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Rewind: Central Otago Wings n Wheels 2017

Since I’ve been really slack, I’ve neglected detailing a few of my adventures over the last few months. In this post we’re going to jump back in time to Sunday, September 24th 2017 – where I attended the Central Otago Wings n Wheels event at Alexandra Airport.

Fiesta Kms:

Departing early Sunday morning, we hit the road in the Fiesta travelling to Alexandra through Gore. Being a Sunday morning, the roads were really quiet and we have a superb run, without being slowed down by any traffic.

The Wings n Wheels event was a reasonable-sized affair, with an assortment of cars, bikes, boats, trade stands, market stalls, as well as aircraft displays. I didn’t enter my car in the show, so just ended up parking in the public parking. The only downside to the public parking was the dirt road that we had to exit on – the poor Fiesta look pretty second-hand by the end of the day.


Getting straight into the car display, I spotted this sweet looking 2-door ’66 Ford Falcon (Futura). Dad used to own a 4-door NZ new ’67 Falcon, so this brought back some memories. I think the colour of the car is probably a bit like marmite (love it or hate it), but I thought it made the car pop.


While we’re talking about classic Falcons, the next car to grab my attention was this 1977 Ford Fairmont. For those who are unaware, Fairmont is basically the luxury trim level for Falcons. It’s pretty rare to see that someone spec’d out a wagon in Fairmont trim & this car has covered very few kilometers since new and was in immaculate condition.


The final Falcon in my list was the 1980 XD, above. This car is original & has never been restored. In GL spec, this car was the cheapest one that was offered when new and even featured the “cheap mans” 4-speed manual gearbox. Makes this car ultra desirable today. I’d love to try and get my hands on an 80s Falcon, as my favouite childhood memories were made when we had an ’84 XF wagon!
(At some stage, I will dig out some out pictures and detail some of the cars from my past).

The show had a nice variety makes and models, from brand new cars, to classic British sports cars.


When new, Valiant must have been pretty proud of their new motor, as they decided it was worthy of placing a badge on the side of the car. I assume this scared a few people when they glanced sideways at a set of traffic lights!


The strangest looking car of the show was this Maserati Merak, which had these weird rear-braces (I’m not sure what you’d actually call them). It almost looks like some kind of weird ute/pickup in a sports car format. I couldn’t get a decent photo inside the car, but the entire dash wrapped around the driver. Pretty interesting and unusual.


Carbeque, anyone???


Loving this Lotus Escort in orange!


A bright red Honda S2000 was in attendance and the owner was pretty chatty about how much he loved this car. This thing would be the perfect Central Otago car in the summer. Roof down, twisty roads and hot summer days = the most fun a man can have.


While we had some lunch, we watched some of the RC-aircrafts in action. Some of the operators are pretty talented.

I’m not an aircraft fanatic, so can’t tell you too much about the planes that were flying in & out of the airport or performing stunts. There was an extremely enthusiastic MC informing us about each of the aircraft and their pilots. I can tell you that the camo-coloured jet above is an L-29 Delfin, which is owned by a guy in Queenstown. The noise this beast made when it started up and took off was incredible!

A charted plane that you could pay to go for a ride on.

We traveled back to Invercargill via Frankton, making it a round trip and arrived home in time for dinner. Overall, a great way to spend a Sunday. Stay tuned over the next week for a few more catch-up posts.

 

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