From the Editor:
Hi Club Members,
Well, it’s nearly another year gone. This will be the last Newsletter for 2025. I hope we find you all well and enjoying your rides.
As a committee we wish you all a great Christmas and even better new year. Take the time to reflect on the past and plan for the year coming. To those who are having a break, enjoy the down time and get ready for another year.
Just to explain where I am up to; in July I fell over playing soccer with my 4-yr old Grandson. It was a case of behaving like a 20-yr old and not a 70-yr old. So, it was 100% my fault. The result was that I tore one of the tendons in my left arm. After an MRI, I got an appointment with a specialist, between the time of getting ACC approval and specialist availability it wasn’t until October that I got to see the doc. Any way he scheduled an operation for November, which allowed me to have a family trip to Fiji first. I have had the op and now have my arm in a sling and are under strict instruction not to use it. Lucky me.
While I was waiting for the op, I figured that I would have enough time to fix a problem with my 260Z. I restored the car just over 20 years ago, and I had an old repair coming through the left door. A long crack along the swage and a paint imperfection coming through on the front half of the door. I removed the door and started checking out the problem, this was the start (as it generally goes) of finding that at some stage the door had been damaged and had been totally bogged. I made the decision to replace the door skin. So, I made a new skin and fitted it to the door and subsequently painted it. I still had the paint code so I thought I should be okay with the colour, but once the door was back on, the colour was good but not good enough, it needed blending. I removed all the badges, lamps and bumpers for blending to find a small patch of rust on the left rear quarte. I also had a few small spider webs in the Tailgate slam panel. To make a long story short the patch on the quarter was a quick fix but the slam panel ended up needing replacing, so I made another one of those as well. I got it to prime stage but ran out of time, so it now waits until I am fit and well again. Once I get it completed, I will do a Spotlight Article on it. They say it will take 6 to 12 months to get my arm right again. (oh joy).
As I now have time on my hands, I decided to sort out the club apparel. I enlisted help from Jeff on the committee, and we have worked through this and it is now available through our website.
From the Committee:
Committee meetings: As a committee we have been trailing a bimonthly meeting and for the moment it seems to be working, it does mean that we have to allow the committee members to make decisions that would normally go back to committee, and we need to forward plan a bit better than we have in the past, but so far it’s working.
We will have an event early next year but that is still in the planning stages. Our committee has grown to eight members which we have found very helpful, so thanks to those who are new to the committee. I have added a section in the membership form for those willing to offer help either to the committee or event organising, I have not forgotten these and will be looking into that next year.
Constitution: We also need to redo our constitution, as most of you will know the government is tightening up on nonprofit organisations, one of the requirements is that we need to change our constitution to make it fit the new act. Although it’s a pain to do I think what they are asking makes sense. They want to stop nonprofit organisations from being used in an unlawful way. My thanks to Stuart Horne who has taken this on. It has been very time consuming and has taken a bit of effort to do this without going to the expense of using a lawyer. Our thanks Stuart.
Logo: One other item that was on our agenda, was a relook at our logo. We engaged a professional to look at this. They presented some new versions to us, but the recommendation was, that what we had was a good logo, so we only made a slight change. The logos currently have the Z symbol with CLUBZ under it. We have changed the wording under the Z logo and now reads ZCLUBNZ. We also had an update version of the new Z silhouette made but will stick with 370 for the moment as the new car looks very similar to the original S30.
Club cards: We are also looking at getting a club card made that members could hand out to encourage other Z owners to join the club.
Apparel:
You would have seen my last mailout for the club apparel. This is available and you can order it from our website under the heading “Apparel”. https://zclub.nz/apparel/
The apparel we have chosen is of a high quality and will last well. All the apparel apart from the caps are made to order. I have a tee and polo myself and are very happy with them. The polo is something you can wear for good. It really looks the part and is nice to wear.
I won’t be placing any orders until after Christmas at this stage but do remind you that we have the caps in stock.
I have been asked questions about sizing and have made some measurements available which will help you in choosing your size. This has been sent to our web providers and is now loaded just above the order section.
Past Events: Raglan Run
First stop was in Auckland at the Drury Truck stop where we met up with 3 other Auckland club members. Then it was on to Hamilton. We had about 12 cars in total, which was a good number, unfortunately a couple of registered members cancelled out, but hey, no problem we still had good numbers.
First, we had brunch together in the Museum café and then an opportunity to look through the museum. I have to say, for a small car Museum they have a well-stocked collection, and I hear that they change cars on a regular basis. They also don’t charge a fortune to enter which is nice. I recently went through Southwards in Wellington and although Southwards has an extensive collection of very early cars and is about ten times larger than the Hamilton museum they have done really well with its collection. There is also a good display of memorabilia, and you can see that lot of thought has gone into this.
I would recommend if you haven’t been to this museum that you take the time to do so, and even if you have, go again, cars change around a bit and most of the cars are in pristine condition.
We departed the museum at around 11.30 armed with a QR code and our maps, and nearly all of us promptly found another route to take, which is not a problem as we all ended up taking the long way to Raglan. The Route took us up through Huntly and a bit higher and across though a picturesque countryside, and back down to Raglan. I must say the Waikato put it on for us. We left Auckland in the sun, it was a bit cloudy in Hamilton, with a few rain drops leaving Hamilton, but by the time we reached Huntly it had turned back into sun which stuck with us all the way to Raglan.
We all met up at “The Shack Café” which was quite busy when we got there, but one of our Waikato members got there nice and early and reserved a table for us. Thanks Colin. Although it thinned out a bit by the time we were finished. When planning the run, I tried to find something with good parking, but that didn’t work out, so we were all scattered around town. I need to apologise as I didn’t take any people pics, sort of just got carried away talking.
It was really good to meet up with members again and to see some fresh faces in the mix. My thanks to the guys that came up from Tauranga and for the genuinely nice ladies who came all the way from the Bay of Plenty, overnighting in Hamilton.
I have to say I was extremely impressed with all the Zeds that came along. I am starting to see more of the 300’s joining in, and some genuinely nice ones at that.
I think the 300’s are starting to come into their own, the prices for nice cars certainly seem to be on the rise.
I have put a comprehensive set of pictures in our Gallery so if you follow this link, it will take you to the Gallery. https://zclub.nz/latest-gallery/
Again, thanks to all those who joined in, keep it up guys.
Ellerslie Car Show 2026: 8th of February
We will have a stand again at the 2026 car show and concourse in Ellerslie and have been given allocation for 8 cars.
I am looking for people to bring their cars along. Any cars entering need to be in good condition, clean and tidy, if this is you, and are you are keen, please let me know. bernjean59@gmail.com
Currently I have 2 cars available and looking for 6 more.
On the day:
I am still waiting for final details, start time is generally early, 8.00am and you cannot leave until around 4.00pm. All cars have free entry for the driver and passenger.
Next Event:
We are planning to have an event early next year and at the planning stages at the moment and will advise once we have more details.
Well that it for this year, my thanks to the committee for the past year and also to our members, without you guys we would not have a club.
Bernie Kant
President Z Club of NZ
