June 18th, 2009 by NZ Classic Car
A 1970 Ford Falcon with a prestigious racing history and an estimated price of $385,000 will be auctioned at the Turners Classic and Collectibles Auction this Saturday.
The restored XW GTHO Phase 2 has sparked interest from classic car collectors and the question on everyone’s lips is just how much will it sell for?¨ ¨Todd Hunter, General Manager Sales and Marketing, is expecting a crowd of car collectors and Ford enthusiasts to see the Falcon as well as 40 other lots. ¨ ¨”The Phase 2 was bought New Zealand-new by the late racing driver Ernie Sprague in 1970 and was raced in the South Island saloon events. He sold it to another racer – Pat Monaghan – and its third owner John Gillard also circuit raced the car” says Todd, ¨ ¨The car spent 25 years idle with an Auckland collector and was purchased in 2001 by its current owner who has restored it meticulously to become a collector’s showpiece.
The Classic and Collectibles Auction also features a 1961 Chrysler 300G — a beautiful and rare example of a 1960s car with full matching set of numbers that has been re-painted and re-chromed. It has optional six-way electric front seats and is estimated to sell for $74,000.¨ ¨Other cars for auction include a 1972 Holden Torana XUI Racecar and a 1974 Ford Falcon XBGT in Tropicano green with black accents, estimated to sell for $65,000 and $50,000 respectively.
Another lot expected to generate a stir is the 1956 Jaguar Mark 7 with just four previous owners and an estimated value of $27,500. ¨¨Todd says there are plenty of opportunities for people looking to purchase their next restoration project. ¨ ¨”We have an old beauty in a 1972 Morris Marina TC Coupe. It’s got about 50k on the clock and has had the classic ‘only careful lady owner’ since 1972. It would be a great do-up job and has an estimated sale price of $3,500.”
The auction is the third of five Classic and Collectable Auctions for 2009 and will be held at Turners Auctions Penrose this Saturday 20 June at 2:30pm. Viewings will take place on Friday 19 June 9am till 6pm and Saturday from 9am.
The full list of vehicles can be found at www.turners.co.nz
May 4th, 2009 by NZ Classic Car
Icon Models announced last week that it’s time to bring back the Ford Falcon GTHO Phase 3 in the form of a 1/8 scale model. With a full scale original going for more than $250,000 AUS dollars, the Icon Ford Falcon GTHO scale model is probably the easiest way to get one. It’s still not exactly cheap at $1295 AUS.
The Icon Ford Falcon GTHO scale model comes in Ultra White and is exclusive with only 1000 units of this version being made available to collectors.
Icon Models says the Icon Ford Falcon GTHO scale model has a serious amount of details with around 500 components fully pre-painted and pinstriped. The model has working steering, legendary 12 slot wheels, a highly detailed engine, replica bonnet hinges, metal leaf springs and a lot more.
Icon Models has also planned a 40th anniversary 1/8th scale model of the original XW Falcon GTHO Phase 1, which made its debut at the 1969 Bathurst 500.
The new Icon XW GTHO Phase 1 will be finished in silver with orange stripes and will come fully assembled. Full details of the new 1/8th scale Falcon will be made available closer to release due in the third quarter this year at the smae price of $1295 AUS.
To find out more about Icon Models check out the website at www.iconmodels.com.au. Or view our selection of models for sale through the shopping page of the NZV8 website.
August 7th, 2008 by NZCC Editor
¢ If it weighs anything, it’s too heavy
¢ If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t
¢ If it costs anything, it’s too expensiveColin Chapman
A few days ago I was chatting to a friend about ‘specials’ — if you’d been there with me, the catalyst for our conversation would have been strikingly obvious; in the workshop next to us sat the bare bones of a Kiwi-built special which my friend was working on. Pretty exotic, this was no Austin 7 or Ford 10 special — instead it consists of a pukka Merlin engine mounted into an old Bentley chassis. You couldn’t argue that there’s a better place to fit the Rolls-Royce-built V12 — unless, of course, you’ve got a spare Spitfire hanging around your garage! The Spitfire motor isn’t, alas, supercharged, so it’ll only pump out around 600+bhp!
