As we settle back into our routines after the Christmas break, I find myself making resolutions and planning for the year ahead. It is my favourite time of the year, looking at a relatively clear diary and not knowing what the year will hold. For many it is a time where car projects gain a [...]
The Ransley Riley’s origin as a racing car came about due to a set of bizarre circumstances. The story passed down refers to the day that Don Ransley was driving to Dunedin at the end of 1947 in a post war 2.5-litre Riley. During that trip he was passed by a pre-war Riley Kestrel saloon. [...]
There were a couple of cars under covers in Bruce Moore’s workshop off Moorhouse Avenue in Christchurch when I walked in – and one of them was a car I had not seen since 1967. It was the car I had driven up from Oamaru to see this day in late January 2020. And it [...]
General Motors was caught napping when Ford launched the Mustang in April, 1964. GM knew the Mustang was coming, but GM executives weren’t at all concerned and didn’t expect it to generate the mass appeal it did. Nor did they expect it’d sell 100,000 units within four months, and keep on soaring. Having got a [...]
The sports car campaign had been expensive, particularly when the NZIGP organisation had promised it would help with travel expenses to take the car to the Grand Prix meeting, but then reneged. There was nothing unusual about that casual treatment of South Island drivers by the NZIGP in those days. So, for his next car, [...]
Part of a long-anticipated European/UK motorhome trip for me was to be able to finally see famous racetracks I had only ever read about. Our European adviser, Phil Foulkes from Clevedon, and our UK friends Robin and Sue Longdon had urged us to firstly come to Dijon-Prenois and share the weekend with them, as the [...]
In the late 1950s, America’s ‘big three’ car makers, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, watched the growing success of the compact Rambler and the inroads being made by European compact cars, and knew they had to get into that market. Ford and Chrysler took the conventional road with the Falcon and the Valiant, scaled-down versions [...]
Clive Butler dates his passion for automobiles to 1946, when he was only two years old and his father purchased a 1937 Series 4 BSA. At that time the Butlers lived in Chelmsford, Essex, and the BSA would serve as the family car for the next ten years. By the time Clive arrived in New [...]
Before 2019 becomes a distant memory, Andrew takes time to reflect on the year that was; the cars that moved through his Motor House doors and the people that made it all worthwhile. As you would have read in my ‘Young Gun’ articles, people are drawn to a particular car for a certain reason. The [...]
Originally held under the banner of the BP Alfa Classic, PDL Industries took over the naming rights of this popular classic race event in 1995 before SKOPE became involved in 2003. The enthusiasm from competitors and the public has never waned, and the meeting remains the biggest in both entry and crowd numbers on the [...]