Table of contents for No 297 August - September 2022 in NZ Performance Car

All right, so this editorial is going to be less about the automotive scene, industry, and magazine, and more about me, your ed. I recently moved out of my seaside home in a bid to create a space in the country that’s more suitable for my needs; more sustainable for the future; and, most important, my own. For as long as I can remember, when people have asked what my ideal home is, I have always said the same thing: a shed out in the country in a field, surrounded by epic gardens and spaces to hang out during the weekends. I thought at 31 that I should have a crack at making this a reality. I am incredibly lucky in that my parents have some land north of Auckland,…

Gracing our cover recently was Ifraz Begg’s ‘Bula Bullet’, which, at the time, was aiming to make a big noise in the import drag scene. After the article went to press, the team ended up going back to the drawing board and made some changes to meet tech requirements. The car now features a single ’chute set-up to pull it up from the expected 240-plus kilometres per hour, while the turbo has received a billet front-wheel update in Garrett GTX42 spec, and the gearbox has been replaced with a Momentum UK sequential item. Always a character, Beggz tells us that he’s got new Marley drainpipe side skirts, but to us they look a little more high end. The team expects to do some testing over the Winter Drag Wars and…

With season 10 of Repco Muscle Garage now well and truly under way, time is running out to put yourself in the draw for this season’s mega prize pack from the show’s longtime supporters: Repco New Zealand, Meguiar’s, and Mount Shop Ltd. The prize includes an 85-piece toolkit from Repco valued at $672, a Meguiar’s car care package valued at $760, a Mount Shop voucher to the value of $500, and a year’s subscription to NZV8 valued at $98. To enter, simply head to themotorhood.com, click on the pinned Repco Muscle Garage post and fill out the form. The draw closes Sunday, 14 August at 12pm, so don’t say we didn’t give you plenty of warning. We’d like to thank Repco New Zealand, Meguiar’s and Mount Shop Ltd for making…

The countdown was on. I had three months in which to plan a trip to Palmerston North, put the engine back in, swap out the OEM suspension for aftermarket parts, and prepare for the car’s first drift day in New Zealand! The drive down to Palmy went without a hitch, the engine was sitting there mated to the gearbox, just waiting to be welcomed back to its home. Before we put the engine back in, I decided to upgrade to GKTech solid rack bushes to reduce play in the steering. It took three of us about a full day to put the engine and gearbox back in their home. Once we had refilled the oils, a quick lap around the block ensured that everything was running smoothly — or so…

If there’s another car among the HTC grid that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention more abruptly than tones of the glorious BMW 635CSi Group C car, we sure haven’t heard it yet. One of the older cars on the track, the 635CSi presents a striking figure, especially when compared with a similar machine presented in Group A spec. Group C was a uniquely Australian touring car formula, adopted to stymie the horde of factory-produced ‘supercars’ like the Falcon GTHO, which scared mothers and politicians into submission with fears of road deaths via their other-worldly performance. Group C aimed to permit improved production machines, epitomised by the fat fender flares and equally girthy slicks sported by damn near anything remotely competitive in the era.…

The reaction to the word ‘Mondeo’ isn’t typically overly positive, especially as an exciting proposition to your typical petrolhead. These cars have probably hewn out a reputation as a moderately reliable, if not depressingly tedious, means of hauling sales reps from doorknock to doorknock, via the bakery with only the best pies, of course. Ford and Andy Rouse, long-time British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) campaigner — and four-time champion — disagreed, however. The Mondeo was green-lit for the 1993 BTCC season by Ford top brass, giving Rouse only three months to develop a contender from scratch. He initially wanted a RWD layout, but the Mondeo ended up driving its front wheels, with a Mazda-derived two-litre V6 up the front, pushing out some 224kW and emanating one hell of a scream.…

DAY ONE — THE WAGON Ah, that fresh Christchurch air — the smell of a Subaru road trip filled our nostrils as we stepped off our pre-planned, early morning flight from Auckland. Armed with a bag full of camera gear, a Swanndri jacket, and not much else, we eagerly made our way off the plane to where team Subaru was waiting, waving down a flock of equally enthusiastic automotive media. There’s nothing more exciting than making our way down south to create automotive content, so when Subaru New Zealand invited us to the WRX launch, we cleared our hectic, post-Covid calendar to fit in a Subaru-lover’s trip of a lifetime: a two-day Subaru recce, from Christchurch airport to Mount Cook for the night, then to Arrowtown via the Crown Range…

