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Fords and more – November 2020 issue on sale now

19 October, 2020

 


NZCC 359

 

From their exotic curved sideglass to their curved everything else the late-50s Alfa Romeo Guilia and Giulietta Sprint Speciales proved automotive exotica weren’t just for the super-rich. Owner of this gorgeous 1962 example, Michael Wyatt, says the lower-powered 1300cc Giulietta is even more special as it really makes the most of this super aerodynamic shape. This month we also feature  one of Ford’s best, the the Mk 11 Capri 2.8i, and we celebrate one of the greatest auto engines of all time, the 6¾-litre V8 in the limited edition 2020 Bentley Mulsanne 6.75, a swansong for 60 years of pace and grace. We also look at a sort of K.I.T.T. car, the Pontiac TransAm, and a car that looks better with each passing year, the Isuzu Piazza.         

Get yours in store now or delivered to your door from magstore.nz – New Zealand Classic Car – Issue 359.

The butterfly effect

18 June, 2026

The man on the mountain bike pedalled over, taking it all in. Gazing in wonderment at this small Japanese coupe with butterfly doors, he said, “Wow, I have never seen one of these before. What is it?” When I told him it was a Toyota, he nearly fell off his bike.
The Toyota Sera is unique amongst ’90s Japanese coupes. The Sera, which is Italian for ‘evening’, can trace its roots back to Toyota’s AXV-II concept car. Launched as part of a trio of Toyota concept cars at the 1987 Tokyo Motor Show, it shared its underpinnings with the P70 Toyota Starlet. The similarities ended there, thanks to the AXV-II’s low-slung and rounded coupe styling with butterfly doors. These doors were held upright by gas struts when fully open. Glass covered the upper section of the doors and the rear hatchback.
These features, much to everyone’s surprise, were carried over to the production Sera in 1990. Toyota marketed the Sera, which means ‘will be’ in Spanish and ‘princess’ in Hebrew, as a funky alternative to the much-loved MR2.

Racing Mazdas

12 June, 2026

Both Rod Millen and Ron Kendall were rotary racing kings, emanating from the North Shore of Auckland, where I grew up. And the ultimate rotary techno guru was Bill Shiells, who developed the engine into a rocket ship while working out of Gulf Mazda in Takapuna from 1969, and later in his own business, Rotorsport. He began to extract some phenomenal horsepower from the enigmatic rotary engine. Bill was one of the first to race the Mazda RX-2 Coupe in 1971 and achieved immediate success, causing others to sit up and take notice, particularly the North Shore’s racing elite. They included Robbie Francevic, Rod Millen, Ron Kendall, John Woolf, John Le Feuvre, and Rex Findlay.