KITS AND PIECES
The Hulme: nearly but not quite
Like many a young boy, Tony Parker was car mad and forever sketching vehicles. He well remembers the excitement of being at the New Zealand Grand Prix (NZGP) with his father during the golden age of the Tasman Series in 1969. On that fateful day he had the opportunity to get the autograph of world champion Graham Hill but, being 12 years old and shy, he was too nervous to ask. Fortunately, his friend Owen Evans took his sketchbook, boldly walked up to Graham, and obtained the prized signature alongside one of Tony’s drawings.
After secondary school, Tony’s drawing skill led him to a career in design. After graduating from the Wellington School of Design, he began his career in the architectural division of the Ministry of Works. Winning a government-funded bursary allowed him to study for his master’s in industrial design at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London, where he studied alongside the cream of Europe’s automotive-design students. His autodesign colleagues went on to successful careers in the automotive industry, but Tony’s industrial-design qualifications
— and the government bond — took him back to New Zealand. He moved into corporate industrial design, which he combined with a part-time academic career teaching at the Wellington School of Design.
Tony has worked on many awardwinning products, including furniture, agricultural equipment, petrol pumps, and security products. Designing cars remained the stuff of boyhood dreams. In 1993, he became a full-time academic and, not long after, the School of Design became part of Massey University. Tony’s professional design practice became part of his academic research and the dream to design a world-class car, captured in his childhood sketchbook, became a valid, if still unlikely, proposition.
CARS AT LAST
While Tony was in the office of his colleague Bruce Woods one day, Bruce showed Tony a couple of pictures of a car that a former client and friend, Jock Fremantle, wanted to modify. The Saker’s excellent design and superb chassis encouraged Jock to believe he could create a world-class car in New Zealand using local talent. Jock was the sort of man who could sell ice cubes to Eskimos and Tony gradually found himself caught up in the man’s enthusiasm.
While Tony set to work exploring design options, Jock went off in search of a New Zealand name that would be credible for a new marque of car. Following the example of Mclaren, Jock and Tony approached Mclaren’s Le Mans co-driver and Formula 1 (F1) race winner Chris Amon. Amon’s heavy involvement with Toyota made the venture a conflict of interest, but he was happy to offer advice as a consultant.
The recent Ford v Ferrari movie tells the story of Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles at Le Mans. It grudgingly
records the win of Mclaren and Amon, but Miles’s co-driver Denny Hulme, the third Kiwi on the podium, hardly gets a mention. Sadly, Denny Hulme died during Bathurst in 1992, but with advice, support, and an introduction from a long-time friend, motoring journalist Allan Dick, Jock approached Greta Hulme, Denny’s wife, and won permission to build a supercar with Denny’s name on the bonnet.
Inspired by Denny’s 1967 F1 Drivers’ Championship win, and the way that Bruce Mclaren and Denny had dominated American Can-am racing for almost six years between 1967 and 1972, Tony started to tinker with the idea of a racing car that could be driven every day. In 2002, he came up with the idea of a street-legal open-wheel, F1-type of car. He faxed his sketch to Jock and the next morning Jock phoned him back, excited and keen to build it.
Moving from a sketch to a rival for the Mclaren supercar took Tony into uncharted territory with considerable risk. The first surprise was just how much passion there was for the project. Plenty of professionals were prepared to give their input and expertise free of charge. A lot of people donated finance. Early investors in the project were veteran motor sport figure Inky Tulloch and former Air New Zealand chief Ralph Norris, an avid petrolhead. But funding remained a major hurdle. They later discovered their Powerpoint presentation to investors covered similar ground to the pitch used by Mclaren to initiate its ‘F1’ road car project. That confirmed they were on the right track but they needed a backer with very deep pockets. Work continued on the car on the premise that it would be easier to sell something that existed than to sell an idea.
A NEW SENSATION
Fortunately, Massey University came on board quite early, encouraging and supporting Tony to work on the project in a research contract arrangement and offering its in-house expertise but not direct financial investment. While Tony continued work on the design of a coupé version of the car, Jock and Kevin Mcleod, an ex-tyrrell F1 chief mechanic and builder of the first full-size Hulme design mock-up, headed to the UK in search of suppliers and investors.
The first full-size mock-up of the coupé was unveiled in Auckland and Wellington during 2005 and it caused a sensation. However, many who saw it doubted such a car could be realized in New Zealand and actually put into production, and this scepticism slowed things down throughout the project.
As Denny Hulme reputedly put it: “New Zealand is like a lawn. If one blade of grass is higher than the rest, New Zealanders get 50,000 lawnmowers and chop the whole lot level again.”
With a solid backer still needed, the mock-up was a repeat sensation at several
world shows, also appearing on the covers of global automotive magazines and specialist websites. When the car was shown in Kuwait, an Arabian gentleman offered to buy it; Jock just had to give him a price. When Jock said that the car was not even running, he was still invited to name his price. Unfortunately, the chequebook-holder was not prepared to become an investor for the development of the car and the Hulme returned to New Zealand once again.
Jock decided it was important to get an actual car in front of the public so that they could see and hear it on the road. The time and cost of developing the roof, doors, and side glass, plus getting a windscreen moulded, persuaded the team to develop a roadster version first, called the ‘Hulme Canam’. The prototype car was affectionately known as ‘Bear 1’, after Denny’s nickname.
The ‘Hulme Canam Spyder’, as it is now known, was built by another long-time supporter, Peter Van
Breugel, and unveiled to the public at the A1GP meeting at the Taupo race circuit in January 2009. The car used a modified donor chassis designed by Bruce Turnbull and was demonstrated on the track by Chris Amon. Chris spoke highly of the car, as did other Kiwis on the racing A-list, such as Kenny Smith (first test drive Pukekohe), Paul Radisich (Goodwood Festival of Speed), and Scott Dixon (on the streets of Auckland to the interest of local constabulary).
A personal highlight for Tony and Jock was to drive the Canam up the hill at the Goodwood Festival of Speed during its second Goodwood showing in 2011.
The engine behind the driver was the simple yet highly tuneable American Chev Corvette V8, a nod to the past and the wins that Denny Hulme had notched up driving Chevy-powered Can-am Mclarens back in the ’60s with Bruce. This combination of engine and a Cima six-speed transaxle gave the car a 0–100kph time of just under three seconds, verifying its supercar credentials.
THE SEARCH CONTINUES
In another attempt to raise money, Tony designed a much cheaper car called the ‘Hulmebf2’ as an entry-level car that could raise capital the way that Lotus had used the Lotus Seven to fund its high-end cars. This idea was shelved because Jock was advised that a cheaper car would destroy some of the Hulme brand’s supercar credibility.
The 2000s came to an end with the car still not in production. By 2012, they were 85 per cent of the way there but, before the first car could be sold, they had to raise enough money to build the three to six cars required for crash testing road-legal production cars. In a lastditch effort in 2013, Jock tried to float a public company to get the car built in New Zealand. This also failed and Jock had to return the money they did take in to the investors.
The car’s last public outing was in 2014, at the Leadfoot Festival of Speed on the Coromandel Peninsula. Jock was not feeling well at the event and he was later diagnosed with cancer — a heavy blow as he was the driving force of the project. Right up until Jock’s death in 2016, Jock and Tony continued to share drawings and ideas of what the new Hulme coupé would look like.
We can only wonder what would have happened if the right investor had come along. For a short time, Jock and Tony stood on the world stage, where a young boy, desperately wanting the courage to ask a Grand Prix driver for his autograph, would one day hope to be.