New Zealand Historic Muscle Cars Under HRC

[Steve Holmes]

Another HMC car nearing completion, this awesome looking Pontiac Firebird should be up and running with HMC this season. The paint scheme is based on the car Jerry Titus ran in the Trans-Am at the end of 1968 and at Daytona 24 Hour in 1969. A great looking paint scheme, although this car, unlike the original Titus car, will be Pontiac powered, not Chevy powered.

More pics should be coming soon.

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[Murray Maunder]

Wow, great to see that in addition to a Plymouth Cuda we will have a Firebird on the tracks soon.
Now after much shilly-shallying here's a video of the Lakeside weekend - "Thunder By the Lake" to follow up on Dewi's excellent effort.
I can't recall a weekend of motorsport I have enjoyed more, great setting and a camaraderie absent in most forms of motorsport these days. Thanks to the Jones boys of Qld for their help with downloads and in-car cameras and to all the HMC and ATA guys who couldn't have been more approachable and helpful - you guys rock! Thanks also to legend JR and Mike of HealthHouse and anyone else I have forgotten.

[video=youtube;E3oHPyHQxBs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3oHPyHQxBs[/video]

[GD66]

Horn ! Ran it through a set of speakers, the sound is savage !!

A great weekend, hot racing and plenty of enthusiasm all round : congratulations, all.

[kiwi285]

That was a great video Murray. bring back good memories of a fantastic weekend.

Steve - who is the proud owner of the Firebird - this season is really looking like a cracker.

[Kiwiboss]

Great youtube video Murray, you guys are too much with the fantastic volunteer effort you all put in!! all good for the growth of HMC and i can tell you all my American mates are watching HMC with interest, to them they value there real TA cars too much but they see they could own and/or build a HMC spec car and come on down to race it!! time will tell whether the interest builds with them but im sure as hell on there case?

Dale M

[fullnoise68]

That was a great video Murray. bring back good memories of a fantastic weekend.

Steve - who is the proud owner of the Firebird - this season is really looking like a cracker.

Mike, Graeme Duffy owns the Firebird, he came out to my workshop last week to take some measurements of my Camaro. He is a long time friend of Craig and Paul Stacey, so he has got some good grounding!!........

[Steve Holmes]

Wow, great to see that in addition to a Plymouth Cuda we will have a Firebird on the tracks soon.
Now after much shilly-shallying here's a video of the Lakeside weekend - "Thunder By the Lake" to follow up on Dewi's excellent effort.
I can't recall a weekend of motorsport I have enjoyed more, great setting and a camaraderie absent in most forms of motorsport these days. Thanks to the Jones boys of Qld for their help with downloads and in-car cameras and to all the HMC and ATA guys who couldn't have been more approachable and helpful - you guys rock! Thanks also to legend JR and Mike of HealthHouse and anyone else I have forgotten.

[video=youtube;E3oHPyHQxBs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3oHPyHQxBs[/video]

Wow, great work Murray, I really enjoyed watching that.

[Kiwiboss]

Shane Johnsons recently imported A-Sedan Mustang fastback is now sitting in my shop!! very cool car with lots of US and Mexico road race history.

Only requires side door glass and 15" wheels to comply for HMC. A very cool Mustang . Dale

[Grant Sprague]

Shane Johnsons recently imported A-Sedan Mustang fastback is now sitting in my shop!! very cool car with lots of US and Mexico road race history.

Only requires side door glass and 15" wheels to comply for HMC. A very cool Mustang . Dale

Very Cool Dale, would it be about same deal as Pete the meats ? I see one on E bay black 289 sedan 1967 some type of race club mustang but only got a bout 420 hp up to about 8 k on auction ..... still climbing ....... Hey Dale well done with your car etc very cool mate

[DewiAusTransAm]

Shane Johnsons recently imported A-Sedan Mustang fastback is now sitting in my shop!! very cool car with lots of US and Mexico road race history.

Only requires side door glass and 15" wheels to comply for HMC. A very cool Mustang . Dale

Glad to see you have brought home some souvenirs from your holiday dale! hahaha

[Kiwiboss]

Hi All, been a bit behind the 8 ball the last couple of weeks with work and been away and $$$!! This weekend(14/15th Sept) HRC have their Ice Breaker Historic event at Hampton, were expecting at least 6/8 HMC cars(historic legal) and 10 or so HSC(Historic Saloon cars) so as long as the weather is OK this should be a fun event, some of the HMC racers are still getting over the Australian trip expense and trying to catch their breath, and other cars are in the build so will be very low key. We will have both our HMC Auditors along Saturday doing spot checks on the cars, we’ll do one full audit as a practice using our new audit forms!! and remember this is Historic racing so you won’t see any 16/17” wheels on vehicles that didn’t race on them back in the day.

