Kiwi Glam 1966

A significant time for Down and Nearly Under: post-colonial dependency on the Mother Country faded into fond memory for our expats as the fancy new passenger jets began to encroach upon our cozy insularity (and put paid to Kerosene for domestic heating).  When designing forms for the new PAYE tax, the Department of Inland Revenue learnt that the average mental age of Kiwis was twelve. 

The Government Statistician projected that our population would reach five million by the end of the millennium.  He would have been right, but as successive statisticians noted, in the interim 1.2 million of us had declared, upon departing, our long term intent to seek greener pastures (Queensland benefited most from The Great Kiwi Brain-Drain).

But the residue, wanting to assure ourselves worthy of star rating upon a nebulous international stage, adopted the images of what we perceived to be Western sophistication, as this ubiquitous visual cliché appears to indicate.

Photographed opposite the village store at Castlepoint, a small beach-side town on the Wairarapa coast of the Wellington Region. To the far Right can be see the lighthouse, which stands near the top of the northern end of a one kilometre long reef.

But the real interest is the nippy little roadster  - an early example of a Mark 1 Tiger, circa 1964.  Behind the Walnut dashboard lurks a 4.3 litre, 260 cubic inch V8 engine.  From an idea by Jack Brabham, to a design by Carroll Shelby, built by Jensen for the Sunbeam Motor Company of England and bearing the badge of a world speed record holder, this car appealed to the North American market so much that the Yanks bought the company during the model's run.

New price circa NZ$3,500 - currently fetching around NZ$150,00 for a really good one.

The image came to the digital dark room as a scan of a scratched and pitted 35mm enlargement of an over-coloured half-tone lithographic impression.  Might have graced a garage workshop calendar in an earlier incarnation.