CRUISIN’ FOR A BRUISIN’

2018 PROWEAR CHROME EXPRESSION SESSION

Whether you spent the week(s) leading up to Chrome furiously spannering at 3am every night in an attempt to make sure your car was, by some miracle, even remotely driveable come the weekend, or you simply spit-shined your shoes as you had already accepted the fact that you’d never make it in time, rolling through those fogged-out Hampton Downs gates early Saturday morning — or, on a solidly sunny Friday, if you’re a VIP-baller — whatever efforts were spent were no doubt well and truly worth it.

The crisp, cold air mixed with the hefty aroma of fresh fuel and that soundtrack of nearly 700 cars firing into life is an atmosphere you need to experience for yourself, as no number of words will ever convey the kind of tingles it generates. And, thanks to the new threeday dosage, the all-inclusive event has evolved from just cruising sessions to encompass non-stop drifting over on the Club Circuit, while burnouts are run in conjunction in the pits, and, over on the National Circuit, you are treated to all the cruising, roll racing, and power skidding that your heart can handle. They even opened up the big-boy International Circuit for the twilight cruising sessions!

Those Drive Your Mates hitters still remain the staple of the event, though, as there really is nothing more fun than packing the whole crew into a car and smashing the gas against anything and everything else on track, regardless of whether you get blitzed or not. However, additions such as the hot rod and muscle car session, PAC

Performance Rotary Only Twilight Cruise, and Haltech Horsepower Heroes 400-plus-kilowatts cruise meant that there was always a variety of things to see on track, so even those who were rocking about on foot could still have a good time — especially if you managed to cop a passenger’s band and hop in on the madness.

So, sure, the weather played hardball at times, but hell, even in the wet, drivers managed to throw down like their lives depended on it, and Chrome once again proved that compiling perhaps one of the biggest and best lists of cars that actually get driven and slapping them onto one of New Zealand’s premier tracks for three days of antics makes for one hell of a good time — a credit to the organizers at 4&Rotary and the Premier Events crew.

Spotting a CRX in the wild these days is a rare event; even rarer is seeing one that is packing an H22A H2B conversion underneath the bonnet, like Greg Buchanan’s sweet example here

No one can claim Tony Hill isn’t committed to the cause — when it came to the roll racing, he sent his ‘EGOETA’ Evo I balls deep into the sand trap, all in the name of winning