B R U C E M C L A R E N : K I W I ’ S S TA R U N D I M M E D A F T E R 5 0 Y E A R S NEW ZEALAND CLASSIC CAR JUNE 2020 ISSUE 354
THEY CALLED IT A DINO 246GT • FORD BONUS TRUCK • SUBARU GLF COUPE • ACCORD SUPERTOURER • MCLAREN REMEMBERED
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ISSUE 354 $10.99 INCL. GST JUNE 2020
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FORD BONUS
R E WA R D I N G WORK
SUBARU GLF COUPE ACCORD SUPERTOURER THE RECIPE COMES RIGHT
R ACING THIS TIME
MOTORMAN CE LE BR ATES TE D ROLLISON’S LIFE LONG PASSION FOR CL ASSIC R ACING
IN THIS ISSUE
#354
June 2020
FEATURES
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Dino 246GT
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Ford Bonus F-1
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Subaru GLF coupé
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Slot cars rule!
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Inside importing
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Auto Restorations
CLOSE TO PERFECTION
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CARS CROSSING BORDERS
KIWIS ON TOP OF THE WORLD
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REGULARS
46 LUNCH WITH ... Formula 3 guru Dick Bennetts
80 BEHIND THE GARAGE DOOR
52 MOTORMAN Ted talks 58 KITS AND PIECES McLaren’s road-going racer 64 MOTOR SPORT FLASHBACK The greats remember McLaren
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ISSUE 354/ JUNE 2020
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Feature: 1949 Ford Bonus F-1
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Frank’s dream Perhaps one of the greatest classic pickups of all time, the Ford Bonus F-1 is a study of simplicity and style By Ashley Webb, photography John Galvin
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ISSUE 354 / JUNE 2020
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Feature: 1981 Subaru GLF Coupe
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Rescued, restored, and revered For those who chose to see them, the signs of Subaru’s competition and commercial success were written in the stars. Invercargill’s Mathew Taylor pays homage By Quinton Taylor, photography Quinton Taylor and Mathew Taylor
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orn in an era when Japanese coupés took styling cues from the American muscle car scene, Subaru followed the trend with its GLF coupé — although, as a Japaneseproportioned car, it’s perhaps a muscle car viewed from the wrong end of a telescope. More important, historically speaking, than the GLF’s looks is the fact that Subaru offered a very non– muscle car four-wheel drive as well as turbo-charged versions of this car. Among the American metal that dominated this year’s Otautau Car Show I spotted a 1981 Subaru GLF Series 2 coupé in pristine condition. Turns out its owner, Mathew Taylor, is a keen collector of Subarus and a morethan-handy restorer. THEMOTORHOOD.COM
Mathew was taking the coupé on its first extended drive after its six and a half year journey back from the brink. Apart from outside help with forming some new panels, Mathew worked alone. My question as to how much it all cost brings a smile to his face. “I had to do all the work myself; otherwise I couldn’t have afforded it.
Apart from outside help with forming some new panels, Mathew worked alone
I’ve not counted out exactly how much it cost. I don’t want to, but I have a fair idea.” As if completing a ground-up restoration project wasn’t already a big enough challenge, Mathew suffers from a medical condition that tries to stop him spending his evenings working on project cars. But, as a dairy farm equipment engineer, Mathew knows what he’s capable of, sets himself high standards of workmanship, and can still take a light-hearted view of the time spent on the restoration. “I pretty much made a decision when I started it that nothing was going back on the car unless it was cleaned, painted, polished, or replaced. There are also a lot of new bolts,” he explains. ISSUE 354 / JUNE 2020
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Feature: ?Slot car racing — part one
When slot cars While flower power took over the rest of the world and music changed forever in the ’60s, the hot ticket for many Kiwi kids was: slot car racing! In this first part of a two-part report, Gerard Richards recalls his first true love By Gerard Richards
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o this impressionable youth, the entrance to Aladdin’s cave was the Pit Stop, two floors above the Regent Theatre on Auckland’s Queen Street. It was an oasis of multilane wooden slot car raceways, the walls emblazoned with motor racing art and adverts, with hypnotically attractive model race cars in brightly lit glass cases blasting out in the subdued ambient lighting. The Pit Stop was a mecca for boys and young men in the mid to late 1960s. A twilight wonderland, it attracted us like moths to a naked bulb, glittering with state-of-the-art day-glo/metalflake sleek racers and hot on-track action. In 1969, we were young pretenders,
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only just in the first year of high school. We’d heard word through the grapevine of this groovy place where you could race your own cars on big tracks. At home in the bays on Auckland’s North Shore, our previous slot car experience was limited to our home Scalextric (from about 1963) and later Hurricane slot car sets. Our cars ran pretty well there, but we were in for a rude awakening when we ran them on the mighty wooden and copper tape tracks for the first time. They weren’t quite so flash there. Speed and traction were sadly lacking compared with the regulars’ cars. The top cars even on this commercial raceway’s public days were a quantum leap faster than ours.
