Tuesday 25 March 2008

Concours d'Elegance 2008

This annual event is held at the Ellerslie Race Course the main race track in Auckland there are several large buildings one of which housed the Rare Classics and Performances cars plus various outlets selling car magazines, pictures, and a cafeteria selling very expensive food.

This year the event was hosted by the MG Car club who aimed to have 100 vehicles on display I think they made about 60. Many clubs had displays there not all were entered in the special judging class for best vehicles, which I believe was slightly modified to take in account the drizzly weather during the early morning.

Our club has not gone for a few years which is probably why we were given a spot right at the end of the show next to the fence where the Car Fair is usually held on Sundays, this was completely hidden by a row of trees. The officials came along several times during the day and apologized and said they will do better if we go next year.

As this was our official outing for this month and car and passenger got tickets to go in for free, which unfortunately did not materialize until the Monthly meeting, and as lot of people went to the Galaxy of cars no one had them, so I took them to the event to give out to members arriving, however only Dennis had phoned to enquire about going. While I was standing waiting to give out the tickets I got to see all the cars coming in either driven or on trailers. So from this you can gather we only managed to get two cars to display, Dennis in his 1946 Ford 10 and Bud and Thelma in their 1950 Prefect.

During the day a few people came to look at the cars and we have one prospective member in Hamilton with a Cx who took a magazine and a subscription form. Martin and Roy were talking to us over the fence and Delia and Paul came along in the afternoon, Paul managed to lock his keys in his vehicle in the car park but the AA opened it up for him.

I walked around about 5 times looking for a vehicle I saw come in on a trailer from Hawera which appeared to have a Prefect badge on the back. It was a van but I could not find it, I think it had gone it was a very distinctive colour of bright yellow and green. The show was closing down at 4.30 as we made our way out, in the light drizzle which had started falling again, most of the day had been fine.

Saturday 8 March 2008

Kumeu Hot Rod Event

For many years now members of the club have been taking their cars to the club car display on the Sunday of this two day event. In the early days a lot of our cars went and people made it a picnic day out, however over the years the numbers attending have declined but we always have a few there.

Next year we are going to make it an earlier start as there are now huge numbers attending and we were in the actual arena this year along with a great number of other cars but it is a little out of the way for the public to walk so the foot traffic was a lot smaller. But we could see the entertainment quite close up. This was a stunt outfit doing crashes and jumping over ramps etc, and a tank running around squashing things. In the last act of a car driving up a ramp and jumping over a line of cars the driver was apparently hurt. (They do not use roll cages or bars) as a ambulance came later and he was taken to hospital.

The sheds had the usual highly painted Hot Rods some are works of art. There are lots of unrelated stalls and others of automotive content. Swapmeet items and vehicles for sale in various states of restoration (or non as the case may be). A band plays most of the day and Mr. Whippy does a good trade along with other food outlets.

This year it was warm and dusty as we were next to the trotting track and the wind was quite strong. They have a prize giving but I did not hear who won as we were too far to hear the address system, but I do not think any of our vehicles had the entry forms up on the windscreens.

We went home about 2.30pm, along with the Chaplin’s, John had gone about 12 noon as he had something else to do. So as you can see the club had three cars there John in his Tourer, Peter in his Prefect and Bud and Thelma in their Prefect, also with us were 2 Cortinas driven by members of the Chaplin family who are trying to start a Type of Cortina Club.

I saw no other members there this year, one person who had a friend wrecking some cars near Wellington said he may donate some parts but he has made no further contact.