NZPC #267 PREVIEW

4&ROTARY NATIONALS

HAULING ARSE IN A WIDEBODY EVO ESTATE $10.99 INCL. GST

MAR. 2019

267 ISSUE

9

QUAD-ROTOR COSMO

TOKYO AUTO SALON / WELLY HARDPARK 2K19 / CALCULATING DRIVELINE ANGLES

416803 800821

BIG-POWER EP3

UNDER THE RADAR

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A RACE-BRED EVO WAGON

38 30 500 DORITOS

DIGGIN’ FOR GOLD THE NA WAY! 2019 V 4&ROTARY NATIONALS SHOW

QUAD-ROTOR COSMO

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PRE-SIXTY FLY BEAST MODE themotorhood.com

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SR20-POWERED MKI CORTINA

BOOSTED K24 EP3 CIVIC

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006 EDITORIAL 008 ED. TEAM CHATTER 010 NEWS 016 GIG GUIDE 053 SUBSCRIBE AND RECEIVE 080 D1NZ NEWS 082 POWER PLANT 084 WEEKEND WARRIOR 086 P’CAR BABE 090 CRUISE MODE 092 BIKE REVIEW 094 PRODUCTS 096 DAILY DRIVEN 100 UNDER CONSTRUCTION 102 LOCAL SPECIALISTS 104 DRAG TIMES

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054 KILL THOSE BAD VIBES 058 ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE 066 ALL HAIL THE TUNED 098 BUILD BREAKDOWN HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR SHAFTS FOR SMOOTH SAILING

WELLINGTON HARDPARK ’19

2019 TOKYO AUTO SALON

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20B PP 808 WAGON

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UNDER theradar CHANNELLING BYGONE YEARS OF SWORN SECRECY AND GROUND-UP CAR BUILDS, TUNING WIZARD JACKY TSE FINALLY LIFTS THE COVERS ON THE TOUGHEST STREET-LEGAL WAGON THE COUNTRY HAS EVER SEEN WORDS: JADEN MARTIN PHOTOS: ADAM CROY

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here was once a time when the stakes in car building were so high that if you wanted to be the pioneer of the next big thing, you were best to have kept any plans tightly under wraps or risk having them stolen from under you. Work was done in the dead of night, locked away behind closed doors to avoid prying eyes learning what was going down. And, if you were the fool that let slip even the slightest hint outside of your inner circle, well, you’d have just earned yourself a boot ride out to the middle of nowhere. It was serious business, literally. Companies rose and fell by the cars they built, and the mad rush to change up a build before the

next round of the multiple show car championships without letting it be known was a hard slog. It’s an almost foreign concept compared with the environment we know today; the advent of social media has transformed attitudes from keeping it all under the radar until show day to building a personal following online as the build progresses, posting regular updates — showing every step in the process. It’s a changing of the guard that has seen many of the big names from years gone, headed off doing ‘adult’ things, and the fresh contingent is now bringing a new flavour to the scene. However, we know that there are still a handful of stalwarts out there applying the ways of old …

V 4&ROTARY NATIONALS 2019 WORDS: MARCUS GIBSON PHOTOS: ADAM CROY

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sk most people in the scene what they are doing the last weekend of January any year, and, nine times out of 10, the response will be, “that’s Nationals weekend, bro” — or at least it should be! Nats is the institution that we’ve all come up on — it’s the place to flex your automotive muscle to the masses, where we all come together, and where standards are set for the following year. So, as it has been for decades now, anticipation for this year’s event was high, and the buzz around the cars to be unveiled played out with rumours and whispers flying around. Leading up to the weekend, there was much speculation about exactly who had been doing what and what we would see the covers thrown off. And, although overall entrant numbers seemed a little down on previous years, once the covers did come off, and the likes of this month’s cover car (Jacky’s widebody Evo wagon), the RE Automotive F1300 van, GT Refinishers’ Pandem Cayman, the ex-APC drag Evo, and a few special surprises (such as Alex Murray’s uber-clean 370Z) came to light, there was more than enough to satisfy our desires.

Sitting proper on a set of 18x9-inch Work Meisters, Rory’s Evo VII is airbagged and features an Airlift controller with airbagconverted BC Golds. It’s no slouch either, having had a reflash and pushing out around 250kW

Super Rare

Airbags, a custom interior, and a 13B bridgeport are all things that no one ever thought they’d see in a Mazda F1300 van — but, then again, most people probably thought they’d never see a F1300, period! Todd Holland from RE Automotive is the man responsible for putting it together, with a custom rear chassis to accommodate the airbags and the ride height, and a set of 14-inch Cargar Quick Tricks. Full feature to come.

doritos THERE IS NO REPLACEMENT FOR DISPLACEMENT WORDS: MARCUS GIBSON PHOTOS: ROD DUNN

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t carries the most notable audio note of all time, one that sounds more Formula 1 than … well, modern Formula 1 engines, and one that, for many, is the ultimate-sounding motor, even if you’re not a fan of rotaries. We’re talking, of course, about the myth, the legend, the holy grail of all Mazda power plants: the Mazda four-rotor, aka ‘quadrotor’, aka ‘26B’, aka ‘13J’— never offered for sale to the public, never released as a production engine in any Mazda, and only ever used in a handful of race cars, including the ’91 Le Mans–winning Group C car.

All this only helps to make these engines the holy grail of swaps to many — a swap that is only made possible by some very clever Kiwis who produced their own kits right here in New Zealand, and, ever since, our ear drums have been bathed in quad-rotor goodness.

1991 MAZDA EUNOS COSMO

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PRE SIXTY FLY

MUCKING AROUND WITH GREASY OLD ENGINES IS APPEALING FOR ONLY SO LONG. FOR NEIL TAYLOR, THE FINAL STRAW SAW HIM THROWING 1960’S FINEST IN THE BIN, REPLACING HIS CORTINA’S HEART WITH A SHOT OF MODERN MOTIVATION

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ou just can’t beat the character of an engine from years gone by, motors built from ‘real’ iron, from the bottom end to the top of the cylinder head.

There’s something alluring about faffing about in the block trying to change a cam, or the gnashing of pushrods, flailing up and down trying to keep a bunch of protesting valves in check, right?

Many say that maintaining this is the soul of an old vehicle: retention of old tech beneath a bonnet that was styled by a man with a pen, not a microprocessor; the romanticism of endless fiddling, twirling fasteners with long-obsolete thread pitches, gapping ignition points, and the trial and error of carb jetting for that ‘perfect’ fuelling.

Oh yes, boy! The effort’s all worth it when it manifests itself as the sweet, sweet induction sound that only a brace of old-school side-draught carbs can produce. Never mind that a retune is only just around the corner — that, lad, that’s the vintage aura.

Then you meet Neil Taylor, owner (and skidder) of this look-at-me orange Mark I Ford Cortina. His choice of lump beneath the sculpted ‘Cortina’ motif that tops the bonnet ensures that his two feet are firmly grounded in the exact opposite direction of tradition. Although Neil now relies on motivation from a twin-cam engine of Nissan origin, his past exploits saw him definitely pay his dues when it came to getting hands greasy in the name of old-school power. Neil’s first adventures behind the wheel came courtesy of a Vauxhall Chevette estate, a car bought for him by his old man,

1964 FORD CORTINA MKI

WORDS AND PHOTOS: RICHARD OPIE

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