HE’S ALIVE!

I’m the first to admit that we’ve made some mistakes over the years, and, while the odd person may get the daggers out for it, it’s only human nature. Last issue, though, we had a real doozy, a new high score in the mistakes department — although, when you realize the reason the mistake was made, and how it happened, it’s understandable. That mistake was when we said in our article on Kiwi carbuilding legend Tom Morland that he’d passed away in 2015. Having spoken to the man on the phone a day after the issue came out, I can confirm that he’s alive and kicking. While I’m stoked that he’s alive, I’m equally stoked that he was pissing himself laughing about it, as was the rest of his family. He took my apology in good humour, seeing the funny side of it, and understanding how it would have happened. These days, Tom confesses that he’s a touch more reclusive than he once was. Hence, in our efforts to track him down to confirm he’d passed, we came to a ‘dead end’ — for lack of a better description. Obviously, we’d not tried hard enough, or looked in the right places, as Tom’s not only still alive, but still playing with cars. Although the years of playing with fibreglass have taken their toll on him physically, Tom’s still in great spirits and full of personality. After I had had a good chuckle with both his extended family and the man himself, he agreed to let us set the record straight and to share more of his personal stories with us, so I’m looking forward to being able to bring you round two of his story sometime over the coming months. Besides the obvious feedback from Tom about still being alive, we had other feedback on the article, from people saying they remember the cars; had the brochures; or, in one instance, still own one of the cars. We’re looking forward to bringing you more on this Kiwi icon and his machines. While I’d love to say that we won’t be making more mistakes, I’m not foolish enough to promise that — although, all going well, we certainly won’t be knocking anyone off before their time. Catch you next month.

Todd todd@nzv8.co.nz