Winter has certainly made itself known, but that didn’t stop our hardy members from getting out and about for the Winter Wander and the Greytown Festival Christmas parade.
July seems to have arrived in a hurry, and with the winter solstice already behind us, our special Daffodil Day motor show will be here before we know it. If you’re able to lend a hand on the day, please let the team know. And just as importantly, now is the perfect time to dust off the cobwebs, check the oil and water, pump up the tyres, and bring your favourite vehicle along to join the display.
Now, where did I put that hot water bottle?
Enjoy, and keep warm.
Dennis
Club Night 6th July
Club Night 3rd August
Quiz night with Vintage Machinery Club
In Memoriam
With sadness we note the passing of Robin Briggs. Though a recently new member of WaiVCC, Robin and his Ford Capri were quite well know within the Wairarapa
Chair
Hello and welcome to the July edition of the Zenith and my first report as Chairman.
As I write this the weather outside is wet and miserable, not a day for outside activities. Winter is well and truly here.
I’d firstly like to pay tribute to our retiring chairman Graham Hodder for the efforts he put in on our behalf. He encouraged fresh thinking from the committee in looking for ways to increase participation from our members and lead from the front in this respect. Under his watch the highly successful “Car is the Star” club nights were introduced which proved popular with members and resulted in good numbers attending those nights. The change in the format of the Daffodil Rally and the collaboration with Ram Rodders, the Vintage Machinery Club and Wai Wheels resulted in a 3 to 4 fold increase in the money raised for the Cancer Society. This was solely Graham’s initiative. Graham can rightly reflect on a successful term as chairman.
Mike D’Alton resigned from the Secretary’s role in June after a long stint in the job. We’ll miss his sharp wit and dedication. The secretary’s role involves a lot of background work and Mike dealt with that diligently and accurately. I wish him a well earned relaxing break.
I would also like to recognise Francis Pointon who retired from the committee at the June AGM. Francis made a valuable contribution to the committee with his wise counsel and desire to push things along especially where rallies were concerned.
To the returning committee members I say welcome back. I’m looking forward to working with you in the coming year. Welcome also to Shaun Leahy and Stephanie McGreevy who have jointly taken up the secretarial duties.
Looking ahead I would like to encourage more participation from members and more use of the clubrooms. We have approximately 200 members in the branch. In the last financial year 106 members attended at least one event which in itself is encouraging. An event is either a club night or a weekend rally or run. Of those 106, 51 attended one or two events. It would be nice if we could encourage those 51 members to attend three or four events and the 100 or so who we didn’t see at all to attend at least one club night or weekend run.
The committee is looking at refreshing the clubrooms to make them more inviting. This will go some way towards encouraging their use. The clubrooms are our biggest expense and are used for about 4 hours a month, 10 if you include the parts shed. I’d like to think we can make more use of them.
The other side of the coin is to organise events that are more attractive to members. We received a number of suggestions at the AGM that the committee will consider in conjunction with the regular review of our current events calendar. It goes without saying that any additional events will need organisers. Our committee members put in a lot of time organising our existing events so additional commitments may spread our resources a bit thinly.
We would welcome volunteers to assist with organising and running events in any way that they can.
I’m looking forward to seeing a good turnout at our next club night on the 6th of July when we’ll have fish and chips followed by a refresher on CPR from St. Johns. The Gravel Challenge on the 19th of July will be a good chance to break out of the winter doldrums.
See you there!
Kevin Sullivan
AGM
Leyland P76’s in the Upper South
Leyland P76’s in the Upper South
As some of you already know we took our 1974 Leyland P76 6-cylinder Deluxe (George) south for the Vero Rally as part of the Wairarapa VCC group of participants, however, we left early, March 4th after a few hours delay as we were heading to Hokitika for the Leyland P76 National meeting. We had twenty-two Leyland’s including at long last New Zealand’s only Force 7V coupe.
F7V with George our car Our early trip included visiting a couple of working goldmines and a processing plant, fascinating stuff and a lot of fun holding about $180,000 of gold in your hands! Along the way we encountered some serious security measures in the form of Centurian and a Chieftain tanks! Not an everyday occurrence.
Centurian tank Our long weekend in Hokitika was a great success with many of us, eleven cars from the North Island, boosting the local economies.
Two P76’s departed for Hanmer Springs for food and hot water as you do. I was disappointed to learn that the wonderful old Museum had closed and was gone forever. Our intention was to drive the Molesworth Track up to Blenheim in plenty of time for the others to go back to the Wild Food Festival and for us to stay in Blenheim and revisit Omaka’s Museums, tour Seddon and some other places like Lake Grassmere, a great salty environment for any car but offering some amazing scenery and blue skies to frame our blue car. Blue sky/car
Rob Jones
Of course the Molesworth also provided many a scenic opportunity too.
So, after having a great time in Blenheim George met up with an old friend down the road from the Omaka Museum and we were continually running into our Aussie Leyland guests as well. We set of to Nelson for the Vero, a major leap
in rallying for us, our first one. We quickly ran into other Wai VCC entrants, except Graham and Christine Hodder who we didn’t see face to face the entire week, other than a wave in passing.
