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PRO-STREET PLYMOUTH DUSTER OCT. 2019 ISSUE 173
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ISSUE 173 ∞ OCTOBER 2019
WILD ’35 FORD COUPE
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WICKED TALES – THE LIFE OF FRED MANN
PALMY SWAP MEET — BARGAIN HUNTER’S PARADISE!
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contents OCTOBER 2019
The Cars
22: RAISING THE ROOF — HOME-BUILT WILLYS ROADSTER 32: SIMPLICITY — 598-CUBE CAMARO STREETER 68: REPEAT OFFENDER — A MOPAR NUT’S RETURN 90: THE LONG GAME — CHOPPED AND CHANNELED '35 COUPE 112: GLORY DAYS — REAL-DEAL BATHURST RACER
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Events
44: PALMY SWAP MEET 76: CHROME HORSEPOWER FESTIVAL 86: CONRODDERS MEMORIAL RUN
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The Other Stuff
76 Special Features
50: LOCAL HERO – A TALE OF WHO YOU WISH YOU WERE 80: REPAIRING A WRECK – IT CAN BE DONE 102: DREAM SHED — NZ MOTORING MEMORABILIA PLUS 108: INSTANT GAINS — K&N FILTERS EXPLAINED
04: SHORT SHIFT 08: NEWS 10: TORQUEBACK 12: JUST QUICKLY 16: DAILY GRIND 18: IN THE BUILD 20: EVENTS 40: SUBSCRIBE AND WIN 42: STRAIGHT TALK 62: DRAGGED UP 64: NZ’S QUICKEST 66: AEROFLOW RACE DIARY 98: SOCIAL SCENE 100: CONCEPT CORNER 120: CMC NEWS 122: CARGO 124: A DECADE AGO 126: LOCAL SPECIALISTS 128: COMING NEXT MONTH
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FEATURE 1967 CHEV CAMARO RS/SS CAR
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WORDS: TODD WYLIE PHOTOS: NZV8
PAUL DAINTON’S DREAM MACHINE NEEDED TO BE FAST, SIMPLE, STREETABLE, AND A MOPAR … WHAT HE’S CREATED IS ALMOST ALL OF THAT …
eing a Mopar fan isn’t easy. For starters, there’s generally fewer of them around than there are cars from GM or Ford, and with that comes fewer aftermarket parts and less support. Those in the know call the resulting exorbitant prices asked for decent Mopar cars or parts ‘Mopar tax’. It’s a cruel reality for any Mopar owner, or wannabe Mopar owner, but they
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can either suffer through it, or do as Paul Dainton did six years ago and take a completely different approach. Having crewed for friends for many years and being well aware of what was involved in building and maintaining a quick street car, both physically and financially, he decided that the best way to get his street car thrills would be behind the wheel of
a first-generation Camaro. “The ease, cost, and availability of tried and proven go-fast products for Camaros is endless,” Paul states of the decision. While the build would by no means be a cheap or quick exercise, he could help himself in both of these aspects by hunting down a car that he wouldn’t need to repaint to begin with. Although the seller may disagree, the freshly restored 1967
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SPECIAL FRED MANN FEATURE
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WORDS: TONY JOHNSON  PHOTOS: GRAEME JACKSON, PAUL HOPPER, CHRIS BENNETT, ROBYN MANN, GOLLY ADAMS
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CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF A GUY WHO FILLED HIS AMAZING LIFE WITH FAST CARS, FAST WOMEN, AND GOOD FRIENDS
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f you didn’t live in Wanganui in the 1970s then chances are that you’ve never heard of Fred Mann. Yet, despite his relative obscurity, he built cars back then — nearly half a century ago — so ahead of their time that if any of them were to pull up your driveway today your jaw would hit the floor even now. Fred was a visionary and a multi-talented guy, whose entire life revolved around big block Chevys, tunnel-ram intake manifolds, four-speed manual transmissions, and good times. Smooth, good-looking, and charismatic, he spent much of his amazing life living the dream in Southern California, always with a beer in his hand, a Marlboro cigarette between his lips, and a gorgeous girl on his arm. Or several … Fred died earlier this year aged 63, and it’s well past time to tell the story of a hell of a guy who lived a hell of a life; a life which might look something like the very life that many of us might have chosen — from our wildest dreams — to live if we could have.
