ISSUE
Rodders at the ay B h it w s g ra D Nostalgia rag pure olds-cool d e DMAC Studios of om d es n ke aw e ee w th e T awesom RA CSR GET AMONGS Meremere for an ow with the NZH ay sh w r g ra oo d D in ts d ar P ke e wic Stratford NAPA Auto lus check out th Show in wintery od R ot H al racing action. P n io ides Nat nding builds! Custom Street R for some outsta
DANG, we’re crashing through this year fast it seems! Even though it’s winter, there is still a fair bit going on to get them wheels turning and burning. Premier Events have been rocking the scene again with their awesome Prowear Chrome Horsepower Festival which caters for pretty much anyone to get amongst and have some fun.
Check out our video coverage on our YouTube channel
The team there certainly know how to run an event to keep us busy running around trying to capture all the action! We’ll be covering that awesome weekend in the next issue so watch this space for that one!
We already have massive video coverage of it up on our YouTube channel, so make sure you jump over to that and kick back for some cool-as close up action. Don’t forget to hit the “subscribe” button on our channel as well. That way you can keep up to date with our new releases, and it costs you nothing!! It won’t be long now before we are headfirst into the crazy summer season of shows and drag racing either. If you’re like me, you will be busy in the shed on the project cars over this semi quiet time of winter. My ole Coupe is getting pretty close now and I can almost see the end through the mist. It’s been a while since it was in show mode, so there’s been a fair bit of polishing and
cleaning up going on as well as trying to squeeze that 400 in there. The ole girl has done a fair few miles since the last tidy up session, so it’s kind of been like “aww man”. I bet there aren’t too many here that can say they’ve clocked their ride, hahaha. Somehow, I’ve managed to send it around the clock one and half times since I’ve owned it, so there’s been a few dinosaurs go down that carburetor!
RIGHT, back into it here! Make sure you check out the coming events at the back of this issue and get amongst the shows coming up. It’s going to be ALL-GO soon! ROCK N ROLL ALL! Have fun and GET AMONGST! Cheers! Giggles (aka Bogan)
It’s good to see the club are still rockin and the keen are getting out and about. It’s awesome to see the photos popping up online with people out tiki-touring. It’s what we are all about! Planning for our Tauranga Motorfest Show with Jessica from Blissful Photography is rockin full noise. It’s looking to be another great show this year with some awesome sponsors on board again. Check out our coverage of last years show in issue 27 and GET AMONGST if you’re looking for a great day out. The Tauranga Crossing mall is an awesome place for the show with something for everyone and even shelter if the weather looks dodgy.
Photo credit goes to the awesome Rod Dunn from Creative Auto Photography
This issue has one of my all-time favorite events in, The DMAC Studios Nostalgia drags held at NAPPA Auto Parts Dragway Meremere. This is such a massively cool weekend of pure olds-cool action and I just love it!
November 2nd is the date for this year’s event so make sure you get that day in your diary.
ISSUE
OCTANE FIX ONLINE:
CONTENTS: CSR National 2023 Hot Rod Show...................................................................04
0274 827 221
Tauranga Motorfest...........................................................................................70
info@octanefixonline.com
DMAC Studio Nostalgia Drags 2024....................................................................72
www.octanefixonline.com
Up-coming Events...............................................................................................154
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EDITOR / PHOTOGRAPHER / VIDEOGRAPHER: Kelvin Couchman (aka Giggles or Bogan)
|
DESIGNERS: Lisa Lewis / Kyla Saunders
Grab a hot coffee and kick back under the snowy mountain for this show!
Indoor shows like these are awesome. To be able to check the cars out, fully set up with lights, wheels off and even mirrors to highlight all the intricate finishing and paintwork that has gone into these builds is fantastic.
Custom Street Rides in association with the New Zealand Hot Rod Association put together the Hot Rod Nationals for 2023 in the TSB Hub building in Hawera back in September.
