October 12th, 2011 by NZ Classic Car
The historic 1968 Bultaco motorcycle that was ridden by kiwi racing legend Ginger Molloy will be included in Webb’s Classic Motorcycle & Car Auction held next week in Auckland. The famous bike was originally built by the Spanish motorcycling company; 
Bultaco, specifically for Molloy.
Ginger Molloy is one of New Zealand greatest and most well-liked race pilots of the 1960s. He was also one of Bultaco’s most loyal and consistent riders of the period. Encapsulating the spirit of early-1960s’ motorcycle racing, Molloy caught a lift from Huntly and a boat to the Continental circus where he earned a ride with the charismatic and very Spanish Bultaco team. The Bultaco connection can be traced back to ace tuner Frank Sheene (father of Barry) who sourced Ginger his first competitive Bultaco.
Competing at the highest level between 1963 and 1970, Ginger competed in more than 370 international events and enjoyed considerable success. In 1966, he won Bultaco’s first-ever Grand Prix, the 250cc Ulster GP, run in torrential rain. What is also not widely known is that 1968 was perhaps Ginger’s best year; he gained 3rd in the 125, 4th in the 350 and 5th in the 250 world titles, all on Bultacos. In 1970, he finished second to Giacomo Agostini in the 500cc world championship. Overall, Ginger Molloy clocked up 66 international victories. Read the rest of this entry »
February 11th, 2010 by NZ Classic Car
Chris Amon’s Maserati 250F, the car that launched the Kiwi driver’s legendary career, is ready for this weekend’s (13-14 February 2010) reunion with its most famous driver since its total rebuild by the Southward Collection.
For the first time in more than 40 years Amon’s Maserati 250F, one of just a few in the world of what has been described as the best Formula One car of all time, was driven at the Fielding Circuit.
The run by the Southward Collection’s highly-prized Maserati 250F was a shakedown ahead of its star outing at the February 13-14 New Zealand Grand Prix at Manfeild.
The cigar-bodied 2.5-litre front-engined single seater driven by a teenage Amon, worth millions today, is fresh from a comprehensive from-the-wheels-up refurbishment.
The intent today was simply to blow out any cobwebs, Southward restoration manager John Bellamore explained.
“We just needed a couple of laps to make sure everything is working as it should,” said Mr Bellamore, noting that the car was a blast in every sense. “The car hasn’t been run for some years and it hasn’t run in anything like full racing condition since the late 1960s.”
Manfeild chief executive Heather Verry says the session was a reminder of why motorsport fans of all ages need to get to the GP and see the car demonstrated on the circuit during next Sunday’s lunch break.
“The Maserati 250F is a landmark machine — it was the best F1 car of the 1950s – and seeing it in the metal and on the move is just amazing. That glorious sound is so special.
“I am deeply impressed that Chris Amon raced it when he was just 17, and that it was just his second racing car.
“That he was immediately impressive in such potent machinery says so much about the level of natural talent he had — and still has.
“Chris will at the GP, of course, and we think he will be delighted to be reunited with a car that has always been very special to him.”
The display opportunity arises from a commitment from the Southward Museum trust to bring stars of their world-class collection back to active condition.
This went a step further last year when the museum demonstrated an equally precious Ferrari Monza 750 sports car. The national and international response to that breakthrough event astounded Southwards.
Ms Verry said it was great Manfeild could play a role in the museum’s new direction, and she deeply admired the restorers’ determination and innovation. “With the Maserati, as with the Ferrari, this is history in the remaking.”
Bringing the 250F back to full health has been exhaustive and expensive, though the cost is easily dwarfed by the probable value of the last of the great world championship front-engined racers.
Just 26 were built and surviving examples have changed hands in recent years for upwards of $10 million – many times its value when it was retired from racing.
Museum founder Len Southward paid several hundred pounds for the Amon car in the late 1960s in a deal sealed outside a pub.
Amon raced the car in the summer of 1962. The 240 kmh monster was just the Scott’s Ferry-born farm boy’s second ‘proper’ racing car, following a 1500cc Cooper.
A year later he headed to Europe to enjoy a long and illustrious international career, notably leading the Ferrari team for three seasons in the late 1960s.
Amon remains a key figure in New Zealand motorsport, no more so than with the Toyota Racing Series, the high-powered wings and slicks single-seater category contesting next Sunday’s GP.