s ruled the room
Cox Lotus 40 V8 sports car, FT 36 Mabuchi side-winder, mid 1960s
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Feature: Import/Export
How to import a car 101 Want a classic car but can’t find your perfect match here? Well the internet means the world is now just one big car market. So, how easy is it to import the car of your dreams? By Ian Parkes
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n the last issue, we looked at the numbers and types of classic cars being exported from or imported into New Zealand. The good news was that there were more cars coming than going but the main takeaway was that it was American cars coming in. In recent years, there has been a steady stream of ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s classic car imports from the US of A, driven by the sheer variety and volume of cars available there and for the savings that can be made. Naturally, it’s a high-risk proposition, handing over thousands of
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dollars to someone overseas who isn’t subject to our Fair Trading Act and then having to wait several weeks before you get, or even see, what you have paid for. Then there’s the anxiety about getting it certified fit for our roads. New Zealand certifiers are notoriously difficult to please, especially with regard to anything modified. We’ll stick to original-spec cars for this discussion but it’s still a challenge getting a 50-year-old car through standards designed for modern cars. That a vehicle is judged roadworthy in
the UK, for example, means nothing to assessors here. UK councils salt the roads in winter so chassis rust is commonplace there. Yet, here, even surface rust on an import’s structural components may require rectification. In fact, even cars that would get warrants of fitness here would fail an import certification inspection. We effectively operate a two-tier system here in which imported vehicles have to meet a higher bar. Yet some states in the US don’t have any mandatory roadworthiness checks at all. There’s that, then.
THE ALL-IMPORTANT INSPECTION That puts a lot of emphasis on getting any vehicle you want to buy inspected properly. A variety of inspection services operate in America and some dealers will arrange that for you. A couple of people we spoke to recommended getting Kiwi mechanics living in the States — who know what certifiers here are looking for — to check the cars for you. Local classic car owner Stephen Hawkins got a friend based in Huntington Beach, California, to check out F150 trucks for him. Steve’s inspector called him as he was going over each car, checking the floors and suspension mounting points, looking for signs of damage in wheel wells, and so on, and rating everything out of 10. Steve asked his friend to check five to ten trucks in the right range that he had found within just 15 miles of the friend’s zip code. However, Steve said 15 miles in LA meant his friend still spent
hours in traffic and, in the end, probably regretted the very reasonable charge for the services he offered to Steve. Getting a sound vehicle is clearly the most important detail. While Steve says the quality and number of photographs are much better on sale listings in the US than here you can still miss a lot in photographs. He sent his friend to
New Zealand certifiers are notoriously difficult to please, especially with regard to anything modified check on a black truck on one lot. The friend rang Steve to confirm he had the right one, asking if it was “the one with flame effect on the front guards”. Not Steve’s taste at all. Steve zoomed into the pictures he had checked online and,
sure enough, purple flames. So that was a wasted trip for the inspector, and it shows just how essential it is to get someone to look over the car for you.
THE SEARCH That’s a good tip: find an inspector then find cars within their reach. A host of classic car apps will search and find dozens, possibly hundreds, of cars within a 100-mile radius. That’s a great place to start, but at this stage it’s just research. For a bit of fun, download a few apps such as Iseecars, Classics.autotrader, ClassicCars.com, eBay Motors, MyClassicGarage, Carsforsale.com, Cargurus, and craigslist. Searchtempest is good, too. It searches all craigslist sites within a specified radius from a zip code. For example, type in zip code 92604, which is in the middle of Orange County. “Try a 100-mile radius from zip code 92604 and see how many hits you
You can import the American dream — or at least a 1948 Buick
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ISSUE 354 / JUNE 2020
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Star Insurance Marketplace Send your enquiries, questions, and comments to carsforsale@classiccar.co.nz
CHARGING MORE!
