Reigning Targa champion Tony Quinn and his co-driver Adam Tillet will be campaigning their Nissan Skyline GTR-35 in a 101-strong entry for this year’s Targa Rotorua tarmac motor rally. The event is scheduled for Queen’s Birthday weekend (Sat June 04-Sun June 05).

Based in Australia, Quinn took top honours in the six-day Dunlop Targa here in NZ in October of last year. His winning ways continued back over the ditch earlier this year when he won Targa Tasmania for a second time. He and then co-driver Sue O’Neill also won Targa Rotorua outright in 2009 and finished second to local rally ace Richard Mason and co-driver Simon Kirkpatrick in 2010.

Quinn’s Skyline will be one of a five-strong group of high-performance GTR-35 models to compete in the upcoming Rotorua event. The other four include the cars of Auckland pairings Harry Dodson/Glen Cupit, and Clark Proctor/Tony Callaghan – will all be entered into the Modern Competition category, while the other two, entered by Ron Stroeven and Patsy Poirier, and Nigel and Roger Parr will cruise in the Rotorua Tour. Read full story…

The Pukekohe Lions club hosted its first “Wheels of Fortune” vehicle display event last weekend at the Pukekohe racecourse. In attendance was a large selection of vehicles including classics, muscle cars, hot rods and more modern fare. It was a broad range of machines and plenty of entertainment away from the car show too.

More than 1200 cars and special interest vehicles parked around the track and in the pit area with unique displays from car clubs and organisations including Franklin Street Rodders, the American Muscle Car Club, Iron Sands Rod & Custom, HSV Club, Zephyr and Zodiac, Mini, MG, Military vehicles, Coast Guard, Fire Service, St John and many more. There was also part of Dave Parkers huge car collection, with 11 of his 18 classic cars on display.

For the hungry there was a good selection of food and beverages, there was also live music by Tuakau country variety music club and the Sunset coast big band. Some famous folk were doing the rounds including Auckland mayor Len Brown, TVNZ’s Mark Sainbury, and local MP Paul Hutchison. The police were in attendance but not to look for trouble, instead they were offering rides around the track in their cruisers. St John also had several promotional vehicles taking the kids for a spin. Read full story…

The Zagato design house has created plenty of beautiful machines with a variety of automakers over the years. But for many it’s the collaboration between Zagato and Aston Martin that has birthed the most special specimens.

The first and possibly most important, was the iconic Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. To mark the event, the British automaker and the famous Italian design house have reconnected on a new project that could potentially head into limited production. Details on this latest collaboration remain scarce but the concept is set to be revealed at the forthcoming Villa D’Este Concours on May 21 to check initial customer reaction with a production model possibly following as early as next year.

For now, a teaser rendering has been released with little else except speculation that the new Aston Martin Zagato could be based on the mechanical hardware and platform of the current V8 Vantage.

Aston Martin boss, Dr. Ulrich Bez, said: “Now is the right time for a new Aston Martin Zagato and in combining our design intelligence I think we can create something fitting of the iconic DB4GT Zagato that has gone before and since established itself as one of the most famous Aston Martins of all time.” Read full story…

Do you prefer to buying your gas from Shell service stations? Why not, it wasn’t Shell that caused the sea bird massacring Gulf of Mexico oil spill and occasionally they have special deals on bags of chips and chocolate bars. But Shell stations in their current form are about to become a thing of the past.

In a massive rebranding exercise Shell stations will from June become Z (pronounced Zed) service stations. That’s right folks Z is the new Shell.

After several months research and half a million dollars spent, marketing experts came up with Z to replace the 50 year-old Shell logo. Starting with Shell Greenlane in Auckland, New Zealand’s 226 Shell service stations will be rebranded with the new Z logo. Beginning next month, it will take around a year to fully complete. The objective of it all is to give NZ consumers a service station that can be seen as totally Kiwi.

Back in April 2010, Shell‟s fuel business in New Zealand was sold to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and Kiwi infrastructure company Infratil for NZ$695 million. Greenstone Energy is the company that owns and operates these assets.

“When the Shell business was purchased, we set about trying to understand what consumers actually wanted in a retail fuel company, how they felt about this sector and the companies operating in it,” said Greenstone CEO Mike Bennetts. “This became the biggest piece of industry-specific consumer research in a decade, touching 17,000 consumers. The insights we‟ve gained from listening to our customers and those of our competitors have seen us radically rethink our business.” Read full story…

Buying cars form overseas vendors via internet auction sites is fraught with danger, as we’ve all come to realise over the past few years. The temptation to hit the ‘buy now’ key is a something many of us find irresistible – and it was a temptation that Greg and Diane Haliday couldn’t resist when they spotted this Corvette for sale.

