A trip around Middle Earth
Looking back I was mildly surprised to see that over the past six years I have written more than 70 stories about cars built from scratch, from a kit set and occasionally bought turn-key. Almost all of them were unique to New Zealand, and the stories of many had been eclipsed and on the point of being forgotten with the passage of time. When I started, I made the decision to focus on cars not built for racing or pure speed but for adventure or the dream of creating a new automotive marque. These adventures start with a bloke in a shed and finish with something that is special to New Zealand — cars built and used purely for the joy of driving on New Zealand’s picturesque country roads.
These stories take me all over the country. When I travel it is not to see just one car — that would be uneconomical. It takes a lot of research, emails and a good measure of blind luck to complete a successful trip. Occasionally it is disappointing, but more often than not I am richly rewarded by the accomplishments of Kiwis in sheds and factories around New Zealand.
In December I travelled to Motueka having compiled a list of six people to interview in the South Island with the hope of gleaning six home-built car stories in six days. With most of these articles now in print, I thought it would be interesting to relate how those stories came to be, not least because it would be the most interviews I had ever