Inventiveness is a badge Kiwis wear proudly on their chests. In motorsport circles, there’s not much more inventive than open saloon car racing, with a former star and shining example of do-it-yourself chic back on track for the first time in decades Down here at the bottom of the planet, us Kiwis enjoy a bit of a reputation for resourcefulness. It sure as hell isn’t restricted to farming implements and makeshift structures though, with a solid helping of so-called Kiwi ingenuity filtering through to the motorsport fraternity, all in the name of shaving a few seconds off per lap, stage, or quarter mile. Arguably one of the most visual manifestations of the attitude was the Open Saloon Car Association class (OSCA), originating in the South Island with a handful of…

LEDS ARE BACK! Yeah, you heard us — LEDs, interior lights and underglow are back, and Griffiths have an epic new range of interior lighting in the form of the Type S interior LED lighting kits. With most modern vehicles coming with interior lighting from the factory, it can leave us ’80s, ’90s and early ’00s Japanese car enthusiasts out of the loop and without wicked interior lighting. The Type S range of lighting kits are a LED light strip that will allow you to change the look and feel of your interior. They’re 12V, easy to install and cut to length. But the best thing is they’re app controlled, meaning you have full command over the LEDs from your mobile phone — they can even sync in with your…

OK, so with my initials being MAG, it’s no wonder that I’ve been working on mags for almost all my working life. I’ve been at the Performance Car magazine stables for 17 years and have had the pleasure of working on all of the Parkside Media titles. I was raised by an adrenaline-junkie father who was still in his 20s when he was strapping me into the three-point harness of a beach buggy to launch over the sand dunes at Muriwai. He bought that for my mum as her daily driver. My first driving experience was behind the wheel of one of the two 7.4-litre Corvette Stingrays that he had just bought back from the States to raise money for his next adventure. I was eight. As the graphic designer…

One of the biggest criticisms the latest generation Supra faced on its release — other than not having a 2JZGTE engine — was that there was no manual gearbox offering, with the only option being an automatic ZF transmission, based out of the BMW Z4. Although a quick shifter and capable of holding a decent whack of power, true manual transmission enthusiasts have been yearning for a manually shifted, foot-clutch-engaged gearbox. Well, Toyota has answered with the news that, next year, it will be releasing a six-speed manual variant with the Intelligent Manual Transmission (iMT) tech used in the Yaris and soon-to-be-released GR Four Corolla. There are whispers that the gearbox will be from the BMW parts bin, which is not terrible news, being that they’re capable and stout units…

Automotive maturity is something that we’re seeing a lot more of here at NZPC. Enthusiasts who have grown up with modified Japanese and European imports have begun to home in on their chosen poison. More and more, we’re seeing people say that they’ve tried them all, only to settle on one particular platform that spoke to or resonated with them in some way. We performance car enthusiasts are dialling in what truly makes us tick and the by-product is an intense passion for each make and model that we haven’t seen for years. An enthusiast who has dialled in his chosen platform is Seven Li, a drifter based on the North Shore, Auckland, who now not only drives the Toyota GT86 and Subaru BRZ platform but has also made a…

We have a winner! At last, the winner has been announced for the TPD Honda K-swap, built for charity. Congratulations, Dean Hart! Dean has taken ownership of one of the cleanest Honda Fits and K-swapped cars we’ve come across, donated by the TPD team — all in the name of a good cause, with $31K going to Starship children’s hospital. It has been one helluva ride over the past six to eight months, with setbacks, Covid-related staffing issues, and a heap of custom work, but the TPD team got the project done in a spectacular fashion. It’s so good, in fact, that hopping inside you’d think that the Honda Fit platform came in an OEM Type R model, with all the usual Type R trimmings now installed in the cabin…

Is any discussion about touring cars — especially in an Aussie or Kiwi context — complete without mention of ‘Tricky Dicky’ Johnson and his flame-spitting turbocharged Sierra terrors? The Sierras came to epitomise the Group A touring car years in a truly worldwide context. They effectively wrote the book on boosted homologation specials, achieving domination across the globe thanks in a large part to their potent two-litre ‘YB’ twin-cam turbo power plants. But none was built quite as quickly as the Dick Johnson Racing (DJR) cars, rolling out of a workshop in Queensland. Really, this was a by-product of the Australian series being one of the toughest championships, if not the toughest of them all, for Group A hardware. Initially, DJR began with a couple of cars purchased from Andy…

