MATAMATA PANELWORKS MUSTANG

It was great to see a Kiwi entry at this year’s event, with Kelvin Taylor’s gorgeous ’67 Mustang fastback sitting in the middle of the pavilion floor. “We’ve come over here to have some fun,” Taylor admitted to me just prior to the doors opening and the hordes descending. “There are 13 of us, and we are having a ball,” he went on to say. I managed to pull car builder Malcolm Sankey over to one side and ask him what he thought of the event. “It is great to see so many good-looking cars built to such a high standard,” Sankey said. “We’ve come over here to see what the latest trends are and to grab some ideas to take home. Everybody has been really friendly and welcomed us, but, every time we come here, they up their game a little; however, I think we still have a slight edge on the Aussies,” he continued with a twinkle in his eye. I had to agree with him; I had just come back from Auckland a few weeks before, and seeing how passionate people were about their cars certainly backed up Malcolm’s statement. “How do you think you will go?” I asked him. “Well, we’re probably in the most competitive class in the entire show,” he readily admitted. “You have to understand that this car was built to be street driven, and it is displayed here with stone chips and the like. We arrived on Wednesday without proper show lighting so it will be very tough. “What you see here is the result of thousands of hours of hard work, with 570 hours in the paintwork alone. We worked very hard on the door gaps, and spent some 2500 hours on the metal fabrication to get it right. The car runs a 427-cube nitrous-injected Roush motor, so it has plenty of power, and [it’s] is just a great all-round car. I have to thank Trojan Transport for helping us and Owen Webb for all the preshow assistance and storing our gear prior to the event. “The best thing about attending MotorEx is that I finally got out of the workshop, which is a good thing,” Malcolm said with a chuckle. As it turned out, the Mustang only won a single award — a bronze in Bodywork in the Medals of Excellence, which was a solid effort against a tough crowd.