I went to the annual Whangamata Classic Car and Rock n Roll Beach Hop Festival again this year. Largest turnout ever in what the organisers say is the world's largest classic car festival. Hard to believe but with more than a thousand classic cars taking part it must be well up there. To give some scale the importer who brought in the give-away car had imported 200 alone from the US in 07 alone.
This years car given away in a free lucky draw was a '69 Pontiac Catalina. Bought specially in the US for the festival and completely stripped and reworked with performance gear, inside and out including a $10,000 sound system.
When the lucky entry form was drawn the master of ceremonies had the crowd on, he read the winning form and asked "Are there any Aussies here ?" Well of course there were hundreds, some of them bringing their own classic cars over for the event, so a large roar went up. The MC then said "Well it's staying in New Zealand !"
It was won by a guy from Hamilton, NZ.
The R n R club that won the best parade down the main street was my own club, here's a pic:
Plenty of bikes there but 99% of the hundreds there were Harley's so I won't show you a pic of those. Several Rocket III's there, I am surprised just how many of these bikes are in NZ. As the organisers request, 'Only American and British bikes invited'.
The small town of Whangamata hosts this every year, this is my 4th consecutive year down there, again I rode down on my Triumph Thunderbird.
There's no R n R festival complete without the King:
Anyone ever getting to NZ in late April, then this is the place to be.
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Ride on !
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