Spare Room Be our guest…

By Dominic Blaazer

This report is not beaming to you from Monte Carlo but from Pukekohe instead. But the more I think about it, both towns do share a few similarities: of course, an international-standard racing circuit, a high number of casinos and houses with chandeliers. Glam-ifique!

Throughout the year you’ll see all manner of racing at Puke – V8s, saloon cars, V8s, horses, trucks … V8s – but the reason I was there was for classic motorcycles, at the main event in the New Zealand Classic Motorcycle Racing Register’s calendar, the Pukekohe Classic Festival.

Forget about day-glo race-bikes from multi-billion-euro laboratories, this is the world of semi-pros and amateurs, shed mechanics, oily rags and wives with sarnies in Tupperware. That may sound like a cosy division of labour between the sexes but on the Friday practice day I attended there were women competing and spannering as well as men cooking the snags – albeit on a camping-stove in the back of a Ford Transit.

Despite a tiny public profile, the Pukekohe Classic Festival is one of the most anticipated classic-racing events in the Southern Hemisphere, with riders and machines attending from the States, all over Europe, Japan and Australia, just like Monte Carlo. The sporting camaraderie these friends and acquaintances demonstrate lets you know they do this a lot, the lucky buggers. And they don’t just wheel a Triumph or two out of their shipping crate (though many do), we are talking about exquisite motorcycling exotica: hand-built prototypes, championship-winning one-offs, legendary machines from private collections usually confined to fan-mags and websites. But the bikes aren’t here to just be gawped at, they’re here to be ridden in anger at ungodly speeds, and for each legendary steed, there’s always a rider with similar credentials.

This year’s guest of honour was Ulsterman, Sammy Miller (pictured above), who has an obscene number of British and European off-road titles to his name as well as his own famous motorcycle museum and restoration facility in the UK.

Sam’s shipping-crate contained the only surviving AJS “Porcupine” (left), first raced in 1949, and a drop-dead gorgeous, Prada-schmada, four-cylinder Gilera (other left).

By the way, he’s 75 and rode them both. In 1999 the greatest GP racer ever, Giacomo Agostini, rocked the Counties, and five years later it was the world’s only two and four-wheel champion, John Surtees, racing Mike Hailwood’s 500cc MV Agusta. Last year, it was the turn of Paul Smart, the English rider who shoved Ducati into the spotlight in the 1970s, on an ex-Hailwood Ducati.

In a world where capitalism and authority seem to be rounding off the edges of anything fun, this is sport in its most gladiatorial form and I bloody loved it. No clothing franchises, no opening ceremony, no confusing ticket-lotteries, no overzealous security, autographs a-plenty and no corporate boxes – nothing really to distance you from the action. And, praises be, the “she’ll be right” safety-procedures allowed me to spend the day walking around the pits talking to racers, listening to accents, inhaling spent methanol, and being deafened – and guess what, she generally is right. It may sound dangerous, but like a bungee-jumper, I happily paid for the privilege. Anyway, among the backstage fettling and push-starts, everyone seemed acutely aware of the dangers, respecting them to the letter.

So far, it might sound a mite agricultural for your perfect family outing, but that’s exactly what it is: two of New Zealand’s greatest passions – sport and the internal combustion engine – meeting for a party. Admittedly, motorcycling is a low priority for most Kiwis, but for crying out loud, this is a land that makes a sporting event out of gumboot-throwing. Additionally, most of these bikes would cause a traffic jam if they were parked up in your local mall. The wide variety of punters, from 70-year-old riders right down to dumbstruck toddlers, shows the event has wide appeal. Even New Zealand’s fine-arts community was there, represented by Manx-Norton owner, Billy Apple, and Inia Taylor riding his 1936 Norton/JAP.

In all my visits to the Pukekohe Classics, I’ve only ever managed to make it on a Friday or Sunday but next year I’ll try, as ever, to make it down on the Saturday too, for a whole day of racing. Ten metres away from a start-line full of open-piped racing bikes is a pretty exciting place to be, rather like the best mosh-pit ever.

Video: Okay, it’s from last year’s event, but here’s a video of the Pukekohe Classic festival, courtesy of motorcycling enthusiast and YouTuber “DangerDaveNZ”, who runs a website at davidcohen.co.nz…