The Roaring Season

The McIntyre/Ellison Fiat 125T had throttle linkage trouble at the start.


The Leonard/E. Sprague leading at the end of the first lap.


The Draper/Hood Fiat 125T in pits after a ding with the Fahey 125T.


Simon Taylor/Alan Curry Charger


Kevin O'Hagan/Pat Groube Ford Cortina GT


?/? Fiat 125T leading the Peter Hughes/Tony Lawrence 125T

Ron McPhail/Don Dawson Datsun 1200, Allan Woolf/Garry Pederson Fiat 125T, Rod Collingwood/Ross Johnson Corolla


Ron Rutherford/Errol Inwood Falcon XA, Murray MacDonald/Morrie Baigent Hillman Avenger TC


Geoff Harris/Graham Morris Renault 12 TL, Rodger Anderson/Neville Crichton Triumph 2.5 PI


Leo Leonard/Ernie Sprague Charger


Graham McKerrow/Lin Neilson Valiant V8


Peter Hughes/Tony Lawrence Fiat 125T

Great stuff Milan - these bring back some memories

awesome Milan,

Thank you Milan , brings back great memories as a boy , we loved travelling to Puke......was a great event .

Neat old photos Milan. I was there that day, but a bit early for me to be taking photos. I remember there was a stack of those Fiat 125T's all the same colour. They had some good bits bolted on with the promise that there would be a good number of them assembled and sold, but it evidently never happened. Didn't one of them roll over very early in the race? It was a wet and slippery day - quite a test for the drivers - and I spent most of it watching from the grandstand out of the weather.
I'm sure a few of those Fiats are still racing in Classic's or 125T replicas.

They made 82 Fiat 125T's . I have over the years owned 2 of them and one of those being one of the cars in the 72 B&H. I also owned one of the Avenger TC that in this race as well.

I was working at Town and Country Cars in Auckland and was part of the group that went out to Motor Holdings to finish the assembly of the 125T. There are some very interesting stories associated with these.

Was any one else there the day that the decision was made that as not enough 125T were made, therefore they couldnt race.
Carter was pulled off the grid on the start line and left some black lines and smoke while leaving.
They were certainly a neat package.

I know that Fiat Italy pulled the plug on the manufacturing of them as they had the 125S which was boring compared to the T. They did not make the homologated numbers I believe John....think it was meant to be 100 or 200 units.

There are differences in the numbers built and some go as far as 89 but the figures I saw show 82 to 84. They had to build 200 and Fiat were not happy as it was unautherised. They pulled the plug. Yes a NZ Special and it was a cool package and looked the part in bright yellow, lowered on Ward mags, hotter cams, noisy exhaust and the largest fuel tank you ever saw in a boot.....
Very rare to find a real one these days and number one the show car lives just down the road.

The 125T story is one of these NZ special myths and legends yarns that even I do not have complete knowledge of and I was there at the time and later became the Service Manager for the Torino Group of companies.
The idea came from a South African 125 bought into NZ by Trevor Tapper called the Scorpion. Trevor ran it in a Heatway Rally. Somehow Torinos picked up on the idea and got Peter Hughes who was a mechanic at T&C at the time to develop the concept into something that had the potential to win the Benson and Hedges. The whole deal was done in a hurry and was beset with a lot of minor mechanical issues such as the valve clearances which went out of shim range because the base circle of the cams were ground down to give more lift and it took an eternity to set the ignition timing because one of the distributor cap posts interfered with the front carb throttle shaft.
There are many stories as to how many were actually made and my thoughts put it at about 140 in three different batches, each of which was slightly different, including a slightly different paint colour on at least the third batch. The promise was that there would be 200 produced in a 12 month period for homologation purposes. So they were allowed to compete in the B&H against that promise. I had not heard the Terry Carter story before. I remember a Alan Carter ran one in GTX or similar.
The original batch had the most diabolical throttle linkage set up which produced an all or nothing opening until modified to make them a little more subtle. Great concept though and I recreated one for Ross Macdonald in Waihi whom I co-drove with for many years.

Yes Allan the 3 batches were different in colour. The 73 I had was painted Canary Yellow.....Good Ford colour... The 72 was painted yellow over the original red such I think was the hurry to get it out there on the grid.
I bought that car as a project and had been burnt but not badly damaged.. I forget the number plate and whos it was but from memory was one of the South Islanders that ran it.
The 73 after I sold was raced in classic racing down here extensively by Ross Church.
Great cars and my lovely tells me I should go and buy another....

This is the entry list for the 72 B7H. Note that numbers 24 & 25 have their car models transposed.

Bruce , there was a beige colour , my brother drove one the colour at B&H with Neil Cottle I think they came 2 nd over all , its under the sprague family photos , tried to drag it across but would not fit.......showing the car at LEVIN

Looking at the list Grant it was the Tom Ward Motors entry. Finished down the order from memory. I have lost my 125 T stuff with rego numbers etc and the technical details as well....bugger.

Gary Levin 4 hour ???..... this is the car they ran quite well in at Puke

It was 1969 that Gary and Barry Cottle ran the 125 in the B&H

Milan Fistonic wrote:It was 1969 that Gary and Barry Cottle ran the 125 in the B&H

Yep that make sense , the car even looks a bit dated to the others , but was a great car that I remember Thank you Milan

Grant Sprague wrote:Yep that make sense , the car even looks a bit dated to the others , but was a great car that I remember Thank you Milan

They actually won the Levin race outright. Ernie rolled his Victor after an axle broke and most of the big cars had tyre troubles. A Riley Kestrel driven by Rod Coillingwood and Alan Boyle was second.