We have also been invited by TACCOC to race at their December 8th one day event which is a good shake down pre X-mas before the Festival rolls around.

All are welcome to come along to view the cars and racing and have a chat, this event is a good one to catch up with prospective historic racers and those interested in historic Saloon racing in general.

See you there

Dale Mathers
HMC Director

[Kiwiboss]

I guess most have seen the new "Code of Driving Conduct" set out by the BMW race drivers club, I thought it was very good and HMC plan to enact this driving standard at it events. I know most in HMC don't want to suffer any panel damage for whatever reason.

http://www.motorsport.org.nz/sites/default/files/motorsport/documents/MSNZ%20Code%20of%20Driving%20Conduct.pdf

Dale M

[Steve Emson]

I guess most have seen the new "Code of Driving Conduct" set out by the BMW race drivers club, I thought it was very good and HMC plan to enact this driving standard at it events. I know most in HMC don't want to suffer any panel damage for whatever reason.

http://www.motorsport.org.nz/sites/default/files/motorsport/documents/MSNZ%20Code%20of%20Driving%20Conduct.pdf

Dale M

Interesting guys! This brings me back to the past. Been here and done this! Over driving....yes we did have this in Historic Group N in Qld when I was the group manager. This "rubin is racing" thing was the cause, and as it attracted previous experienced drivers from all sorts of categories, we had a mixed bag. I only had to panel beat my car once, (although there was car contact about 4 times in all) but that was mainly because i was out on my own most of the time.
The thing about blocking. A NZ saloon car champion gave me a lesson about blocking at Baypark once. It nearly cost me the Championship. You can drive around a track like that and there is no way you can ever pass. (I tried). It is very subtle thing that many by standers would miss. Lakeside is the same. If you drive a certain line you cannot be overtaken. Weaving all over the place is something very different, and not what I am referring too.
I hope you can have fun and enjoy your cars without this sort of thing becoming a problem. The two worst offenders were the two scruffiest cars, which kinda explains the problem. If all the cars are immaculate in there presentation, you are less likely to have people running into each other.
When you have ex touring car drivers in the field things did get a little serious at times. Some big egos also in play. I tried to get my group to behave themselves, and as the fields grew it became more of an issue.

You guys seem to be doing a great job! People like Woody and JE are like minded people. Neither of those guys would intentionally run into you. Your style of cars have a great future ahead, and I take my hat off to you lot. Keep it up.

[nigel watts]

Here's a few shots from the Icebreaker meeting[ATTACH]21343[/ATTACH]

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[nigel watts]

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[nigel watts]

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[Kiwiboss]

Thanks for posting the pics Nigel, a great low key but important meeting for us!!! weather wasn't too good saturday!! Saturday we had our two HMC tech auditors Keith Hargraves and David Graham on-board so we used this event to test our new tech sheets and for them to get a handle on how to go about this for the future, we done a full audit on Nigel MacDonald’s Mustang to test the system before we get carbon copy forms finally printed!! It was great to meet Graham Duffy, a future HMC contender in a 68 Pontiac Firebird and to talk with Robert Peglar and Cam Crawford about Historic racing. As for the racing, I drove away very pleased as it was great fun and a great test day for us all to try a few new things, Nigel was struggling with set up on the Hoosier tyres so I helped him with that and in the last race he was .4 of me, the fastest he’s ever gone around Hampton, the Javelin wasn’t far behind. John Sampson in the mighty V6 Capri clean all our V8's out in the damp Saturday race and only just got pipped from a first place in the last race of the day!! No points, No championships, No non compliant cars, No trophies but BIG smiles all-round, just what Classic racing should be.

A great all-round weekend

Dale M

[Steve Holmes]

Nigel beautiful photos! Thanks for posting.

[Howard Wood]

Nigel, do you have any photos from the BMW 2 litre races immediately before the HMC/ Pre'78 races? As usual your photos capture the spirit beautifully.

[nigel watts]

Thanks Steve,

Howard, yes I do - bit busy right now but when I get a mo I'll start a new thread "Icebreaker" where I can post the non HMC photos