"I could feel my waters breaking and I was like 'he's coming, literally, he's coming now'," she said.
Miss Dahlberg, who was on all fours in the front seat of the car facing the back window, can't remember much of the birth as it happened so fast.
"He just came flying out on to the front seat," she said. "He came out and landed on the seat and I had to pick him up and wrap him."
Mr Francis stopped the car long enough to get things sorted before they carried on to the hospital. He said Miss Dahlberg was screaming like a heavy-metal singer throughout the ordeal.
"I was going as fast as the car could go. It felt like the wheels were going to fall off," he said.
Miss Dahlberg was met by a small crowd at the hospital who whisked her straight into a delivery room.
"I was a bit gutted when they cut the cord. I wanted to cut it but they didn't have time," Mr Francis said.
He said the fast-tracked birth had come as a shock, and Nikoli had spent some time in the neo-natal unit before being allowed to go home. Nikoli's great-aunt Bonnie Ratapu received a call to say he had been born and was told: "Guess what? He was born in the car ... Everyone walking passed the car was like 'where's the mess'?" she said.
The baby is the fifth generation of his family in Wairarapa, and is the great-grandson of former Masterton mayor Bob Francis.