Leyland P76’s in the Upper South (cont’)
Amazing is the only way to describe what we had come upon, and I won’t try to describe the event over all but will list some highlights for us. In no particular order.
The Beachcomber accommodation was marvellous. Two doors down I meet a bloke I hadn’t seen since high school, 52 years ago! We have since had lunch together in Taupo where he now lives. Sonya and I did 2000 miles in George over our whole trip. Andrew, the other P76 driver and I replaced his fanbelt at the big show at Richmond on the Saturday. Some oil and a bit of petrol and we were back home on March 29th. I consider myself a bit of a car nerd but certainly discovered a beautiful car that I’d never heard of before, the 1911 StoddardDayton, a superb looking machine as you can see.
Sonya was convinced we should source a 44-gallon drum for the boot to show off at the public displays.
This was duly done and proved a huge success with he public. We’d been asked hundreds of times if we had a drum in the boot and so we had to get one. Astonishingly, I met at least three people who had never heard the story of the drum!
On the Wednesday night I removed the drum to allow a young boy to have his Mum take his photo in the boot, sprawled out like a supermodel. At the Saturday show he returned with his dad to show him the car with the drum. Heart warming it was.
Three random cars follow from the Richmond show, how do you choose from the hundreds there?
The people you meet, obviously dozens of folks interested in the P76 or the car next to it but there’s no one to help them. From a Leyland perspective I met two daughters, a grandfather and a brother in law of P76 owners of old wondering where their family cars are now. All were happy to find the cars known to me and that they are all in good care, other than the grandson’s car, it’s a spares wreck here outside Masterton in fact, but his son’s car is still alive and well. And yet another driver of an IPC car who remembers them fondly. Plain Clothes traffic patrol cars, or Inconspicuous Patrol Cars as they were known are almost always remembered fondly by the surprising number of ex drivers I have met.
My brand new tow rope got broken in on our way to Nelson, towing a overheating 1929 Dodge up the hill. Knew I bought that for a reason. One very happy Dodge crew.
1928 Vauxhall
Elderly Overland
1907 Darracq
Leyland P76’s in the Upper South (cont’)
Then we met a lovely lady, Alison Moore, at the Higgins Heritage Park who joined our picnic table for lunch.
Her steed a thing of Sonya’s dreams and so it came to be that I lost my navigator to this little gem a 1930 Austin 7 Ulster pic
I also met up with an old P76 club member who did remember me and was able to tell him of his cars good fate, he now driving a mint Morris 1800. To replace Sonya I rescued Adele, one of the Vero staffers from her previous ride, a 1937 International truck, into the comparative luxury of the P76!
Rob Jones
On day two we had a guest passenger; the poor chap having had two loan cars fail to make it to the rally. We put ourselves down as happy to take someone along for the day, and on the Friday, I had a P76 club member join me from Christchurch to have a go at navigating. Sonya is excellent.
But everywhere we went, with only one exception, people were brilliant, happy to see us and our P76’s on the rally, is it a first? I had the honour of sitting with the rally’s oldest participant at the final dinner, what a guy, gave up his pilots’ licence at 94 and was driving his car, an MG I think on the rally.
If you’re in Nelson/Richmond we cannot recommend the Higgins Heritage Park enough as a place to visit. Just do it. Having left Takaka we returned to the Higgins open day, indescribable! We never got to the car museum in Nelson but did visit almost every other little museum we found in all the little towns we passed through, except Takaka, just didn’t quite make it sadly, and we stayed there for about 5 days after the rally. This is a very brief report on an absolutely wonderous event and holiday for us. We want to thank the rally organisers, where a little change may have been needed it happened, overall, it was just brilliant. Also thanks to Jim Laird for the advice he gave us for our travels after the event. We took your advice Jim and really enjoyed our travels. Like so many, our ferry got cancelled and we had to reset our plans, but we got lucky and arrived home about 5 hours earlier than our original plan had us home. Worked for us.
We had a ball and enjoyed meeting so many people from all over the country and the Wairarapa away from home.
Peoples choice winner of Vero rally
Event Calendar 2026
July 2026
Monday 6th Club Night
Fri. 10th Matariki
Tuesday 14th Committee Meeting
Sunday 19th Gravel Challenge
Sunday 26th Horowhenua Branch Parts Visit
August 2026
Monday 3rd Club Night
Tuesday 11th Committee Meeting
Fri. 14 – Sat. 15th National A.G.M & Executive Meeting
Sunday 23rd Daffodil Run
September 2026
Monday 7th Club Night
Tuesday 8th Committee Meeting
Sunday 13th Spring Rally
Fri 18th to Mon 21st Wellington Club – Hawera Run
Sunday 27th Distinguished Gentlemen’s Drive
October 2026
Saturday 3rd Tin Can Rally
Monday 5th Club Night
Tuesday 13th Committee Meeting
Monday 26th Labour Day
Sat 31st Oct. –Su. 1st Nov. Wairarapa A & P Show Clareville
Upcoming Events
TBC Bygone era of wings and wheels.
