Two roofless racers are linked to New Zealand motor racing royalty, writes Alastair Sloane
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Two open-top supercars linked to New Zealand's famous Formula One race mates Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme have made purely coincidental first public appearances - one in New Zealand and the other at a glitzy ceremony in Europe.
The launches also paid tribute to two surviving names from the same F1 era - Chris Amon, the third member of the Kiwi triumvirate, and Britain's Sir Stirling Moss.
Amon drove the orange-and-black Hulme CanAm roadster on the Taupo racetrack 24 hours ago, during a break in the A1GP schedule.
Earlier, on the other side of the world, Moss was on hand at a special presentation of a car carrying his name - the Mercedes-Benz SLR Stirling Moss, the final model to come from the Benz partnership with F1's Team McLaren.
Team McLaren began in 1963 as Bruce McLaren Motor Racing Ltd. McLaren himself was contracted to the British Cooper F1 team at the time and continued to drive for it until 1965, when he entered his own F1 team with Amon as co-driver.
Amon left in 1967 to drive for Ferrari and Hulme - world F1 champion in 1967 with the Brabham team - joined McLaren in 1968, the year McLaren himself won the Belgian GP, the team's first F1 win.
Through the late 1960s the three New Zealanders joined forces to win in a mix of motorsport events in Europe and North America until McLaren's death in 1970 in a test-track crash in Britain.
The McLaren name lived on. Mercedes-Benz and Team McLaren got together in F1 in 1994. The German carmaker developed the road-going McLaren SLR line of supercars with McLaren Automotive, Team McLaren's British-based engineering arm.
The Anglo-German partnership ends this year. Mercedes-Benz's performance arm AMG is building its own flagship supercar, a new roadster called the SLC due to be launched in Europe next year.
The special-edition Moss SLR - "Sport, Leicht, Rennsport", or sport, light, racing - is the second model in as many years to honour the British driver, who turns 80 in September.
Moss was on hand a couple of years ago when Daimler AG boss Dr Dieter Zetsche took the covers off the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 722, built in memory of Moss' win in the 1955 Mille Miglia, an Italian open-road race over 1597km. Moss drove a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR with the number 722 in the event. He was flagged away at 7.22am (hence the start number) and crossed the finish line in the record time of 10 hours, 7 minutes and 48 seconds, almost 30 minutes ahead of celebrated team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio in second place.
The Moss SLR made its world debut at this month's Detroit motor show. Production is limited to 75 units, built between July and November this year and available to a hand-picked group of existing SLR owners. Its price in Britain is listed at 591,000 ($1.56 million).
Like the standard SLR, it gets gullwing doors and a supercharged 5.4-litre V8 engine producing around 480kW. But that's where the similarities end. The Moss car has no roof and no windows, just simple aero screens above the dashboard.
The lightweight carbon fibre bodywork is entirely redesigned, with two air scoops above the headrests doubling as roll hoops. A central bar splits the cabin into two distinct cockpits.
It is a whopping 200kg lighter than the regular model - and quicker, too, with a claimed top speed of 351km/h and a zero to 100km/h sprint time of 3.5 seconds.
The chassis is enclosed by a flat undertray and large rear diffuser - both for maximum downforce at the rear axle - while a self-raising airbrake along the lines of the one in the Bugatti Veyron pops up under heavy deceleration to aid stability further.
The interior is sparse and functional, in keeping with the speedster's racing car roots, and each model is fitted with a metal plate around the automatic shift lever engraved with Moss's signature.
The Hulme CanAm is built by Hulme Supercars Ltd, a company set up in 2002 by businessman/entrepreneur Jock Freemantle to honour both Hulme's 1967 F1 title and the success he had with McLaren and Amon.
It is scheduled to go into production in 2010, priced provisionally at 295,000 ($728,000).
The roadster Amon wheeled around Taupo is the company's second model. The first was a coupe, unveiled at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Britain in 2006.
The Hulme CanAm uses a carbon composite body designed and built in New Zealand with America's Cup knowhow and Massey University design input, says the blurb.
A 7-litre V8 Chevrolet engine delivers around 450kW of power and 600Nm of torque to the CanAm's rear wheels via a six-speed gearbox. Hulme Supercars says the roadster weighs less than 1000kg.
Hulme died of a heart attack at the wheel of a BMW M3 during the 1992 Bathurst 1000 endurance race in Australia.
