NZ Motorsport: A brief history of Hill Climbs in NZ

Hill climbs are a great way to test your car and your driving skills. They are also one of the most popular forms of motorsport today as they are great for getting into motorsport (Bruce Mclaren even started out at a hill climb) But when did the hill climb craze start over here in NZ?

After digging around on the net, I couldn't find a date for the first hill climb in NZ but I know that they used to hold them as early as the 40's. The first hill climb cars were usually old dungers that were converted into rough race cars such as Austin Seven's and Humber's but as the sport progressed, the cars grew more and more quicker.

Enter the 50's and 60's and hill climbing started to get a bit more competitive and people started to bring cars such as open wheelers and purpose built race cars. This caused more people to become interested in hill climbs and motorsport, with hill climbs sprouting up all over the country.

In the 70's, with the large stocks of cheap Escort's and Mini's flooding the market it was even more easier to enter hill climbs. With Escort's capable of rear wheel drive hooliganry and Mini's delivering peppy performance and easy tunability, the prospect of hill climbing was incredibly desirable.

Bring on the 80's and 90's! with the rise of Japanese imports, this meant that awesome cars like the Toyota AE86 Levin/Trueno and turbo DR30 Nissan Skyline's were available cheaply on the second hand market which caused hill climbing to remain popular throughout the "turbo" era. Even some Group B specials managed to creep into NZ such as the Nissan 240RS (pictured). Classics like the Escort were still prevalent in hill climbs as there was still plenty of them left.

Nowadays, hill climbs are still incredibly popular with local car clubs hosting events all over New Zealand. Surprisingly, a lot of classic vehicles are still entered into these events which is great to see as classic vehicles need to be driven. There is also some mental open wheeler's and sports cars such as Jedi's and Mallock's. Every car and motorsport fan should check out their local hill climb because it is a days worth of awesome motorsport for free, plus the variety of cars that turn up to these events is astounding.

Do you have a cool story from a hill climb? Can you tell us when the first hill climb was in NZ?  Leave a comment below or on our Facebook page.

Thanks for reading!!!