Tim visits Classic Car Rentals in Hokitika to check out two simply stunning classic replicars

Alfa Romeo’s 8C 2900B has the wow factor. See one in the street, anywhere in the world, and you’ll drop your jaw wide open and be unable to communicate anything much more than a few expletives.

So, seeing this long and low silver bullet on New Zealand’s West Coast is more than little unusual. And it’s a race car for goodness sake — why did they need to make a race car so beautiful? Did it need to be this gorgeous to go fast? It was designed to race — and race it did, winning honours at many a Le Mans and Mille Miglia 24-hour race between 1931 and 1934.

The Alfa’s designer, Vittorio Jano, was a famous bloke, and with this one he designed a good one with an engine that would become arguably the 1930s’ best. Initially a 2.3-litre, it was made up from two twin-overhead cam four-cylinder engines, and first saw the race track in the Tipo B ‘P3’ Grand prix racers and the 8C 2300 sports cars. By 1935 it was up to just over 2.9 litres and in its finest hour it could chug out 190kW (255bhp), although for reliability a smaller 164kW (220bhp) version was used.

All this happened under the management of a chap called Enzo Ferrari, who ran Alfa Romeo’s race team until leaving in 1937 to set up his own little company. Alfa then concentrated on setting up Alfa Corse, as its own racing department was called, and in 1938 entered five 8C 2900 Bs in Le Mans — four of them fitted with spider bodies like the one featured here, and the other as a coupe. If you want to see a real one you’ll need to head to the Alfa Romeo Museum, but I rather doubt it’ll let you drive it. This one, however, is very driveable.

Auto Artist

This Alfa — actually called the SL Special — was built by auto artist Sam Lyle, of Gisborne. It doesn’t pretend to be a replica — instead this is a car in the spirit of the original. Many will want to debate the term that should be used to describe such a beast, but I don’t want to enter into that. Let’s just say it honours the original without pretence. Using a sturdy chassis and a seriously boosted Nissan VG20-DET V6 motor putting out some 186kW  (250bhp), it is with great pleasure and an unrestrained smile that I can tell you that the car is huge fun. With non-assisted brakes and steering, and tightly wound suspension, it feels surprisingly vintage until you boot it, and then a sheer excess of power and notable lack of grip from the rear tyres dominate the experience completely and utterly.

It’s sleek, sexy, and wild. It’s also basic and raw, and huge fun. The cockpit’s tight for a tall bloke and the tiny aero screens just about keep the bugs out of your teeth, but not much more. If you’ve any hair left this thing will put some wind in it. The open road speed limit comes up very, very quickly, but you won’t be tempted to exceed it for any long periods of time unless you’ve brought your goggles. It’s noisy, rumbustious, scary even. Altogether wonderful.

Barry Keenan, of Classic Car Rentals, is the Alfa’s keeper and has travelled extensively in the car. Comfortable it is not, and he confirms it’s all the better for it.

Tipping the Trident

For longer trips, you might like to consider this muscular, blood red Maserati 450S recreation; it’s certainly more civilized than the Alfa. In comparison with the silver Alfa, the lunging Maserati is an absolute softy, with power brakes and steering, suspension that soaks up bumps, and a torque-laden V8.

Again this is a recreation, though this time it was hand-built by Barry Keenan. It uses a modern car’s floor-pan with a carefully executed steel frame on top that holds up the hand-built fibreglass body. A sohc 16-valve, 4.5-litre V8 sends plenty of power to a five-speed transaxle creating the exact same layout as the original Maserati. The donor car also provided stunning brakes and a modern collapsible steering column. Guessed what the donor is yet? No it’s not Italian — it’s German.

After using a Porsche 928 as his daily driver for some time, Barry realised that underneath the body of this upper-class high-speed GT, there was an old racing Maserati trying to get out. Now at that point I’d speculate and dream lots of ‘what ifs’ and ‘that would work’ and tell myself to stop being silly. But Barry is an accomplished engineer, and was in a position to do something about it. And the result is amazing.

He hand-built a frame over the complete and unchanged Porsche floor-pan and hand fashioned a buck for a one-off Maserati-style body. It’s actually wider than the original, but that suited Barry — 1950s cars were narrow by modern standards and the extra width gives it the road-holding he wanted. Plus he can use modern tyres without looking all Cobra-like (am I the only person who finds the narrow-hipped early 289 Cobras much nicer than the flared-hipped 427s?).

My first drive of the Maser was toddling around at crawling speed in the Hokitika Santa parade. Ho-ho-ho — yeah! It poodled and doodled and generally refused to overheat or be temperamental, after all there’s still a top-of-the-line Porsche underneath. We waved and smiled and tried to stir the crowds with some V8 roar, whilst all the time wanting to hit the open road. Patience Tim, let’s get some history first.

