February 2021
CENTRAL HAWKE’S BAY BRANCH of the VINTAGE CAR CLUB of NZ (Inc) Lamb Country Branch Email: centralhawkesbay@vcc.org.nz
POSTAL ADDRESS
CHB Branch of the Vintage Car Club (Inc) c/-18 Wilder Street, Waipukurau. 4200
Club Nights—7.30pm 3rd Wednesday of every Month
Dave Brown—Invercargill—Classic Car Builder—by Jamie Searle
Classic car builder Dave Brown with a Jaguar XKSS that will soon be sent to a buyer in the UK. The father of Formula One motor racing driver Lewis Hamilton will soon have an Invercargill-built car in his lounge in England. Anthony Hamilton’s Jaguar XKSS has had a fascinating journey since leaving Dave Brown’s Invercargill workshop in 2013. Brown builds recreations of sport/racing cars manufactured in the 1950-60s, specialising in the Ford GT 40s and C and D-type Jaguars. The cars are certified for use on public roads. “I call them recreations of the originals, right down to the last nut and bolt,” he said. “We build the whole car exactly as they were in the day. We don’t call them lookalikes.” Brown originally built the XKSS for a Welsh dentist’s collection of 400 cars. After a few years the collection was bought by Jaguar UK. The manufacturing giant took particular interest in the XKSS because it was planning to make replicas of the model it built in 1957. “The car [XKSS] we sent over, they stripped it down and copied the parts [for the replicas],” Brown said.