SOMETHING HEAD
In the 1970s, New Zealand was turning out racing sports cars and drivers that could match the best in the world. Even so, not many local drivers can lay claim to nine New Zealand Sports Car Championships (NZSCCs) as Jamie Aislabie can — usually in cars he had developed and completed himself with the help of a few good mates. It was Jamie’s talent for spotting a good basic design and building on it that brought success in his SID I, SID II, and SID III cars over a career lasting 35 years from 1958 to 1993. Jamie long maintained that the name ‘SID’ stood for ‘Something I Did’ or ‘Still in Debt’, but in a recent radio interview he revealed its true inspiration: “We were on a night out with some friends at one of those Carry On movies and Sid James was in it. I said to my mates ‘That Sid is an ugly bugger, isn’t he?’ That’s the name we chose for SID I and it stuck.”
Cromwell’s Gerald Duncan and Barry and Brendon Leitch at Leitch Motorsport & Restoration in Invercargill have now brought the second of the SID-series cars back from the brink. This piece of New Zealand sports car racing history is now as it was when Jamie developed it for the 1978– ’79 season. Jamie acted as consultant throughout the restoration and the car attracted a lot of attention