American Charger or Australian Charger? It’s not all about Ford vs GM. Both variants of Mopar Chargers have their fans among Kiwis so where do they cross over? Ben Selby sets his sights on both By Ben Selby
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ullitt, The Dukes of Hazzard, Bathurst, Nascar, Hemi engines, and The Fast and The Furious — all of the above represent why Dodge and Valiant Chargers are icons for Mopar and classic car fanatics everywhere. As a result, prices for both Aussie and American classics have risen well above their social standing when they were new. However, one variant is commanding significantly more than the other. Both have an equal share of fans, sure, but when you compare Chargers, apples for apples, they are very different. According to US car valuing site Carsguru.com, Dodge Chargers saw a sharp hike in recent years but this has mellowed out into a gradual climb, especially for the big block 440ci RT and Hemi cars. Americans have well
and truly cottoned onto the fact the muscle car era was a unique period and the supply of these cars, like the oil they gobbled so voraciously, is not inexhaustible after all. What this means for Kiwi buyers and importers is that decent examples of second-generation Chargers — the most sought after — are seldom found for less than $80K. Bryan Leonard of the Northern Mopar Muscle Car Club says the second-generation American cousin gets his seal of approval, despite the odd period design flaw. “They really hit the mark with this design,” says Bryan. “Nothing says ‘staunch’ more than a secondgeneration US Charger.” Scrolling through the classifieds reveals a few B-body Chargers for less, but they fall into the project category. If
you want a straight matching-numbers example of a ’68–’70 car, set aside a snip over six figures. However, if only the flagship Charger R/T will do, you are looking at closer to $150,000 for a 440 Magnum 7.2 litre V8 with the 727 automatic transmission.
Superb Super Bee
The third-generation car, built from ’71 to ’74 presents the smartest investment right now. The Charger underwent significant styling tweaks and, despite the looming oil crisis, the Mopar V8s still retained their grunt with everything from a 225ci slant six to the popular 440 on offer. Examples of these ‘coke bottle’ cars change hands in New Zealand for anywhere $40,000 to $70,000 for straight, rust-free examples.
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“The third-generation cars have been climbing steadily in recent years so it would pay to get one now. A 1971 Super Bee would be my pick,” says Bryan. The Aussie Chrysler and Valiant Chargers, regardless of spec level, have been going up in value since the early noughties. That said, within recent years things seem to have calmed down. John Kearse is a Valiant Charger owner and co-ordinator for the Facebook page ‘Mopars in the South’. He confirms this trend of things remaining level for the much-loved Aussie classic. “Valiant and Chrysler Chargers seem to have levelled out in value but aren’t cheap,” says John. “People have their own tastes in Mopar cars, with Pacers and suchlike being looked after, but the Charger is probably the most sought after.”
Tucked away
While E49 R/Ts and E55s can be almost impossible to find for sale in New Zealand — as many of them have already been restored and tucked away by caring owners — just about every variant of Valiant and Chrysler
The third generation built from ‘71 to ‘74 presents the smartest investment right now
Charger is still pretty hard to come by. Any examples, regardless of condition, command some serious coin. “I have owned my 1975 VJ Charger 770 for 18 years and in that time it has owed me $9000. However, I have turned down offers of $35,000 from people wanting to buy it,” says John. A growing trend has seen many classic cars based in New Zealand leave our shores for buyers across the ditch but, according to John, when it comes to Valiant and Chrysler Chargers, it’s Kiwi buyers pushing the
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flow the other way, bringing more into the country out of Australia. “Most of the time, Valiants and Chryslers are actually being imported here from Australia. People are finding tidy examples in Australia for the equivalent of $50,000. With many rough cars in New Zealand needing that amount for a full restoration, most people don’t mind paying a bit extra for compliance and registration, making this way a bit of a no-brainer for most,” he says. Whether you hanker for a US or
0800 250 600
If the US Charger has been fully restored, make sure you have the documents and receipts showing the work and who carried it out
an Aussie Charger, it pays to do your homework. Matching numbers is a good place to start. “Check if it is a matching-numbers car,” suggests Bryan. “Many cars have been engine swapped, so matching the original engine to the chassis is essential for a car to hold its value. They are easily worth more down the track.” John Kearse confirms this trend with Valiant and Chrysler cars, as engine swaps were commonplace in the early’80s. “Back in the day, if your short block was a bit sad, you could go to a reconditioning shop and literally swap it over. Reconditioners would have multiple reconditioned engines for Aussie cars ready to go due to the demand. But once the swap has happened, there goes your originality,” explains John. Traditional advice is simply to find the best example you can afford. Plus, getting bogged down finishing someone else’s project or restoration is best avoided. However, if by chance you come across a barn-find 440 RT or Hemi with original patina, then grab it.
The buck stops here
If the US Charger has been fully restored, make sure you have the documents and receipts showing the work and who carried it out. There are operators out there who are all about making a quick buck. Engine work and bodywork done in New Zealand are often of a higher standard. Engines and gearboxes are simple and easy to maintain; however, rust can rear its ugly head. Common rust points for US cars are around the boot floor and bonnet hinges, so check these over with a finetooth comb. The same can be said for Valiants and Chryslers.
“General thing is, they rust. However, you can still buy all the suspension and mechanical components new,” says John. So which Charger would be best to buy right now? Well, given the gap in prices it really is hard to compare the American to its Australian counterpart. However, in terms of the market now, US Chargers are climbing while Valiants and Chryslers seem to have reached a plateau, for now at least. Either way, if the phrase ‘Mopar or no car’ applies to you, you certainly won’t be losing out.
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