TBC Bus trip to visit museums in Maymon, Porirua with a meal at the Cossie Club on the way home.
KS Fish & Chip with St Johns giving a refresher on CPR and other health care options available. RSVP for numbers by the 30th of June with payment.
DP
We will be providing a B.B.Q luncheon for our visitors. All club members are invited to attend. They will arrive approximately 11.00 am
SOH/PD Quiz Night with Vintage Machinery Club
Manawatu Branch
KS/GH Masterton MotorPlex again with the same format as last year. More info to come.
DE/PD A film evening will be the attraction. Come along and enjoy the excitement.
DE/PD David Eade with a support person
Arrive in Hawera on Fri 18th – accommodation at the Tudor Lodge Motel 158 Waihi Rd. Departing Mon 21st Sept. For more information contact Alastair McCarthy – mccarthys@xtra.co.nz
Registrations open on the 1st of July. Assemble at the White Swan, Greytown at 9.30 am A Fundraiser for Men’s Health
SOH
Car is the Star
Confirmed
Organiser is Wellington Festival
GH/BC/KS Cost and travel times to be advised
27 Feb 2027 Stretched Gymkhana 2027 SOH Solway Showgrounds
6th/7th March 27 Citroen Club
The Citroen Club Rally being held in Wairarapa
2026 Winter Wander
Hope you don’t mind Rob, but I used your words from facebook post.
The Wai VCC Winter Wander was held in suitable conditions on Sunday but they did later improve, drying out nicely for our lunch on the veranda of the Gladstone Pub, our final destination.
I took my mate Mark along as navigator as Sonya is unwell. We hardly got lost at all but we did notice a worrying trend on the route, stolen road signs. There were several not on their poles and not just the ones we were looking for!
Anyway, at the start in the rain we were very pleasantly surprised at the number and variety of cars that kept on arriving for the event in spite of the weather. Good keen folk here in the Wairarapa.
No trophy as such for this one but a prize nonetheless, won by the crew in the older Daimler, determined by lucky number draw. I won a chocolate fish, the availability of which cannot be explained here!
It was pleasing to see the Kennedys and Hodders at the Gladdy for lunch as well, but where did the Daltons get to. Hope you didn’t have car troubles. T
he pub carpark was also home to several lovely Alfa Romeos, a weakness of mine. Food took a while but was good but with nearly every seat in the place full, you had to be patient.
Thanks
Rob Jones
Greytown Midwinter Festival - Parade
A love of British engineering and British television came together in suitably eccentric style at this year’s Greytown Midwinter opening night parade. Alongside my long-standing enthusiasm for British vehicles — particularly those from the 19th century — I have always had a soft spot for Doctor Who. Around 10 years ago, I began building my own original-series Dalek, a project that was delayed by personal circumstances and, later, COVID. Early last month, it was finally completed to static-display standard.
That set the scene for a rather unusual Greytown Christmas parade entry: pairing the Dalek with Olive and giving them both a midwinter makeover. With the parade’s country theme in mind, I turned the Whovian universe slightly on its head and presented Olive as a Torchwood Dalek recovery vehicle
The Editor
The weather, however, had ideas of its own. A late addition to the preparations was a see-through “mac” to help keep everything dry.
My partner Donna joined me as co-driver, and we set off well prepared for the winter evening, layered up in thermals, warm jackets, and plenty of determination. Before the parade began, there was time to take in the festival atmosphere around downtown Greytown and Greytown School.
Once underway, the two circuits were great fun. The crowd was in fine form, offering waves, smiles, and plenty of thumbs up along the route. Whether all of the younger spectators knew exactly what a Dalek was is another question, but the response was certainly encouraging.
Graham also joined the evening in his 1934 Dodge, brightly lit for the occasion. Unfortunately, it was not quite his parade night: fuel problems brought his run to an early halt at the second corner. The issue was eventually sorted, and Graham summed it up with admirable understatement: “Old cars!”
The Christmas theme was covered too, with Olive glowing in green lights and the Dalek securely chained up, while multicoloured flashing lights added the finishing touch.
Our Information
Clubrooms:
A&P Showgrounds, Chester Road,Clareville
Postal Address: PO Box 7, Masterton 5840 Branch
Website: https://waivcc.nz/
Club Night:
First Monday of the month (except January) and June (second Monday) at 7pm.
Committee meet:
Second Tuesday of each month at 7.30pm
Parts Department:
A&P Showgrounds, Chester Road, Clareville
Join Frank, Graham and Jeff for yarn and a cuppa when the Parts Department is open.
In this treasure trove, you might also happen to find any bits and pieces you’ve been looking for.
Located at the clubrooms, the Parts Department is open:
• First Tuesday morning of the Month.
• The 3rd Saturday of the Month from 9:30am - 12noon.
You can also contact Frank for an appointment outside standard opening hours by phoning (06) 379 7167
