As good circumstances would have it, drag racer Wayne Yearbury had become a good mate since I’d shifted to Auckland three years previously. Wayne owned Performance Parts in Papakura, South Auckland, and spent a lot of his time buying used engines and transmissions, and the occasional old car, out of California, then loading them into containers in his Los Angeles yard for shipping back to New Zealand. Thirty years ago, Performance Parts was the first place you’d call if you needed a used American V8 engine and transmission. Rodney Holland and I had repaired and painted the fibreglass body of Wayne’s ex-John Force Top Fuel Funny Car he’d bought (which Wayne would run as the first ‘Performance Parts’ Top Alcohol Funny Car), and Wayne was happy to return a favour to me.
Mark II got T-Rex running and fitted with some old tyres that would hold air at Squeak Bell’s chicken ranchT-Rex. The other ‘59 had lived its life in America’s Midwest, where the climate had caused it to rust so badly that I wondered whether it would even be worth restoring.
