Yards And Yarns

[khyndart in CA]

[QUOTE=Roger Dowding;50633]This was posted on Historic Sports Car Racing New Zealand Facebook page, they have posted a couple of mine, so thought we should share ;
Garth Souness - pre Morrari in the V8 Coupe, and Dennis Marwood in the Humber 80, - is it the same one that features in the 1965 NSCC Hillclimb pics from Stu Buchanan.??.



Roger,
Thanks for posting this as it certainly brings back memories for me. December 28 1963. My dad had just died 2 weeks before this and my brother John took me away from all the gloom over to the Mount for this racing. If you look closely you may see me in the distance as I was at the far corner with my b&w Box Brownie camera, taking these photos of Ernie Sprague in his Mark 3 Zephyr ahead of the Lotus Cortina and also a photo of Frank Matich coming around in his Lotus 19B. Allan has some great coloured photos from this same race day. I can remember all the dust in the distance when David Young flipped over Morrie Stanton's Special and somehow survived.



Check this great coloured photo that Allan posted at the previous corner and it could have been on the same lap. Thanks Allan.



This is turning onto Totara Street from Hull Road. Some of these buildings are still there when I last looked.



(Ken Hyndman )

[John H]

Re the Stanton crash that day. We were standing on the outside of the track at the end of the straight where this happened. The Stanton rode over the back of the beautiful little Cooper of Young and we all had a clear view of the underside of the Stanton as it flew in the air. It crashed and rolled down in right hand side of the track against the pine logs placed there. All of the spectators were on the left hand side say about 5-6 deep. The crowd marshal had been having a problem trying to hold the crowd back up to that point.
After this accident we were very happy to be further back. It could so easily have been a 1955 Lemans type result. Very fortunate.
Matich pulled up on the side of the track to take a look as he must have seen it in his mirrors then drove away. I have a photo somewhere the Young Cooper that had slammed into the fence. Clear memory. Was it only held on that track for 2 years? Not sure.

[Milan Fistonic]

Re the Stanton crash that day. We were standing on the outside of the track at the end of the straight where this happened. The Stanton rode over the back of the beautiful little Cooper of Young and we all had a clear view of the underside of the Stanton as it flew in the air. It crashed and rolled down in right hand side of the track against the pine logs placed there. All of the spectators were on the left hand side say about 5-6 deep. The crowd marshal had been having a problem trying to hold the crowd back up to that point.
After this accident we were very happy to be further back. It could so easily have been a 1955 Lemans type result. Very fortunate.
Matich pulled up on the side of the track to take a look as he must have seen it in his mirrors then drove away. I have a photo somewhere the Young Cooper that had slammed into the fence. Clear memory. Was it only held on that track for 2 years? Not sure.

I must have been standing alongside you that day. It happened right in front of us and there was I with a camera in my hand and too shocked to take a shot. I got a photo of the Stanton being taken away dangling from the back of a tow truck but the photo is still packed away somewhere following my shift.

[John H]

Thanks Milan. I also have a photo of it dangling from the tow truck but mostly blocked by your girlfriends huge sun hat!! Hows that... over 50 years ago and our memory is still sharp Chrs

[rf84]

Race cars and bikes that competed on closed public roads had to be registered. There was a category called "Class A" that covered vehicles and machinery that were used infrequently on public roads eg tractors and other farm machinery that had to travel on roads to get from one farm to another, trucks that were used seasonally to cart fruit etc.
Racing cars and bikes were Class A, sub category E. I still have a couple of old stickers here and would post photos if I knew how.
The cost was $1-30 in 1973-$1 for the 2 metal plates and 30 cents for the actual rego.
The rules around using race cars on the road were very loose-there was a clause that said a vehicle registered EA could be driven on public roads "for the purposes of testing or servicing". The boundaries seemed to have been pushed at times-Jim Birkett crashed the JBS now owned by Garry Simkin on the Ngauranga Gorge on his way to or from a hillclimb and I have photos of the Cooper I owned parked on the side of what is now the Hutt Motorway by the original owner Bob Gibbons.
As late as about 15 years ago, Colin Waite and Allan Woolf were the only ones who could run an out-and-out race car at a HB Car Club hillclimb at Pukeora because the Cooper Imp was registered EA and the organisers had obtained the wrong kind of road closure. Further, the little Cooper had a "daylight Warrant Of Fitness", another quaint anachronism that probably does not exist any more. Not only was Allan able to do the hillclimb, after each run he drove the car on State Highway 5 back to the start line! I always kick myself that I did not get a photo but on one trip back to the start line there was a big stock truck and trailer closely following Allan. Allan gave a perfect hand signal and turned right to get back into the venue. The diminutive Cooper looked positively miniscule in front of the huge truck.

[Roger Dowding]

rf84

" Racing cars and bikes were Class A, sub category E. I still have a couple of old stickers here and would post photos if I knew how.".
If you scan the stickers to your PC assuming you have one you can then - resize them as they have to be less than 185mb then should be able to upload. It took me a while to get it, the first time I emailed Steve Holmes to get a picture posted, so maybe thry that if you have trouble, cheers .

PS love the info about the Rego and WoF's .. remember seeing a racing Anglia with the rego plate bolted to the floor on the passenger side ..