With two halls full of hot rods and muscle cars on display, it was a pretty cool wander about which took a fair while to do when you want to fully check them out.
On a freezing cold snowy weekend, The Hub was a-buzz with people wrapping up cosy to come out and get amongst this awesome collection of automobiles with some of New Zealand’s best hot rods on display under lights. The Egmont Rod and Custom Club from Stratford in the Taranaki won the rights to hold the show after a twelve-year break from being held in the Taranki area. Being a National Show, NZHRA clubs from all around NZ apply to hold the show in their own area’s which is awesome for drawing in cars from all around NZ to get along to wow the crowd and inspire the next generation of keen rodders and custom builders to get amongst the scene.
Luckily for me, I managed to get in early with the cameras as when the doors opened for the public, it was all go! Hot rod clubs from all around rolled into the carpark to make up another massive show outside to wander around. This kept evolving with new rides rolling in as the day went on with an endless supply of cool rides to check out. The two-day show was certainly a success for the area promoting the hot rod scene and car clubs in general giving a lot of clubs an excuse to hit the road for a cruise to Hawera. The standard of our builds in NZ is certainly something to be proud of when comparing to the worldwide scene.
With the new creations being debuted at these shows, it certainly shows the enthusiasm and skills we have here in lil ole NZ! The custom side of the industry is certainly right up there too. The joy of building a hot rod is that you can build whatever you please, within the safety side of things anyway. But the style, stance and look is all yours to play with. It’s not like you are restoring a classic to factory where everything is back to basics as if straight off the factory floor. With a hot rod, you can go crazy with your imagination. The phrase “saved from a restorer” springs to mind. Street Machines are much the same. You always have the body shape to guide the process somewhat but the noisy bit up front and what’s behind that to make the wheels go around is where the creativity really kicks in. The retromod scene in NZ is also cranking up full noise and I love this scene. The good ole muscle car vibe with the
performance of a modern-day engine and handling makes for an awesome unit. Custom interiors with a modern twist bringing comfort into the hard-core muscle era but still awesome to watch cruising the main like the good ole days. It wasn’t just hot rods and muscle cars on display, dragsters, pick-ups and a 60’s themed chopper were on display bringing the whole era to life. Being a national show, thirty-four trophies were up for grabs for the builds covering “best paint”, “best interior” and engine bay alike.
Picking which would take away the trophy for each class is a mammoth task for the judges and definitely not one to envy with such high caliber builds. Supporting the show were various trade stands and pop-up stores selling goods for the cave including wheel protectors and a massive display of Hot Wheels cars and models to purchase. LVVTA had an awesome set up with a Cadillac demonstrating an aftermarket diagonal seatbelt set-up that can be retro fitted to any bench seat pillarless car to help save lives swapping out from the
standard factory lap belts. While the show was on, entrants were treated to a tiki-tour around the Taranaki area visiting local museums like the Hillsborough Car Museum, featuring Holdens of every description, Tawhiti Museum and the Elvis Presley Museum. Custom Street Rides opened their doors for a tour around their workshop showing the quality of work they can produce to have their builds included in the show. So, all in all, for a cold wintery snowy weekend in Hawera, it was a pretty hot weekend to get amongst.