450S History

Up to 1956 Maserati was doing very nicely in the smaller-engined classes with 1.5 and 3.0-litre engines, but had its heart set on taking on the much more powerful Ferraris, Astons and Jaguars. It needed a bigger motor and a chassis to suit. So its engineers simultaneously worked on both a 3.5-litre six-cylinder and a 4.5-litre V8 and just one new chassis. The new six was tried first in the 1956 Mille Miglia, but straight away proved underpowered and uncompetitive. There’s nothing like a bit of low key testing! The V8 therefore got the nod, and with development the quad cam V8 engine produced 298kW (400bhp), making the 450S the most powerful front-engine sports car around. It wasn’t until the Panoz prototypes in the late ’90s that it was beaten!¨The new 450S made its debut at the 1957 Argentine 1000km event driven by none other than Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss (talk about name dropping). It literally stormed away from the field until the clutch gave in, leading to transmission failure. However, the complicated engine was reliable, and at Sebring that March, in the hands of Fangio and Jean Behra, a 450S won. Maserati went into the final race of the season in contention for the World Championship, but it was not to be; the Venezuelan Grand Prix was one of the worst weekends in Maserati’s racing history. The day before the race, Maserati’s manager died. On the day Moss’s 450S was destroyed after a collision with an AC Bristol, and the two other Masers took each other out after Bonnier’s car blew up and careered right into Schell’s 450S. The rules for sports car racing changed for the 1958 season and left the 450S obsolete — cut out before it really made its mark. When it finished it won, and bad luck seems to have been its only downfall.

Designed for racing

What I’m most interested in is how the Maser looks! Like the Alfa, these cars were designed for racing and the body merely had to keep it all clean and slippery. Of course, Maserati and Alfa Romeo just didn’t know how to make an ugly car, and this 450S recreation is absolutely stunning.

As I’ve said, it’s not an exact replica — it’s considerably wider for a start, and obviously of totally different construction. What it does do is drive very well in a very modern way. The Maser is beautifully made; the doors open cleanly on big strong hinges, and close with a solid clunk. The seat slides seamlessly back and forth, affording an easy, comfortable driving position. It starts as you’d expect a modern Porsche to, and with less weight it pulls effortlessly like a train. Steering is light but meaty with feel, and the brakes are modern and strong. You can drive it like a modern without worrying too much about road irregularities, and other such things that set the Alfa jumping and changing course. But then that’s part of the fun of the Alfa!

On the road

Barry, the owner of these cars, and the creator of the Maserati, suggested we head off on one of the short routes commonly used by hirers, and this immediately shows the advantage of being in Hokitika; as soon as you leave town the roads are great. I started in the Maser, having already familiarised myself with it on the Santa parade. We headed east out of Hokitika towards a small township called Kaniere, where we veered right across the Kaniere bridge and along towards Woodstock (home of just one famous West Coast Hotel).

This used to be the main road heading South, and offers a great mix of short open stretches on which I could open her up a bit, and easy sweeping corners for fun. The Maser impressed with its integrity, easy driving characteristics, great road-holding, and safe handling. Anyone could drive this and flatter themselves. It’s fast of course, but there’s little drama or noise, more a turbine-like push. At Rimu we stopped at a lookout and swapped cars — I wanted a taste of the more vintage-style Alfa on these roads.

My timing was perfect, with several kilometres of uninhabited road winding around the back of Lake Mahinapua allowing me a taste of simple old-fashioned fun. I loved the Alfa on these roads — the noise and sudden turbo-boosted acceleration were great in squirts between corners as I learned about its road-holding and handling limits. I found that if I allowed her a bit of slack, let the steering move around while the back stepped out and jumped around, then everything went smoothly and easily — but ultimately I still needed to force the issue a few times and just turn her in despite objections. It’s hard work driving the Alfa — but you’re well rewarded for the effort.
We soon linked up with State Highway 6, which took us past both Lake Mahinapua and another famous hotel, The Pu Pub. This was featured in the Mainland cheese advert a few years ago.

Somewhere around here I swapped back into the Maser for a much quieter 10 kilometres of big, wide and long straight roads back into Hokitika. This was a great drive and a blast of fresh air and pure fun. So the next day, thanks to the need to get some photos to show our readers, we did it all again! It wasn’t hard.

Trying to summarise the two cars at the end I could only conclude that the Maserati Barry’s built is a far finer piece of kit. In specification, build quality, and driving sophistication it beats the Alfa hands down, as it should. The Maser is the one I would want to take home. But next time I’m over on the coast it’s the Alfa I’ll take out for a short blast. The noise, the vintage feel, and the completely unexpected and ridiculous turbo boost are just too much fun to ignore. The Maser is a better, quicker car, but my smile lasted longer in the Alfa.

You can rent either of these cars through the Hokitika Information Centre that Barry and his wife run, Barry rents them for half or one-hour rentals. In the past he has rented them for longer periods, but the quick squirt seems to suit people best. He has also had lots of other cars in the fleet, but is now sticking to these weird and lovely special creations, and he has some very cool ideas for future additions.

Words: Tim Monck-Mason Photos: Sean Craig

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