Every race series has some icons, or some cars that stand out because they’re just so damn good-looking. Where the BTCC is concerned, the Peugeot 406 might just win the best-looker prize, by virtue of those silky-smooth French curves and particularly the gold-over-green Esso Ultron livery. Peugeot was one of those manufacturers that put in the effort, with much promise, but results at the truly pointy end of the field always seemed elusive. Peugeot had been in it since the beginning of the Class 2 category in 1992, peaking in 1994 with Patrick Watts finishing in eighth place driving the 405 Mi16, the angular predecessor to the swoopy 406. It soldiered on nonetheless, debuting the 406 in 1996 with Watts, and Tim Harvey on driving duties. Sadly, results proved relatively…

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NZPC: Hey, Liza — what an absolute weapon! First, what is your history with cars? Liza: Never had to really think about this, but I guess it has to come from my dad. He is the biggest F1 fan I know, and growing up I would always watch all the races with him. He would explain to me how the cars are built and what changes are made season by season and, most importantly, why. He owned a car dealership when I was little and I feel like we never had the same car for over a week. I never knew what I was getting picked up in from school [laughs]. Sometimes I would go to his work after school, and he had these brochures from different manufacturers, which basically…

EPIK 200 marked the awakening from the slumber of no events, no fun, and nothing much happening in the car scene for what seemed like a lifetime. Alan and Pare Togia, along with their Downtime Entertainment crew, made the trip down to Manfeild to reignite the automotive event flame. Originally scheduled as the Jamboree weekend, EPIK 200 encompassed all the best bits of that initial plan into a Hail-Mary event that really shouldn’t have gone ahead. With limitations on gatherings, and not much time at all, Alan and Pare could just as easily have stayed home and chalked another cancellation up to Covid. However, if you know how the dream team operates, that was never going to be an option. A sunny Saturday played host to cruising, burnouts, and roll…

New Zealand’s wildest BMW E36 is nearing completion. Built by the talented Mitchell Race Xtreme (MRX) team, we’re more than excited to throw a few cameras their way once the S85-powered 388kW V8 BMW is complete. You’d be wrong if you thought there was much BMW steel left, as MRX has basically turned it into an in-house-designed-and-built tube-frame race car. Mitchell tells us, “The chassis has had a huge amount of fabrication work carried out. The front firewall has been removed and relocated. It’s got a custom front chassis clip, custom rear chassis, and custom drive tunnel.” The slicks will be mounted to Forgeline 18x11- and 18x12.5-inch wheels, tucked up under the modified Flossman carbon body-panel kit. With circuit duties the main designation for such a weapon, Endless has been…

We’ve been jam-packed with press vehicles lately and been very lucky in that regard, getting to pedal around the various performance vehicles that manufacturers are churning out at the moment, before the inevitable demise of the internal-combustion engine. However, it’s a weird one, as customers aren’t just liking it — they’re loving getting their hands on proper, performance-focused hot hatches and sedans with similar pedigrees to those of the good ol’ days. The Hyundai i20 N hot hatch is just that, packing 150kW of front-wheel-drive manual epicness — a lively small weapon capable of tearing up the back roads. With limited space this issue and an upcoming Hyundai i30 N press car coming our way, keep an eye out for the next issue, when we’ll compare the two direct-injection turbocharged…

The annual MOD (Mitsubishi Owners Day) took place at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park over Queen’s Birthday weekend. Celebrating all models of Mitsubishi, it played host to a full day of cruising and roll racing, as well as the Andrew Simms parade/record attempt — achieving 236 cars on the track, a little shy of the 2008 world record of 273. After a full day of action, Te Puke–based Evo specialist Mike Gibbons thrashed his self-built monster Evo III all the way to the title of King, running the car out of brakes in time attack and then hitting the pad for a solid heli display. Taking out Queen was first-time attendee Brooke Urquhart, who had the whole family in tow as she did multiple laps cruising. She then had her first…

There comes a time in the journey of all modified car owners when decisions need to be made; sure, you love the thrill of Friday night at the drags with the boys, slapping those gears and trying to get those reaction times perfect, but deep down you can sense that hunting the perfect apex and seeking those hundredths of a second per lap might be your calling and you need to decide just what weapon you want to attack that with. Then the perfect opportunity comes up … Meet Betsy’s owner, Aaron, who admits he used to be a Subaru guy but for now we’ve decided not to hold that against him as he has seen the light and created what has to be one of the most refined and…