The Chris Amon Trophy is awarded each year to the overall Toyota Racing Series champion.
The 250F was introduced for the 1954 F1 season and remained on the world scene for the next six years. Between 1954 and 1958 it competed in 46 F1 championship events and won numerous races. It achieved immediate success with period great and five-time world champion Juan Manual Fangio of Argentina.
Amon’s car was bought new from the factory by British team BRM as a test bed. It was the only 250F in which the oil tank was located beside the driver, and just one of two with disc brakes.
Amon had it for the 1962 summer season, highlights being a victory in an all-New Zealand race at Levin and a fighting 11th place in the NZGP at Ardmore.
“I loved that car. You could steer it on the throttle. I’d grown up reading about guys like Fangio and it was from their era.
“It was that car that got me to Europe. Reg Parnell (the British team owner who took Amon overseas) saw me drifting it at Wigram and told me later he’d never seen a 250F driven like that since Fangio retired.”
Everything about the car was special, even the fuel – petrol heavily laced with methanol, with 10 percent acetone, a dollop of benzol and a touch of castor oil. It produced between 220-270 bhp, depending on tune.
“I remember the fuel made excellent paint-stripper,” Amon chuckled in memory. “It was a hugely powerful brew.”
Another with sweet memories of the car is British motorsport figure Stirling Moss.
“It steered beautifully, and inclined towards stable oversteer which one could exploit by balancing it against power and steering in long sustained drifts through corners,” he recalled.
Armchair enthusiasts also think highly of it. Not too long ago readers of a respected British motorsport magazine, Octane, named it the greatest racing car ever. It beat other world-class luminaries as the Auto Union Type C, Lotus 49, Porsche 917, Cobra, Mercedes-Benz W196 and Toyota TS010 Group C.
The name 250F refers to the specifications for F1 in 1954 – a maximum engine capacity of 2.5 litres (hence the 250 number) and F refers, naturally, to F1.
January 27th, 2010 by NZ Classic Car
Legendary New Zealand racing driver, Chris Amon, will be reunited with the Maserati 250F racing car that kick-started his career when he demonstrates the fully restored motorsport legend at the 2010 New Zealand Grand Prix, which takes place at New Zealand’s Manfield race track on 13-14 February 2010.
The Maserati 250F was only the second racing car raced by Amon and he was just 17 years old when he got behind the wheel of a car that had already been driven by two legends of the sport, Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins. Behind the wheel of the 250F, dubbed the greatest racing car of all time, Amon won at Levin and was placed 11th in the 1962 New Zealand Grand Prix.
Amon is in no doubt that it was the Maserati that provided the springboard for his international career.
“It was that car that got me to Europe,”explains Amon. “Reg Parnell (the British team owner who took Amon overseas) saw me drifting it at Wigram and told me later he’d never seen a 250F driven like that since Fangio retired.”
Amon’s 250F has now been fully restored by the Southwards Car Museum from a static display car to one that is fully able to relive its glory days and Chris Amon is relishing being able to, once again, get behind the wheel of ‘his’ Maserati 250F and provide spectators at the 2010 New Zealand Grand Prix with a glimpse of motorsport history in action.
Half a decade after the fact, the memory of slipping behind the wheel of one of the most famous Grand Prix cars of all time remains fresh in Chris Amon’s memory.
“It was exactly how I imagined how a proper Grand Prix car will be — and it did everything you would imagine a proper Grand Prix car would do.”
Sitting into the wide cockpit, behind that massive six-cylinder engine, the Maserati 250F was unlike any other car he’d known. But that just made it all the more exciting to the then 17-year-old.
“It was something of a beast, I suppose,” he recalls of the highly-prized Southward Collection star machine that is set to be demonstrated at Manfeild during the New Zealand Grand Prix on February 13-14.
“But it smelt right, it spun the wheels and it sounded great. I couldn’t wait to drive it.”
He can fully understand why the cigar-bodied 2.5-litre single-seater is today revered as the last of the great world championship front-engined racers.
So highly regarded, in fact, it was recently named the greatest racer of all time by a British enthusiast magazine. Highly valued, too — just 26 were built and surviving examples are worth millions.
Its place in history is well known. Introduced for the 1954 F1 season, the 250F – F for Formula One, 250 in reference to the 2.5-litre engine – competed in a total of 46 F1 championship events between 1954 and 1958, during which time it won 55 races.