Peter Coster won Best Post 48 Street Machine Sedan
Bruce carter won Best Custom Pre 49 Hotrod with this stunning build
Kerry and Trudy Morrison received Best Unfinished for their stunning Candy Red 1937 Buick with a gorgous straight 8 engine
Paul Gibson winning Best Custom and Peoples Choice with his radical 1967 Ford Anglia, with an Aussie Barra straight six turbo under the bonnet
Craig and Margy O’Hanlon’s 1934 Ford Coupe ‘The California Kid’ looking stunning under the lights
Colin & Shirley pope won Best Post 48 Street Machine with their gorgeous pick-up
Elaine Uttinger took away Best Pre 49 Custom Hot Rod Coupe
Grant Hilton taking away Best Interior with his stunning build
Robin Adams won Best Commercial in the Pre 49 Hot Rod division
John Allen won Best Engineered with his stunningly well built 5 window Coupe
Murray Peterson’s Chevrolet Pickup ‘Mater’
Paul Tofts winner of Pre 49 Hot Rod Best Modified Stock Roadster
Daryl Gates won Pre 49 Best Modified Hot Rod Stock Sedan
PRESS PLAY TO SEE THE FULL VIDEO
Trevor Halstead’s 1951 Studebaker Starlight Bomber took first in Best Engine, second in Best Custom Car and third in People’s Choice with this stunning build
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Check out HOT ROD REVUE’S YouTube channel for more great videos https://www.youtube.com/c/HotRodRevuetv
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ROCK N ROLL! What an awesome weekend this event is! If you haven’t rocked up to the Nostalgia Drags at Meremere, then GET AMONGST and get ya butt there next year for sure! This is such a cool weekend at the track! Out on the back field is plenty of room for camping with people rolling in from friday morning onwards to set up camp and get ready for an awesome weekend of screaming olds-cool V8’s, whining blowers and wheel stands! Not to mention the parties that just evolve along the way. As we do! This annual event run by the Bay Rodders Tauranga Inc. club is a massive hit amongst the olds-cool drag racing fraternity. Everything from street
machines to hot rods, gassers, FED’s – front engine dragster to nitro snorting funny cars roll in for this weekend on the track. It’s not just the racers that turn up either, the stands and hills around the track get filled with onlookers just stopping in for the day to reminisce of how the scene used to be in the years gone by. Vehicle entries are knocked off at pre 1978 vehicles ensuring it’s purely oldscool for this event, and I just love it! There’s something raw about it that gets me excited, kind of like non pc at it’s best!
Open headers, crash boxes, blown V8’s and the crazy idea of sitting on top of a diff in a FED pulling six second quarter mile times with the front wheels in the air and a parachute to slow you down at the end. It’s just crazy-cool! I still get excited every time I stand on the start line and watch these things light up the rear tyres to get them sticky, then launch with as much torque as possible, lifting the front wheels and screaming off down that quarter! Watching the teams celebrate while still standing on the start line when it all goes well with a personal best time or a massive save even. The joy and
excitement is fully contagious across the strip and stands with this action! Ross Brown ripped out a super impressive 6.975 quarter in his FED to take out the challenge. The Gassers are a whole different scenario when they roll up to the water trap to heat the rears. These awesome machines from the early drag racing days are designed to throw the weight back onto the rear wheels. The fronts of these cars are raised with a straight axle making them so un-aerodynamic, BUT super-cool at the same time! Built purely old school to represent the era, this class is so cool to watch. With the front raised, the wheel stand antics are just awesome to watch, and they still pull impressively quick quarter mile times running into the ten second quarters!
The classes are run on a points system instead of the usual knock out system, meaning every racer can keep coming back each round making it an awesome show for the spectators. Glen Munro stormed the quarter with a 9.3778 time to be quickest on the day for the Vintage Gassers and Clint Bower being quickest in the Gasser division with a time of 10.376 seconds. The Wild Bunch is another wicked class that has made the Nostalgia Drags home. These top-fuel old school street machine based ground shaking dragsters are a massive feature with the drag racing crowd. The class is getting bigger and bigger every year with more cars being built to come out and hit the track. With massive blowers adorning the massive V8 engines mounted right back into the fire walls, these machines are incredible to watch.
If you are standing near the start line, believe me when I say you are going to want ear plugs in! The pitch of the blowers screaming and the incredible roar and ground shaking thump from the huge cube V8 when these things launch or even just warm the tyres is addictive for sure! I just lovem! The engineering that goes into these builds is truly impressive! To withstand such forces created from powering an old school body down that quarter mile with six second passes is awesome to check out! There really isn’t much left of the original car body that it represents, but that doesn’t phase you at all when you see the work involved with what’s gone into it. If you can imagine a 55 Chevy or big ole Pontiac lifting the front wheels as it rips off the start line, then you can imagine just how much raw grunt that takes.
