Les Hunter’s Record Holding Truck
IT is late 1973 and I am, as you join us, a clueless 16-year old brat barely out of High School with a face full of acne, hair like a wet mop and still fervently keen to justify the faith placed in me by the editors of NZHRM, who have recently redeemed all my wildest adolescent dreams by turning me loose on their pages. Les and Gail Hunter, bless ‘em, look caught between bemusement and mortified, that NZHRM has apparently dispatched some school exchange programme intern to interview them and take photographs of their ’38 Ford pickup. With a Brownie 127 camera, no less, the results of which were published in the May 1974 issue. It was my second published article.
Les Hunter was just 16 years old when he purchased the ’38 pickup in 1968. It was a barrelnose, and with a souped-up flathead V8 and he began racing it at the second-ever Ruapuna Drag Meet in December ’69. This ‘work in
