently, his collection is always in a state of flux, and he never has time to get bored with a particular car as another car will always be somewhere on the horizon.
I had gone to see one of the more permanent cars in his collection and one of his favourites, a McLaren M6GT replica. “It’s not the fastest or most expensive car here,” says Andrew, “but it does get the most attention.”
Anybody who knows about cars will instantly recognise this car as being a replica of the McLaren M6GT, conceived by Bruce McLaren as having the potential to be the first McLaren road-legal supercar, conceived decades before the McLaren F1.

The essence of fun

5 August, 2025

The dak-dak-dak of the beach buggy’s air-cooled engine spreads head-turning smiles wherever it goes. It has a timeless appeal but it also comes laden with more than a hint of nostalgia for the golden summers of youth, before ice creams — and suntans for that matter — became a guilty pleasure.
The boom time for the beach buggy was the 1960s. They were invented then but volume manufacture screeched to a halt in the 1970s. New car legislation in the US outlawed things like open wheels and exposed engines, but the owner of this classic example, Rob Schrickel, says small-scale manufacture has bubbled along happily ever since.
“They never really went away,” he says.