Before computer-aided hoo ha, folk like Bruce McLaren just built great cars
AS a long-time motorsport fan of a certain age, I couldn't have wished for a better birthday present.
Last Wednesday I grabbed the chance with both hands and feet to be a passenger in a 1965 McLaren CanAm M1A car around the spectacular new Hampton Downs race track.
The theme for the inaugural New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing is Bruce McLaren and this weekend the hills of north Waikato will reverberate to the thunder of various McLarens, F5000s and various other behemoths of yesteryear for two days of racing and demonstration laps.
The unpainted aluminium-skinned race car into which I shoehorned myself belonged to Paul Halford, who has been driving and competing in various classic and historic cars since 2001.
Halford bought the car in the US in 2007 and told me this weekend will be the first time it'll be raced in anger, as last time out it lunched its engine.
It might be stretching the truth a little, but I'd like to claim I was part of the shakedown run for Halford's McLaren in preparation for its big day out tomorrow. That's not a birthday present - that's all my Christmases and New Years rolled into one.
Popping on a pair of goggles, Halford pushed the starter button and the 5.7-litre Chevy V8 crackled into life before settling down to a satisfying rumble, just inches from the back of my head.
Easing out the clutch, Halford got us under way and even before we exited the pitlane the gnashing and wailing of various mechanical parts had settled down to a satisfying roar.
As we accelerated on to the circuit proper, the small car - by later models' standards - jumped away with a bellow and I could feel what hair I have remaining being sucked towards the carburettor trumpets.
I have trawled through Roget's Thesaurus in a vain hope of finding a few words to describe the feeling of being hurled, hustled and bustled around a race track in one of the first cars Bruce McLaren designed and built.
All I could find was stupendous, breathtaking, astounding and remarkable. Even those words don't really do the ride justice.
For a car designed and built in the mid-1960s, it's phenomenally nimble and well balanced with no pitch or roll at speed.
There's no computer-aided, downloaded, micro-chipped, engineering data malarkey in, on, or around the car - it's just bloody well put together.
Those watching from the pits told me later I wore the biggest grin known to man on my face while keeping my glasses on - there's no windscreen or even deflector - by pressing them against my nose.