Coming out the other side of a tumultuous 2021 and early ’22, the annual Skope Classic meeting almost didn’t happen. Uncertainty about whether we’d even be allowed to venture out due to you-know-what killed the notion of its traditional February date, but a spot of lightning-quick organisation and a few emails to the relevant competitors meant that the meeting took place — at a reduced capacity — in April instead. Part of the slimmed-down roster of races included the HTC NZ (HTC) grid, debatably one of the best tin-top race fields on the tarmac in New Zealand at present. The group managed to pull together a solid group of 21 cars — down on the usual grid, with a few key suspects missing and some of the North Island competitors…

No matter what era of touring car racing is being discussed, you can bet that BMW will have to have a part of it. The marque from Munich has become almost synonymous with thrashing production-based saloons around race circuits, snagging chequered flags in competition from Pukekohe to Macau to Monza and beyond. Of course, when the FIA decided to drop Group A in favour of the new Class 2 two-litre formula for touring cars — which would evolve to become SuperTouring — BMW was right there with its finger on the pulse. Arguably, BMW had a bit of a head start on the rest, having tinkered about with competitive naturally aspirated weapons throughout the Group A years with the E30 M3. When the time came to join the two-litre fray,…

UNASSUMING ON THE WELLINGTON ROADS BUT WILL LEAVE YOU FOR DEAD OVER THOSE WINDING HILLS THERE’S NO MISTAKING WHAT LIVES IN THIS ENGINE BAY — HONDA PROUD OK, folks, enough of the jokes — especially about how slow Hondas are, eh, old bloke. Take a punchline, modify it to suit, and how far it can take you is limited really only by imagination and time. In the case of Wellington-based Spencer Pries, that time is nine years and that is how long this H-badged apex hunter has been in his possession and punching above its weight. When you grow up around motorsport, you basically just bide your time until you get your licence, that first build can be acquired, and the tinkering can begin. That’s exactly how it was for…

By now I’ve done enough of these stories to know when the best time to write is; with an event, it’s always in what I call the ‘PEB’ or ‘post-event blues’ phase. You see, my role over an event weekend, among other things, is to ride an emotional roller coaster and try to take the attendees — and, by extension, you the reader — on that journey. With ClubFest, the only ‘by car clubs, for car clubs’ event in the calendar, this is magnified a notch due to the number of cars and people that attend and the atmosphere that brings. One hundred and three! Big number, right? That’s how many clubs registered for the event. Each year, we see new clubs emerge — sometimes as branch-offs; other times from…

An accessory to a nice wheel is a well-presented brake caliper. Even if you’re not running aftermarket brake discs or calipers, following the guidelines we are about to show you will definitely up your wheelhouse game. With the help of the crew at Customs Body Shop, we see how they overhaul a set of Brembo calipers and respray them in factory Mitsubishi White. With some basic tools from your local auto store, a lot of these procedures can be carried out at home — a basic list of supplies that you’ll need is at left. STEP ONE We’ll be working with this Mitsubishi Evo V, which has a factory set of four-piston Brembo calipers up front and two-piston calipers on the back. We’ll be putting it on the hoist for…

AGE: 39 LOCATION: LOWER HUTT OCCUPATION: EX PRIVATE CONTRACTOR TURNED FAMILY MAN NZPC: Kurt, this spotlight has been a long time coming — tell us, how long have you been building the Corolla and how did the car come about in the first place? Kurt: Ever since I’ve been reading the magazine, I told myself that one day I’d have a car worth showing, and finally this day has arrived. In a nutshell, it has been too long — what was supposed to take a year ventured into about 14! I have always liked the KE20s. There used to be one driving around my old stomping ground [Levin] and it came up for sale, so I bought it. The only thing was it was always referred to as the past…

Chef Phil Clark is cooking up something to share with his young family in the near future. Previously featured in NZPC with his Phildo Evo I that was a 10-second street car, Phil picked up a very straight BFMR Familia and is cooking up a throwback-inspired build that will feature a built B6T engine and Evo drivetrain. Aiming for quick response, 260kW is the target, and, with a panel beater in the family, it’s bound to look just like one of his Michelin Star–style dishes once complete!…