Pukekohe was built in 1962 as a hastily conceived replacement for the Ardmore airfield. It has served the sport well, but now the sport has outgrown the place — even with about $7 million dollars being spent. Back to the halcyon days at Pukey’ with this classic Terry Marshall shot of the start of a saloon car race at the 1966 GP meeting — Australian Pete Geoghegan’s Mustang is on pole with the Fastback Anglias of Paul Fahey and David Simpson alongside. Then comes the Zephyr Corvette of Rod Coppins and Jim Mullins in the ex Kerry Grant A40. This was the fourth GP meeting at the place and it still attracted huge crowds. Classic Motorsport

Pukekohe versus Hampton Downs

OVERSTEER looks at what is becoming increasingly obvious as a crisis time for motor racing in Auckland. (Hold cursor over image for caption) The situation in the Auckland area over motor racing facilities is so farcical you’d not believe it, if it weren’t true. After years of being pronounced dead and the corpse being allowed […]

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New manager is Mike Sentch who has a lot of motorsport experience Motorsport News

Highlands – Ready To Roar

The Highlands Motorsport Park project at Cromwell is the most exciting and innovative thing to have happened to New Zealand motorsport since the invention of the wheel. OVERSTEER has been for a look around the track and its facilities (Please hold cursor over photograph to read the captions) One of the construction marvels of New […]

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The writer tackles the famous Carousel corner in one of his later visits Classic Motorsport

The Green Hell

(Please hold your cursor over the images to see the caption) When it comes to talk of motor racing circuits, the inherent dangers of Pukekohe with its fences, narrow space between track and spectators, power poles and trains, doesn’t hold a candle to what they call, the Green Hell — the Nurburgring. I first drove […]

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Classic

Automotive Ambitions

When I was a teenager and my parents bought the shop next to the boatsheds at Brighton near Dunedin, I was in the midst of my initial car-mad phase. I was quite eclectic in my tastes — British, American or “foreign”, I didn’t mind, although I steered away from the mundane and preferred oddballs, or […]

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One of the rare racing appearance made in 1935 by the Bitmore. Note saddle fuel tanks Classic

Heroic Failures

One at both ends – OVERSTEER looks at the bizarre Alfa Romeo Bimotore (To read photo captions, please hold your cursor over the image) Grand Prix racing in the mid to late thirties was totally dominated by two teams, Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union (a name created specifically for the cars) — both were funded by the […]

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Classic

Tragic? Or inspired?

Allan Dick is about to become a Skoda owner . . . Skoda is a brand that’s struggled to overcome a dim, dark period in its history when Czechoslovakia was in the grips of Communist rule and the cars that were produced were low-tech to the point of being primitive and were the butt of […]

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Classic Motorsport

Frozen Moments

These are two quite famous and historic motor racing shots that show how misleading still photographs can be. The first was taken in the first British Grand Prix at Silverstone in 1948. On lap 23 Geoffrey Ansell driving this prewar ERA B-Type lost control, went into a wild slide, the tyres dug in and the […]

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Classic

Major Disaster

I saw an Australian Morris Major yesterday. I also saw a Morris Major Elite! Two Morris Majors in the one day and in the same place. It’s easy to be cynical about BMC in this period as the company had tentatively pushed the self-destruct button, putting in place a slow-moving chain of events that would […]

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