Lap up this Kiwi’s need for speed
Trash 2 Dash (E, 107 mins) Directed by Wayne Johnson
Reviewed by James Croot ★★★ 1⁄ 2
Inspiration first struck New Zealand Airforce technician Sergeant Dean Hart while waiting for his plane to take off home after a deployment in Scotland.
Sure, he’d spun his spanners to satisfying effect by building a street car, but what if he created something really fast? Watching the jet engine blast into action got the wheels in his mind turning, as he cogitated during the 24-hour flight back to New Zealand how to make this dream a reality. That was 13 years ago.
As the almost equally determined Wayne Johnson’s documentary details (surely his own labour of love), Hart dedicated any spare moment he had to creating something John Britten or Burtmunro would be proud of.
Taking an engineer’s eye to his monumental task of building a dragster jet car, the self-styled, would-be ‘‘world’s fastest ginger’’ initially threw himself into 18 months of intense study/google research, before scouring the world for ways to be able to make his fantasy vehicle on a budget. Thanks to Kiwi ingenuity (which included a soda stream bottle as a shut off, Holden Kingswood wheel hubs and aware house Dora the Explorer ball as a mould for the bullet nose), this potential $250,000 project was able to be crafted for around one-fifth of the price. Not that he skimped on safety. ‘‘Everything else can be crap,’’ he tells Johnson, but the parts that allow him to stop and steer it, ‘‘those have to be top-notch’’.
Sensing he needed an ultimate goal for the project, Hart decided to aim high. The New Zealand landspeed record of 348kmh. Owen Evans had set that mark in a Porsche on Goudies Rd in Reporoa in June 1996. It left him with a fractured skull, a near-severed left arm and countless other injuries.
‘‘Doesn’t that scare you?’’ Johnson asks Hart. ‘‘No, but I haven’t turned the car on yet,’’ the measured, amiable ‘‘Ginger-neer’’ replies.
As with his debut 2013 documentary Will it Fly?, which followed West Auckland retired tradesman Ivanmudrovcich’s attempt to recreate Kiwi aviation pioneer Richard Pearse’s gasolinepowered experimental aircraft, Johnson again demonstrates a dedication to capturing every step (and mis-step) of the process and clearly has a knack for establishing trust and rapport with his subject.
While at just a shade under two hours, not everyone will appreciate the souped-up engine-to-wheel nuts approach, motorsport fans and thosewho love a good No 8wire story will lap this up.
Hilariously – and in typical New Zealand fashion – the project is initially stored in the garage alongside ‘‘Mum’s china cabinet and a stack of firewood’’.
Trash 2 dash itself looks slick if, at times, a little like a corporate video, with its revving-engine scene segues, but wins you over with Hart’s down-to-earth nature and openness and Johnson’s skills as a director, editor and fly-on-thewall cameraman.