The Roaring Season

Wow, its great you've managed to trace so much of its history. The Yates ownership is very cool.

Roger,yes the Jim Boyd one is at the start line on the bridge at the bottom of Chamberlain Road,that bridge used to get real slippery in the wet as the mud got carried on to it.The other shot is in the paddock at the top which was used as the pits,on a day with big entries that paddock would be full of cars

Yep Chamberlain wooden bridge start, Cossies Farm concrete cow shed, Gees you guys were rough and tough. Photos of little Anglia Bob

Andersons Farm 1970 ,the hill that went down before it went up ,basically a clay surface ,fast as you dared to go,loved it,

Great photo Bob, yea that was a hard case farm road but good fun. As you say "you could have a go" if you wanted too. Just down the road to the good old Albany Pub at bottom of hill to get rid of dust. Remember the Anglia well. Millen in the buggy was pretty good to watch here, and it was a great spectator watch as people just parked on road or in top paddock and you could see the lot.

Vic Simpkin waiting for the start at Quarry Road, Muriwai 1958. A popular venue for most of the 50's, conveniently handy to the McLaren family beach bach. Eventually replaced by Chamberlain Road, Bombay.

Peach Hill Road, Ramarama was used for a few events in the late 1950's. Here is Merv Neil in the Bobtailed Cooper, still with the trademark McLaren number 47.

bob homewood wrote:

Taylorville Hillclimb Westland Greymouth Motors BDA Escort December 1971


Who was driving this Bob and where did the BDA come from? There can't have been many BDA's in NZ at that time.

Looking at the driver I would say it is Bob, if not there were 2 mighty midgets.

Yep that's what I was thinking

Chris Kitzen wrote:Yep that's what I was thinking

Yes sorry Chris ,for some reason the bit I wrote about it dissapeared .It was me driving I built that BDA engine when I was working in Greymouth in !971.Greymouth Motors which was owned by Jim Kennedy at that time were Ford Dealers ,the engine was brought in from the UK bramd new around mid 1971 and was modified by myself ,it was probably among the first BDA engines to arrive here and without self promotion was striiped ,modified and rebuilt by me to my own specs ,in fact the whole car was built in Grey with the 72 Heatway and the Southern Cross in mind but thats another story ,interesting aside I had that car up and running late 71 and both Jim and I drove it on racing tyres at a Timaru Osca meeting a couple of weeks before that hillclimb which incidentally I won

Stu,That photo in turn brings back some memories for me ,that hillclimb was/is about half a k away from where I live ,although I had been to Ardmore before that ,that hillclimb probably fired up my major interest in motor sport ,from that day on I walked and hiked to every motor sport event that I could locally and later that evolved into train trips trips to Levin before I even left school ,interestingly enough many years later I was involved with Merv when he was racing one of the Chargers

It's a pitty that so many people live up all the old hillclimb roads now as it would be great to run some of them again. It's a bloody struggle to find suitable roads now and it costs a fortune to advertise road closures in public notices, get a traffic management plan done, spend time going to council meetings bla bla bla

Chris Kitzen wrote:It's a pitty that so many people live up all the old hillclimb roads now as it would be great to run some of them again. It's a bloody struggle to find suitable roads now and it costs a fortune to advertise road closures in public notices, get a traffic management plan done, spend time going to council meetings bla bla bla

Chris ,most of the Hills have changed so much now,Peach Hill and Chamberlain Road are nothing like they were originally ,some of the earlier Puke car club ones are now more like a sealed bent sprint ,bit of a idea with the forthcoming reunion how about a bus trip round the old original Puke car club hillclimb venues

Definitely food for thought.

Another of me from from the 69/70 Season This was at Cosseys Farm where on this day I managed to snare the Hill Record and FTD ,it capped of a great weekend because the day before I managed to achieve the same double feat at Andersons Farm,I nicknamed this photo understeer !

I found this a while back 79 Riverhead Hill Climb http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCmPmqjhTQY&feature=related

This is on another thread but another shot of the famous top of Chamberlain Rd.

Same corner, same guy a few years later (Valiant with 400 chev) but different approach and result.