Pretty stoked with that PB!
Hanging onto these incredible builds is yet another thing to consider. It’s not that they want to be ripping down that quarter mile in a straight line with only the rear wheels on the ground, but it certainly goes to show how good the engineering is that rear end for the drivers to have faith that it is actually going to! Bobby Owens in his 64 Ford Falcon stormed through the finish line with a time of 7.375 seconds at 190mph. Now that’s impressive to say the least considering reaching that speed from a standing start in only 402 metres. With four cars running in the seven second bracket, this is an impressive class to watch for sure. In the exhibition class, Steve Carlsen with his 65 Falcon cranked an incredible time of 6.467 seconds at 223 mph across the finish line with Bronson Douglas-Dunne not far behind with a 6.861 seconds at 205mph.
With eight classes of drag racing for racers to compete in, the action is nonstop all day. Classes including Pre 49 Hot Rod, Pre 78 American, Gasser Challenge, Flat Head Challenge, Competition Bracket, FED Challenge, Wild Bunch Challenge and T Bucket Challenge mean that there is all sorts of variety going down the track as well. It really is like stepping back in time like the old street racing days or that famous movie Two Lane Blacktop. Awesome movie that by the way! Bay Rodders do an awesome job with running the entire weekend to make it a drag racing festival worth getting to. The Sunday after the Nostalgia Drags is even set up for club racing and teams to battle it out on the strip for bragging rights amongst the Rodders. We’ll feature that day in another article as the “Last Chance Drags”. The pit area at the Nostalgia’s is always awesome to wander about as well.
It seems as if there is a hot rod and muscle car show going on as well as the drag racing. The massive mature trees lining the pit area makes for an awesome backdrop for the old school rides park amongst them and kick back under if you’re looking to chill out with your hot dog and fries. This weekend isn’t just about the drag racing either. Saturday night is a full noise party with a live band rocking the crowd after the dinner and prize giving. I’m not sure if that is a ploy to produce slower reactions times from the other competing clubs in the drag racing on Sunday or not, but it certainly is a good night to get amongst and a hell of a party! With a massive list of awesome sponsors sponsoring prizes for the event and DMAC Studios stepping up to claim the naming rights for the events, the prize table and trophies was pretty impressive.
Pure CNC in Tauranga coming up with yet another fantastic design for the trophies being presented to the winning drivers for a memorable piece of art to go on the mantle reflecting the day. This weekend is almost like a pilgrimage within the hot rod fraternity and I can certainly relate to that! Definitely get this weekend in your diary for next year. The first weekend of April is set side for this awesome event, so make sure you GET AMONGST next year!
is 65 Falcon
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Awesome trophies supplied by Pure CNC in Tauranga.
The Wild Bunch action is always awesome to catch!
Ross Brown and The Mistress Drag Racing Team ripped out a super impressive 6.975 quarter in his FED to take out the challenge.
Bronson Douglas-Dunne sorting the rears out for a 6.861 seconds pass at 205mph.
Karl Boniface smokin the rears with the Nitro snorting Castrol Funny Car.
Bobby Owens in his
.
e of 7.375 seconds at 190mph
h the finish line with a tim 64 ford Falcon stormed throug
Russell’s always one to entertain the crowd with the Toy Shed Gasser
PRESS PLAY TO SEE THE FULL VIDEO
Head over to our webpage to check out the clubs in your area. Plus the club benefits, coming events, merchandise and the history of NZHRA
www.hotrod.org.nz Email: nzhra@hotrod.org.nz www.hotrod.org.nz / Email: nzhra@hotrod.org.nz
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> We GET AMONGST the crazy action packed weekend at the Prowear Chrome Horsepower Festival for track cruising, burnouts, drifting and a wicked night display and chill out at the awesome Pukehina Surf ‘n Sand Autorama Show.
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