THE SUMMER OF ’70
The end of the 1960s saw the charges heralded in this era achieving escape velocity. The democratizing phenomenon of television was blasting startling global realities into global living rooms, even in the conservative backwater of New Zealand, even in fuzzy black and white! Our comfortable inertia was challenged by the grim images of Vietnam, the Manson murders, riots, apartheid in South Africa, and the civil rights movement in the American South, along with women’s lib and many other radical notions. With that came a flood of culture change in style, arts, clothes, and music. Woodstock and the free livin’ and lovin’ hippies were confronting the straights and the squares, persuading even them to wear long hair and flares, with matching sideburns. This change played out on all fronts in the Kiwi youth culture, including the hot rod scene and motor racing fraternities.
THE ANTICIPATION OF ADDICTS
Nowhere was this more evident to young auto racing addicts than on the local motor racing scene, at the outset of the 1969–’70 season. The previous summer’s international races had featured the purest-bred Europeanbased Formula cars but instantly it seemed almost light years ago. I have to say that as a ‘teenager’— to use the newly coined vernacular — (14 in reality), the Tasman Series was the prime focus of my summer of ’70. The loud, brash, wildly coloured Formula 5000 (F5000) cars had just been introduced and they seemed to totally embody the exciting new age we were living in. The