It is particularly associated with one of Amon’s boyhood heroes, period great Juan Manual Fangio of Argentina. As the best balanced of all front engined Grand Prix racers, it perfectly suited Fangio’s high speed four wheel drifts — a style Amon was to emulate.
It took the five-time world champion to victory in what is regarded as one of the greatest races of all time, on Germany’s vaunted Nurburgring where he overcame a 50-second deficit in just 20 laps, breaking the lap record 10 times, taking the lead on the final lap.
Amon’s car has been on static display for many years and, like the collection’s Ferrari Monza that ran at Manfeild at the 2009 NZGP, has only been brought back to full health through to an exhaustive and expensive rebuild.
The painstaking restoration has included the first comprehensive rebuild of the engine since its racing days. The story of how Amon got to drive one of the archetypal racers of the 1950s is interesting. Amazingly, it was on a used car yard run by Wellington motoring identity Tony Shelley, also a keen racer of the period.
The machine had been bought new from the factory by British team BRM as a test bed, and altered to suit. It remains the only 250F in which the oil tank was located beside the driver, and just one of two with disc brakes.
It placed third in the Argentine Grand Prix of 1955 with Mike Hawthorne, and also provided another Englishman, Peter Collins, with a victory that year, then subsequently came to New Zealand.
“Tony had inherited in some deal he had done — it had been traded for a road car, as I recall — and so it was sitting in the lot.”
Amon’s parents and the Shelleys knew each other socially, through both having properties in Paraparaumu. Somehow the car came up in conversation, and the canny salesman saw an opportunity.
“Tony said he’d bring the car up to Levin and let me take it for a lap — I think, in hindsight, he already had an eye for a sale, though probably he wanted to have a few laps in it as well.”
When Amon’s turn came, he was under strict parental instruction to go easy. With an engine capable of producing up to 270 horsepower in full tune, and a top speed of around 240kmh, it was not to be taken lightly. Even so, he immediately got a feel, and a liking, for the car.
“It did exactly what I imagined — I gave it a bit of throttle and it spun the tyres, and the engine sound was just amazing.”
The deal was done, and soon they were racing. It was just the Scott’s Ferry-born farmboy’s second ‘proper’ racing car, following a 1500cc Cooper. The differences were huge.
“The Cooper was quick, too, but somehow more sanitary, much tamer, probably calmer ¦ the Maserati did everything. It sounded right, it leaked oil. It had character. And I have to say that, in the first few races I did, I was very much a passenger!”
The Maserati provided a taste for lairy oversteer and he immediately revelled in the challenge it laid down. He became a consummate ‘drifter’ half a century before the skill became a sport in its own right.
“I loved that car. You could steer it on the throttle. In fact, the quickest way around a corner was to throw it into a big slide and hold it there on the power.”
Everything was special, even the fuel – petrol heavily laced with methanol, with 10 percent acetone, a dollop of benzol and a touch of castor oil.
“I remember the fuel made excellent paint-stripper,” Amon chuckled in memory. “It was a hugely powerful brew.”
He and the car parted company in 1963. Amon headed to Europe to enjoy a long and illustrious international career, notably leading the Ferrari team for three seasons in the late 1960s, achieving New Zealand Grand Prix wins for the Italian thoroughbred marque in 1968 and 1969.
He retired from Formula One in 1976, having taken part in 102 Grands Prix, scoring 83 championship points and reaching the podium 11 times.
Today he is remembered as Ferrari’s favourite test driver and also a central figure in Ford’s famous win in the 1966 Le Mans 24-hour sportscar race. His contemporary Jackie Stewart rated him as one of the world’s foremost drivers and Jochen Rindt considered him a true rival.
Amon remains a key figure in New Zealand motorsport, no more so than with the Toyota Racing Series, the high-powered wings and slicks single-seater category now contesting the NZGP.
The Chris Amon Trophy is awarded each year to the overall Toyota Racing Series champion.
The Maserati remained with the Amon family, sitting in a shed in Hunterville, until Sir Len Southward bought it in 1967, thinking it might look good in the museum he was thinking about. He paid several hundred pounds for it in a deal sealed outside a pub.
About 10 years later, Amon sought to buy it back, but by then the value had risen tremendously.
“We talked about it, and got to the point where he was happy for me to have it if I could get him a four-cylinder BRM from a collection in England, which didn’t quite work out,” Amon recalls wistfully.
