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Printable View
That Mercury is a neat bit of gear, grunt city.
It ran 2011 and 2016.
This pic from January 2011.
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That certainly is a very nice 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, they originally came out with a 289, 260 and 6 cyl option. Ford offered them for Drag racing in A/FX class through their performance program with a 427 high riser FE big block and 4 speed with locker 9 inch diff and fiberglass all round panels. They were very fast and did serious battle with the big Mopars & Chevys in the day.
This is the smaller version built on the same floor pan as a Falcon sprint.
There also was a large 1964 Mercury Marauder which was offered stock with big block FEs (352, 390 & 427) and this shared the larger 63-64 Galaxie full chassis. Very easy to confuse both models.
BMW time - the first two from the Classic Trial.
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Long time BMW driver John 'Two Summers' Hudson. Those who regularly buy or read one of the British classic car magazines, will know that whilst John spends the NZ summers here, he spends another summer in the UK, where he has been instrumental in fettling contributor Dave Evan's BMW, to a very high standard. Sadly, Dave passed away suddenly just a week or so ago, so our condolences to John for the loss of a great mate.
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Marty Irvine having a guest drive in Barry Kirk-Burnand's E46.
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Warwick Mortimer, not Andre this time.
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Warwick deserves another pic as along with Barry, he is a great contributor to local classic motorsport.
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Not so mellow, yellows...
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Great photos Ray. You've got that bazooka sussed now.
Thanks Nigel - and thanks for the tips!
MGB time. Four cylinders. Longest BMC/ERC supporter, Nev Thompson.
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First equal series winner under my stewardship when owned by Nick Wilcox, now owned by John Palmer.
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Eight cylinders - John Fulford.
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Many drivers like to see photographs of their cars in action, not for an ego boost, (drivers? egos?) but it shows what the car is actually doing especially under cornering and braking.
Note these three V8 MGs. Grant Kern's MG BV8 sports - obviously not a factory V8. Top driver. Good car attitude.
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Dave Mallin's genuine factory MG BV8 GT, formerly raced in the earlier days of the series by Harley Norager, where it famously earned the distinction of the first series car to be black flagged and a drive through penalty for breaking the speed bar. Another top driver. Good car attitude.
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Adrian Hayman's home brewed MG BV8 GT. This car has never really looked very settled on track.
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Not in the programme... I am assuming a Swift.
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Ferrari day 1 today - nothing on track. Heavy rain. Came home. Nigel may have stuck it out longer, as he had driven a couple of hours to get there. Traffic the usual crawl from Drury northwards at 11am, with torrential rain south of the Bombays.
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Sorry for the Ferrari racers and even the Ferrari owners just hanging about, but off track it was a lake in places. Maybe the future plans for HD will include a lake?
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Yep..take the motors out of the cars and put into the Sprint Boats
No race today but there will be 2 tomorrow. 2 qualifying sessions today instead.
Rained on and off til lunchtime. Not much the organisers can do about the weather.
Only 36 club Ferraris turned up instead of the 200 mentioned in the publicity. Hardly surprising given the weather bomb but still a wee bit disappointing.
That said I've now been to a Ferrari Challenge meeting so I can cross that off the bucket list!!
A few cars out on track at the moment - dry race line - but raining in Auckland (10am).
Back to the Legends Meeting... Interesting to contemplate what the status of classic/historic motorsport would be without the popular BMW E Series, then two grids of open BMWs? Would we have been restricted to 1 day meetings?
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Last one as the first one - Chuddleigh Haggart showing why this sort of racing is so much better to watch than utes, certainly from behind a camera. Not as much lift as Nigel's brilliant photo, but this was a just little earlier in practice.
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Overall, although I didn't stay for the racing, from a 'getting to know the lens' perspective, a most productive morning and another pile of pics into the library.
Caffeine & Classics March. As expected, a massively reduced turnout as it was Beach Hop weekend, so not too many photographs.
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Nice car but wouldn't be my choice of wheels.
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Amazing artwork on this Mercury.
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Chevron (NZ)
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Cheetah x 2
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The name is Bond, Laurie Bond. Not exactly the best front end treatment by a country mile.
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That almost brings me up to date with the current stuff, apart from a few damp Ferrari pics so now I'll need to either get back to scanning old stuff or delve into the archives to see what I haven't published before. Here's one I scanned recently for the ERA Facebook site.
Earl Howe at Donington 1937 in ERA R8B.
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Ferrari Festival
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I have always liked the classic front engined Ferraris.
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Meanwhile, inside the pavilion...
I'm not a huge fan of one make, one model racing but made the trip to HD hoping to see more than just Ferrari 488's. As it turned out, we didn't see anything out on track at all and several pit garages were closed, so no apologies for the sameness of the next batch or two.
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Fantastic pics Ray, You have captured the atmosphere of that meeting, damp as it was.
Bruce.
Gad it was miserable Bruce! The atmosphere was indeed damp and depressing. I have only published the pics because I took them, not because I am in any way proud of them. Like Nigel, not sure that I'd bother to go again, even it was fine, as the programme was basically a Ferrari Owners Club bash, despite all the publicity.
When TACCOC had a Ferrari race at Whenuapai, it at least had a variety of Ferraris on track. When you look back at the photos you have taken, no matter what the one make/model series is, you tend to skip through them. You take your time when there is true variety, even if it is just a variety of models. Quite simply, any one model series means that the optimum line through a corner is the same for every single car and as we all know, you are not going to get the varied lines and car attitudes seen in Central Muscle cars, Pre 65's or any of the saloon series for that matter.
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And that's a wrap.
ERC have borrowed - stolen the Healey pic, car is ex Germany,new to NZ this year.
We only called in a for a few minutes to the April Caffeine & Classics quire late on, so needless to say, many had already left. Never mind, there were still one or two we hadn't seen before or worth a snap.
Back to Ferrari and Italian...
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Ferrari GTC Lusso
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Never realised before just how similar some hatchbacks are, so noticeable when they are painted the same colour. There was a time when we had 3 small Fiats running in the ERC series.
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Hampton Downs (today) Sunday - guess what the weather was like in the morning...
Some very impressive driving by the youngster in the D Type replica (Louis McNair?). I for one am happy to see good replicas like the C type and the D type as otherwise, Kiwis would rarely get the chance to see some of the world's more iconic cars. Even some of the 'real' cars have so many replacement parts that they are hardly original anyway. It certainly makes for a more attractive (ie varied) grid and this was the best grid of the day for me.
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Thankfully, the weather cleared up later and young Louis had a tremendous battle with the two leading Formula Juniors - but I haven't yet got that far with sorting the pics! Several hundred taken to add to the library.