BURGERS AND BACKFIRES
FOUR CITIES, ONE NIGHT — ALL FOR THE LOVE OF ROTARIES
The car community are a pretty self-reliant bunch really; we don’t need fancy, purpose-built facilities or anything like that. Give us an empty corner of a car park, a few modified cars, and some like-minded individuals, and you’ll have yourself a damn good time that can drag on into the wee-smalls with people shooting the shit! At the risk of sounding like some geriatric banging on about how good we use to have it, if you wind the clock back a few years, the rotary scene all over New Zealand would have regular meets like these almost weekly in some instances. But, be it due to a crackdown from Johnny Law, owners getting older and life getting busy, or the even the price of petrol, they have been in heavy decline.
Jamie Walden, who runs the Kiwi Rotor Facebook page decided it was time to do something about it in an attempt to get things back to how they used to be in ‘the good old days’. Instead of starting small and organizing just one meet to kick things off, he brewed up four meets — one each in Wellington, Auckland, Hamilton, and Tauranga — all on the same night.
“I think the rotor scene here is far too overlooked,” he said. “The only time you normally see rotors now is at events. Our page, Kiwi Rotor, is dedicated to showcasing Kiwi rotors only. And I’m hoping when summer hits to arrange a few cruises around the country. Like the old Rotor Corner Mission Bay ones, etc.”
Saturday, 21 July was the date set. Now, getting people off the couch and out into the cold during the dead of winter is no easy feat, but, by working with the local BurgerFuel branches and offering up some free fries, there was no shortage of brap boxes dragged out of their sheds, even in Tauranga and Wellington, where it decided to rain. We’d be inclined to call the first round of events a great success, and, with such great support from the outset and plans to run these every three months, we’re sure they are only going to get bigger, especially once the weather starts to sort itself out.
So, if you have a rotor that’s been gathering dust in the shed, why not get it out next time and go spin a yarn our two in a carpark near you? Or perhaps Jamie needs to spread the net even further and organize one at your local — if so, hit him up on Facebook.