THE CARS OF HIS WANGANUI DAYS
Fred Mann with all but one of his four vices: a cool American car, a cold beer, and a Marlboro. Fred’s ’68 Camaro was an old 327 and Powerglide car that he bought in the mid 80s, not long after arriving in California. He later stripped it down completely and had Dez in Bakersfield build a 396 big block for it, which eventually found its way into his blue El Camino after he sold the Camaro, less engine and gearbox
In an epitaph he wrote about his close friend and Los Angeles flatmate Golly Adams, of Taranaki, related some lines from a song as a synonym for Fred: “all the girls wanted to be with him, and all the guys wanted to be him”. This writer was one of those guys. I was 17. Fred was 22. I struggled to hang onto one girlfriend; Fred had girls scratching each other’s eyes out to get to him. I had a marginally cool American car; Fred had the handsdown coolest and most bad-arse tyre-frying street machine in town. In fact, though we were all too young and insular to realize it at the time, Fred had several of the baddest cars in the whole country. And it’s only in more recent years, when those of us who knew him at the time think back to what he achieved well over four decades ago, that we’ve come to realize just how ahead of his time, how influential, and how visionary Fred Mann, car guy extraordinaire, really was. With his long-haired rock-star good looks and smooth demeanour, Fred had such extraordinary popularity with the girls that Wanganui folklore had it that he maintained a little black pocketsized diary that held the details of every girl he’d ‘had relations’ with, along with a code system that gave each girl a rating for their performance and enthusiasm, and notations about points of particular interest. As we all grew up, of course, we wondered if the old legend about Fred’s little black pocket diary was, in fact, anything more than just a legend. Fred first came to the attention of other car guys in and around Wanganui as a result of his first car, selfbuilt during his teenage years: a tastefully modified
MkII Zephyr. These cars were the hot ticket in the early 1970s, and car modifying and customizing was in its infancy — especially in small-town New Zealand places like Wanganui. Today, you’d call Fred’s Zephyr a mild custom, and he made it go just as good as it looked. This car — uber-cool for its day — kicked off lifelong friendships with other Wanganui gearheads of the time, including Chris Bennett, Mike Madden, and Bob Hannah. Bob Hannah: “I first met Fred one night in 1974 when we were both 18 or 19 years old. It was at the burger bar on Victoria Avenue in Wanganui when we recognized we had similar cars. I had a MkII Zodiac and Fred had a MkII Zephyr. We both got talking about cars that night and a friendship developed which lasted our whole lives. Together we modified his Zephyr to make it a super-cool car — and, of course, a chick magnet. At this time, I also owned a MkI Zephyr and Fred helped me modify it with MkIII Zephyr running gear.” Mike Madden: “Early on, Fred — ‘Fearless’, as I called him — and I knew of each other and had a mutual respect for what each other was doing car-wise, but we hadn’t crossed paths. Fred had this amazing MkII Zephyr which was just bad-arse for a Zephyr. It was lowered, had bucket seats, PA Vauxhall tail lights, MkIII Zephyr engine, and fourspeed gearbox, headers, a wild cam, stripped-out interior, gauges on the dash, and the list goes on. The thing is that it was a really balanced-looking car, not over the top, good stance, awesome engine and drivetrain, and that was the first indication of Fred’s unbelievable knack of pulling all of the elements together to create a piece of moving art. Sort of like these flash chefs nowadays on the TV, but in automotive speak. He could draw freehand as well, and, when I think of his renditions back then, they remind me of the Dave Kindigs and Chip Fooses of today’s world. Huge talent — if he wasn’t such a bloody larrikin, God knows what he could have done with his life.” While Fred was driving his Zephyr, he became influenced by what was going on within the car scene in the US, and his eyes were suddenly opened wide, like so many young car guys all around the world, by the two iconic car movies American Graffiti and Two-Lane Blacktop. This was the influence for what would become the toughest street car that Wanganui, and probably the rest of the lower North Island, had ever seen in the mid 1970s. American Graffiti hit the worldwide cinemas in 1973, and, by late in 1974, Fred had bought a rough and immobile four-door ’55 Chev sedan, and began turning his vision into reality.
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FEATURE 1972 PLYMOUTH DUSTER CAR
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WORDS AND PHOTOS: SHANE WISHNOWSKY
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RATHER THAN PUT HIS FEET UP, TAKE A BREAK, AND HAVE SOME DOWNTIME AFTER SELLING HIS LAST CAR, MIKE CLARK DECIDED THAT HE WOULD DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN
ike Clark likes his Mopars. He’s owned too many to list over the years and doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty making them more to his taste in the process. Besides, nobody really likes a standard car anyway, right?
We stumbled across his last car, a beautiful silver big block VH Valiant hardtop, at the Palmy Swap Meet way back in 2012 (NZV8 Issue No. 89). The 500cube Procharger dream that he had planned for under the bonnet of the big Aussie Mopar never eventuated, so Mike decided it was time for a
change and to move the hardtop on for someone else to enjoy. He sold it to good friend Malcolm, and, with the funds rapidly incinerating a hole in his pocket, he began searching for a replacement in earnest. The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems.
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FEATURE 1988 HOLDEN VL COMMODORE GROUP A WALKINSHAW CAR
WORDS: CONNAL GRACE PHOTOS: NZV8
OLD HOLDENS DON’T DIE, THEY JUST GET FASTER — AND IF THE OLD HOLDEN IS AN EX-BATHURST RACER, IT MIGHT BE LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET THE RODNEY HEADS TREATMENT TO DO SO
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emember the good old days of motor racing? The days when the race cars on your little television screen, or blaring through the radio speaker, actually held far more than just a passing resemblance to something you could purchase off a showroom floor? The days when that old ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ saying actually meant something? Tauranga’s Rodney Heads’ does, and those good old days are the reason that Rodney’s poured so much time and money into a VL Commodore race car that is unlikely to see much track time at all.
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