Events

That time of year has rolled around again which meant it was time to drive for several hours up to Alexandra from Invercargill on the Sunday to see the Drag Racing and witness the cars parked in and about the area at such a time.  As usual, they did not disappoint.  Entries were up on last year and thankfully so were the numbers of older cars competing.  I kept my photos as much to the classic and retro scale of things as possible though I didn’t have my camera on me at all times and towards the end of the day I got a bit lazy and probably missed out on taking photos of a good 20-30 classics sitting in the parking area.  Mopars were represented in a large proportion, as is typical, they seems to be the classic of choice in Central Otago and it’s easy to see why, they’re that little bit different to the regular Aussie fodder of Fords and Holdens.  Enough yabba and on with the pictures!

Q ute vs A9X

Q ute vs A9X

The drag racing itself was far more organised this year than it was last, things were almost kept to classes but the whole Rung What Ya Brung idea lends itself well to grudge racing vs. friends so there was quite a bit of leniency in that regard, which is good.  Thankfully the Motorcycles were kept to their own class and weren’t allowed to squeeze many numbers of runs in between the cars as they did last year.

The ranges around Alexandra make for quite the impressive backdrop, as you can see in the previous photo and will see in a number of the following ones, so browse away.  There’s a link to the whole gallery at the end of this entry and I’ll have a small selection of badly filmed videos up in due course.

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Ed (Orion) fellow RC writer and Skyline Enthusiast extraordinaire (as well as an 80′s enthusiast, he can be forgiven in that though, he was born in the 80′s) sent me the above titled video for my perusal. Having heard about it from him I was most definitely looking forward to it. I slapped it in the drive and pressed the appropriate buttons in order to begin my viewing pleasure and the first car that popped up actually took me by surprise. A Suzuki Mighty-Boy! Magic. Only a brief showing, followed by a magnitude of Corollas of varying model and other interesting cars.

Suzuki Mighty Boy, so mighty!

Suzuki Mighty Boy, so mighty!

By now, everyone has seen enough AE85/6′s so there’s really no need for me to share any screen captures of those, I will however share some of the more unexpected and amusing vehicles that feature through-out the video. As such… (more…)

Trackday!

September 3, 2009

The laser pointer of DOOM survives yet another flogging around Taupo, this time in absurdly wet conditions. No heat in the slicks + no traction + no weight in the rear + nosewheel drive = frantic countersteering antics: next time, I’m taping my hand to the wheel a la gumtape deathmatch styles…

definitely time for a new turbo though!

Faster than the speed of light!

So, any plans for another FLAWLESS trackday before year’s end?

Having read on several websites and having seen the outrage amongst retro and classic car enthusiasts in both the UK and the US and with talk of NZ’s retarded mule government just latching on to a global trend like a South Auckland teenager does to US Rap Culture.  It’s good to see not everyone is quite that blind.  Local Auction website Turners Auctions is trying another tact.  Rather than just killing these vehicles thusly contributing nothing of any means to anyone who might actually been using and maintaining their cars for as long as possible (the “greenest” of all options, if you think buying a newly spat out Hybrid vehicle is a “green” option then you’re simply retarded) they’re offering to collect (within reason) and sell without profit on their part old and dis-used vehicles, just to keep them from rotting or dying somewhere horrid and leaking their contents into the earth (not that that actually happens tremendously often in reality)

You can read more about Turner’s plans on their own website, here;

http://www.turners.co.nz/About/news/Pages/Vehicle-Recycling-program.aspx

I for one would like to commend Turners of their take on this scheme and I hope that many cars that would otherwise be neglected can now be moved onto people who can take full advantage of them.

Bravo Turners, recycling at it’s greatest and thanks to Pete (retep130) on oldschool.co.nz for the headsup.

-Michael

If you can’t figure out the title.  This should clear it up for you;

Awesomeness, am I right?  Hell yeah I am.  These pictures and many, many more are taken by (as the watermark says) Juho Peltola, to see the rest of them I suggest you follow the links; (more…)