Like most of our readers, I’ve certainly heard my fair share of horror stories associated with the importation of cars, especially from the US – with unsuspecting new owners ending up with anything from mild dissatisfaction to a complete and utter financial nightmare.

Our feature car, unfortunately, confirmed an all too familiar story for Greg and Diane Haliday. Sure, they’d imported cars from the US before, and yes, they’d been disappointed and vowed never again. But when a 1958 Corvette looks like a million dollars on a computer screen and is described as a “good driver” with a numbers matching drivetrain, then I’m with Greg and Diane on this one.

I’d have pushed the ‘buy now’ key if I had the cash available. 

It wasn’t really as if it was a rush decision, Greg and Diane had been looking around for a nice early Corvette for some time, and had done their homework researching the differences between the varying Corvette C1 models produced between 1953 and 1962, eventually deciding on the 1958 model. I have to agree, it’s the nicest-looking of the C1 ’Vettes. Diane had also spotted one at the Kumeu Hot Rod Festival which only confirmed they’d made the right choice. Read full story…

Skoda is known for a lot of things but not everyone is aware that it’s one of the oldest car manufacturers in the world, having been established back in 1895. The Czech brand, is now a success story for its owners the Volkswagen Group, and also has one of the oldest logos in the automotive world. Yesterday, the winged arrow emblem officially turned 85. It was on May 10, 1926, that the first Skoda car to wear the logo was produced in the Mlada Boleslav plant and delivered to the president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk.

The special car was a Skoda Hispano Suiza, named so because Skoda had bought the license to produce luxurious vehicles from the Spanish company Hispano-Suiza in 1924.

The Skoda Hispano-Suiza is a rarity with only 100 examples ever built during its three year production run. Production of the first model began in 1925 and was completed a year later, in May 1926. The reason behind such a long production time was that every car was custom-built to individual requirements, making each model unique. The Skoda Hispano Suiza could weigh up to 2,700 kilograms, depending on equipment, and had a top speed of 138 km/h. Read full story…

Two Aston Martins virtually identical to that owned by Prince Charles which was famously driven by Prince William after the recent royal wedding, will be on sale at a UK-based Bonhams auction of Aston Martins on May 21st in Newport Pagnell, home of the brand.

If the idea of having a Royal look-alike Aston in the garage appeals (and for most of us, it would) the auction has a choice of two mint condition examples. Prince Charles received his Aston as a 21st birthday present from the Queen. It started a love affair with the marque and in the 1980’s he specified a more powerful variant – a V8 Vantage Volante.

James Knight, Global Head of Collectors Motor Cars at Bonhams, says: “Aston Martin’s hold a position very close to the heart of Prince Charles. He received his first – the DB6 MKII Vantage Volante – as a 21st birthday present from the Queen. In the 1980s, the V8 model was being produced by Aston Martin and Prince Charles influenced the design by specifying a V8 Volante with Vantage power but without the aggressive looks of the Vantage. This ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing spec was adopted by only a few other customers and a limited run of just 25 were built. These cars became known as the V8 Vantage Volante ‘Prince of Wales’.” Read full story…

The latest entry in our ridiculous rides file comes from specialist Russian carmaker Dartz Prombron in the form of its Nagel concept. What the hell is that? You may well ask, it’s the world’s first fully armoured sportback vehicle made for hauling yachts.

The Nagel comes with enough armour plating to stop small armies from trying to steel your dingy and has a tow rating of up to five tonnes. While a sedan may not seem like the ideal vehicle type for towing boats the Nagel ‘apparently’ comes packing a ridiculous 1,471kW that’s 2,000 horsepower in old speak. Other outlandish claims from the Russian carmaker include pegging the Nagel top speed at 250kph but you may want to unhook your boat before giving that a go.

It all gets stranger too, it turns out the model is named after Andrey Nagel who, along with co-driver Vadim Mikhailoff, won the Monte Carlo Rally back in 1911 in a C24/55 Monaco RussoBalt. RussoBalt is the company from which Dartz Prombron’ derives from. The Nagel is being put into production next year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this victory. Read full story…