New Zealand Classic Car – Issue 351 on sale now

26 February, 2020

 

 

The latest issue of New Zealand Classic Car has just hit the shelves. 

With over 100 hundred pages on offer, this issue has something for everyone, providing you have a certain passion for gorgeous French classics. The phrase, ‘a picture tells a thousand words’, is perfectly suited to this month’s cover. Two stunning Renault Alpines with so much in common, despite the 47 year age gap, but in a way couldn’t be more further apart. We take to the streets in these two stunners and reveal what’s under the skin of both these beauties.

Carrying on with our French theme, we belatedly celebrate 100 years of Citroën with an old favourite, the Citroën DS 23 Pallas. The curvaceous shape and lines of this distinctive and beautiful French icon was the perfect recipe for it to be voted the most beautiful car ever by a well known international magazine back in 2009. 

If French styling isn’t your cup of tea then don’t despair, there is plenty of great content including 100 years of Mazda and Donn Anderson takes us back three decades to when he was taken for a ride in piece of automotive history, a genuine Ford GT40. Michael Clark catches up with our very own drag racing legend, Garth Hogan, for part two of his great accomplishments over the decades and we take a look at the eight cars that were displayed at the first exhibition concerned with the aesthetics of motor car design plus much, much more.

Get yours in store now or delivered to your door from magstore.nz – New Zealand Classic Car – Issue 351.

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”