MADE IN MANUREWA

Fifty or so years ago, the South Auckland suburb of Manurewa was the nerve centre of top-flight saloon car racing in New Zealand. In the posh part of town were Paul Fahey, Dennis Marwood, and Rod Coppins. Barry Phillips and others were close by, too, while Irvine W Dawson’s pig farm wasn’t too far north off Redoubt Road. As a kid growing up there, I well recall the day I saw a 105E racing car, red with yellow trim, being towed up Weymouth Road by a young guy in an Anglia van. I took note of the number — 105 — and a few months later at Pukekohe locked in the name ‘Jim Richards’ — not, I should add, because I had any skills as a talent spotter, but because it had made a deep impression.

Up on Grande Vue Road, on Sunday afternoons and during school holidays, in a house near the primary school, motor racing every bit as an intense as what I was seeing at Pukekohe, Western Springs, and Waikaraka Park, was played out. A couple of very competitive 12-year-olds were