What makes a motor racing meeting memorable? What is it, for instance, that makes you hang out for the next one? That makes you mark the date on your new wall planner (or, yes, pedants, in your digital Outlook diary) as I did in September last year, and/or book your leave/airline/Cook Strait ferry tickets so far in advance part of you worries that you will be run over by a bus/or hit by some other life-changing event in the interim.
I don’t know about you, but one such event on my annual summer ‘must-attend’ list is the Skope Classic.
This year’s is the 28th organised and run – so well – by the Canterbury Car Club at Mike Pero Motorsport Park Ruapuna, and without delving too far into the maths I must have been to over half. I’ve been covering the now SAS Autoparts MSC-backed MSC F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series now, for instance, for the past 16 years and the F5000s have usually had a round at the Skope meeting.
Even before that, though, I’d try and get down to ChCh for at least a day at the three-day meeting, if for no other reason than to catch up with friends and acquaintances I’d made at the track when I contested the Pyrotect South Island Mazda RX7 series.
Christchurch has always had a very active and vibrant ‘alternative’ motorsport scene of course, and in many ways the Skope Classic is simply a continuation (in repackaged, rather more fan and spectator-friendly fashion) of the brilliantly conceived albeit defiantly anarchic Country Gentlemen’s meetings which started – I believe – sometime in the mid-to-late 1970s and ended, sadly, with a whimper rather than the bang they really did deserve, sometime in the mid-1990s.
Like Auckland’s TACCOC (which stands for Thoroughbred and Classic Car Owners Club) the Country Gentlemen’s Historic Racing and Sports Car Club enjoyed a golden run organising classic racing events for well-heeled older chaps happy simply to get out on a track and give their old, largely British, bangers a ‘jolly good thrashing, what-oh!’
The fact that people like myself – car nuts who enjoy getting up close and personal with ‘cool’ cars of any era but have neither the wherewithal or even desire to actually own such a vehicle – might well be interested in paying to attend such a meeting was largely lost on these iconoclastic pioneers. Though I seem to remember huge ‘paying’ crowds at the Whenuapai airfield just down the road from where I now live for several year’s worth of ‘Wings and Wheels’ meetings.
The upshot of it was that meetings like the Skope Classic were added to the calendars of event-organising clubs around the country and as Motorsport New Zealand’s annual summer championship series lost its appeal and/or way it was the so-called ‘classic’ ones which took up the slack.
Not every ‘classic’ meeting has had such a long, and largely successful run as ‘the Skope though.
In some cases the reason has to do with the venue, or management at said venue. Jim Barclay was very much a hands-on organiser when he was the boss at the Whenuapai Airbase, as well as an active member of TACCOC for instance. So it came as no surprise that when he left the air force his successor at Whenuapai didn’t see the inevitable disruption caused by closing an operational base for over a week at the height of the summer in the same ‘we’ll sort it’ way Jim did.
It should also come as no surprise that the last two ‘Legends’ classic car meetings at Hampton Downs have only been a shadow of the huge and successful NZ Festival of Motor Racing celebrating……..Bruce McLaren, Chris Amon, Ferrari at al ones Jim organised more recently on behalf of circuit founders Tony Roberts and Chris Watson.
In others the mix of classes and with it the ‘ambience’ or ‘vibe’ of a meeting is all wrong.
For example, I know that – by age – pretty much every Pre-65 class car is eligible to contest a ‘classic’ meeting like ‘the Skope. Has anyone – bar a keen car owner and racer – ever actually looked closely at a Pre-65 grid recently however? I did at this year’s Legends of Bathurst meeting at Hampton Downs and – frankly – was appalled.
None looked anything like a classic, the worst offenders the lurid modern colours and incongruous ‘sponsorship’ (and if you have read the odd column here you will be aware of my opinion on that!) banners and aftermarket (modern design) wheels many of the cars were fitted with.
Across the Tasman the only way you can get anywhere near a gird in a Mk1 Ford Cortina, Ford Anglia, Austin or Morris Mini or even PB Vauxhall is either in a Demolition Derby….or in an FIA Appendix K class…meaning, period colours, working lights and all chrome trim plus most of the interior trim bar what you have to pull out to fit a roll cage.
Don’t tell me that this would ruin the racing either. Last year I tripped over the coverage of the Classic Saloon Car races at the annual Goodwood Revival meeting from the UK while searching for something to watch on YouTube…..and promptly found myself glued to the screen as gorgeous new-build A40 Farinas being driven by current BTCC hotshots diced with Minis, Ford Cortinas, Zephyrs and Mustangs, Mk 1 and 2 Jaguars and even big old Austin Cambridges, in a no-hold-barred celebration of just enough power to overcome just enough grip.
All in cars that looked like slightly lowered factory original models, even down to the wonderful bakelite indicator switch mounted in the middle of the dashboard on the little factory-option two-tone A40s (and A35s I remember riding in as a kid.)
Speaking strictly personally here, I’d love to see the whole FIA Appendix K thing applied in this country – across all classes in which older classic cars compete. It already works and works well in the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series and though their cars are still more contemporary than classic I know the guys behind the new Historic Touring Car NZ category are right into correct period spec and liveries.
Having also really enjoyed the low-key yet pukka vibe of the recent Taupo Historic GP meeting I think there is real potential for a pairing up along Skope North and Skope South lines, so – for instance – the organisers could share in the costs of shipping in interesting feature cars and drivers to boost the exclusivity of each meeting.
That said, it’s the mix of identifiable classics like the late Ron Silvester’s ’38 Chev coupe (pictured above) , and Bert Goven’s Mk 2 Jaguar (pictured above) as well as the appearance of Kiwi specials like the late Hec Green’s recently resurrected RA Vanguard and the now Russell Greer-owned and driven Stanton Corvette which is probably the thing that stands out for me when I try and work out the on-going appeal of ‘the Skope.
That and the fact that as much as the key core cars and competitors seem to remain the same, each year something different turns up, be it Paul Fahey’s famous FVA-powered Mk 1 Ford Escort, restored to immaculate, original condition by a local car dealer, the ‘barn-find’s Willys V8 Coupe of a couple of years ago or this year, David Dicker’s fantastic (in the true sense of the word) F1-spec FZED single-seater track day car.
Not exactly a classic (yet) but I can’t think of a better venue, or more receptive audience, for such a machine.
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