Boys And Cars
On Farm Road when I was growing up you were one of two types of car people. A Holden person or a Ford person. I’m a Ford girl. How does a girl get to be more Ford than Holden? In my case, it was more by default since many of my friends drove Fords back then. The Fords seemed to be heavier in the backend and sat better on the metal roads for the drive along Te Awa Road (off Farm Road) and out along Hirinui Road.
One of the stages of the Heatway Rally was driven out along this stretch of metal hell and I recall the young Finn driver Ari Vatanen leaving the road twice in that year (I forget which year exactly and there’s an aging memory failure reason for that). Vatanen was aptly dubbed the ‘Flying Finn’ and that’s precisely what he was doing when he overshot a right-hand bend rounding the corner at the gate leading down to the sheds at Te Tui Station.
Fifteen minutes later he gave us all another flying lesson along Te Awa Road where bends sneak up on you faster than a cranky red belly black snake. He made a fairly civilised 20ft drop through some blue gum trees and into the paddock below. He was driving a Ford Escort RS1800.
But I digress. It always amazed me how boys (big and small) got so gaga about a car and I never really understood what that was about until recently. Boys go gaga about design. The design and the ‘inside bits’ that make the cat purr.
I know this gaga thing now because I most recently fell in love with the Ford 2007 Shelby GR-1 designed by George Saridakis. Trust me when I say, I think it’s a seriously handsome masterpiece of design and engineering. I was totally gaga! Angus McKenzie from Motor Trends described it as “drop dead gorgeous” and since I’m a girl, I have to say it can seriously take a girl’s breath away.
The Shelby GR-1 is “built on exactly the same chassis as the Cobra roadster unveiled at the 2004 Detroit show, it uses a lot of ready-made suspension and chassis hardware from the mid-engine Ford GT, plus the Cobra’s thundering 6.4-litre, 605-horsepower V-10 and six-speed manual transmission.” I think it has that Clooneyesque factor, you know the one, ridiculously handsome with the common man’s touch. It’ll get the girl everytime but the IT factor is you gotta have both of them in just the right amounts.
Guys, no matter what your belief about the first impression you want to make on a girl, the only ones that matter in the end are the lasting ones ergo there’s absolutely no substitution for substance!
And guys, as ridiculously handsome as you might eventually and or grudgingly concede Clooney is, he does have substance and he does invariably get the girl! Just like the Shelby GR-1. Indisputable fact and you gotta admire that!
