JOCKO

ne of the most challenging and stressful patches of my life took place between 1989 and 1992. This was the period during which we set up the LVV certification system, which meant the planning, designing, and creation of all of the things we needed in order to have the system, before the system actually got up and running. One of the first elements of developing the certification system’s starting point was rounding up the technical expertise. I figured — blessed with all of the ignorance and naivety of youth (I was 29 years old at the time) — that I could set up a national certification system for modified and individually-constructed vehicles in support of the ‘self-governance’ proposal that I was pitching to the Ministry of Transport. However, I was well aware of my technical limitations. I was going to need to surround myself with the very best technical car-building minds in New Zealand, and I looked to the guys who had been consistently building the best cars over many years, and who would commit to helping the hobby in the most desperate