However, onto more humbler specials; that conversation got me thinking about Kiwis and self-built specials. The two go hand-in-hand; and the usual explanation for the wealth of specials in New Zealand usually revolves around ‘the Kiwi No8 wire’ philosophy and the simple fact that, back in the golden age of motorsport, modern racing machinery was hard to come by, so Kiwi enthusiasts simply built their own cars and went racing — usually on the beach!
That may be so, but I remember an awful lot of ‘odd’ cars driving around when I was a young lad back in the UK during the Swinging Sixties. Any visit to the paddock at my local race circuit — Oulton Park — would reveal a whole host of, mostly, Austin 7 and Ford 10 specials. So, even the Poms were into special building and a whole industry sprang into life to support these enthusiasts. As an added bonus for British builders, if they built their own car they avoided having to pay sales tax — a factor which led to Colin Chapman offering the Lotus 7 in component form. This was essentially the beginning of the kit-car industry.
As I was recalling all this, I happened across an old copy of Motorsport magazine (August 1960) and, turning to the adverts at the back of the magazine, I discovered a stack of companies offering a bewildering variety of fibre-glass body-shells suitable for the specials builder.
Some of these body-shell manufacturers actually did very well. One of them, Peter Pellandine’s Falcon Shells Ltd, produced a series of swoopy looking sports car bodies for both Ford 8 and 10 mechanicals. Perhaps their best known body is the Caribbean, of which around 2000 were built until the company’s final dissolution in 1964. The Caribbean came as a closed coupe or as a convertible, and the company also essayed the 2+2 Bermuda and the lesser known Peregrine. Falcon even entered a team of three, Coventry-Climax-powered Falcon 515s for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1963 — all three cars were rejected by the organisers!
In their advert, Super Accessories of Kent proudly offered a whole series of interesting looking bodies, including the Caribbean. The Super Two looks rather tasty, while the Rochdale will be familiar to specials builders. In fact, Rochdale started life way back in 1948 building aluminium race car bodies. They designed and built their first fibre-glass body in 1952, but achieved lasting fame with the Olympic GT cars — a series that remained in production until 1968.
The AKS is one that I hadn’t come across before — the name coming from Auto Kraft Shells. They produced body-shells mostly for Ford 8 and 10 chassis. The body advertised was apparently inspired by the mid ‘50s Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider — and you can certainly see that influence in the car’s frontal aspect.
Most would never have heard of the Speedex Silverstone — but they probably will know the man behind Speedex; Jem Marsh.
Jem would later claim motoring fame as the ‘Mar’ of Marcos. Before his Marcos days, Marsh worked as a sales rep for Firestone before moving into a position with Dante Engineering. At the time, he was racing an Austin 7 special. Speedex opened its doors in 1958 and introduced their first body — the Speedex 750 — in the same year. The Silverstone appeared in 1959 and was designed for the Austin 7 chassis. This was followed in 1960 by the delightful Sirocco GT. However, by the early ‘60s, Marcos was taking off and Speedex gradually dwindled away to become a spare parts business.
TWM’s history is more convoluted and began with two brothers — Terry and Clive Wren who, in 1956 began building fibre-glass bodies which they called Convair. Initially an open top car, they eventually added a closed coupe — the Excell. TWM — Terry Wren Motors — took over the Excell moulds in 1959, while Clive went off to build light aircraft. TWM was eventually dissolved when Terry decided that production cars like the Austin-Healey Sprite would probably signal the end of specials building. Terry Wren died during the early ‘60s in a light aircraft accident.
With all these body-shells available for the specials builder — and remember, these are only the ones I spotted in a single issue of Motorsport — there also had to be expert tuition as well. This area was ably covered by many books on specials building — in the days before the kit-car industry became big business these books were the only written instructions you could expect to find.
They were great days for motoring enthusiasts, an era when being individual didn’t just mean a fancy paint job, a body-kit and a massive set of chromed wheels. It’s no wonder that specials building is still a popular pastime for many motoring enthusiasts; like my friend with the Merlin-powered Bentley special, some people refuse to be sucked in by the gimmicks being offered by the big auto-makers — they want their cars to truly reflect their own personalities.
Long live the specials builder!
