WESTIES AND THEIR CARS

A special relationship

The image of the westie bloke tinkering with an engine block on his kitchen table while mum sorted out the kids and dinner always resonated with me. I was drawn to what I imagined were busy, purposeful lives, albeit ones surrounded by car parts, engine blocks and garages that housed numerous projects in various states of incompletion.

When I lived in Te Atatu North, I’d frequently drift off to sleep to the sound of donuts and burnouts reverberating across the level peninsula ground. I wondered then if westies had a ‘special’ relationship with cars?   

Lance Bell, long-time owner of Arrow Wheels based in Kelston says yes, “There are a lot of petrolheads out west and there is something special going on between westies and cars”. In his line of work as a custom mag wheel manufacturer he’s well placed to judge. He sees people daily who have kerbed their wheels and want them restored to their former glory, regardless of cost.

Lance and the Arrow Wheels team are the go-to people for repairing mag wheels. Wheels which looked well beyond the repair stage to me come up like new. The prestigious franchise car dealerships use Arrow to refurbish damaged wheels for cars being prepared for sale.

Tucked away off Scenic Drive in Swanson and seemingly a world away from the street and race cars that Arrow Wheels work on, is Veteran and Vintage Spares & Repairs. Owned by Erroll McAlpine, they specialise in early Ford Model A and T repairs and restoration. Erroll is a westie craftsman who can handle just about anything on wheels, as the narrow-gauge bush-railway train and funky 1958 Nash Metropolitan that was in the workshop when I visited, amply demonstrated.  

Errol feels the connection between westies and cars also, “It’s an area of hard working people where DIY as a necessity stems from a hard-work attitude.”

An electrician by trade, Erroll spent 40 years repairing domestic appliances and anything mechanical, before buying Veteran & Vintage in the mid-2000s and relocating it from Mangere to Swanson. As a teenager, his younger brother bought a Model A which he was too young to drive, and Errol passed his time by taking it apart and putting it back together, “I took to it like a duck to water” he says.

Customers come to Veteran & Vintage from all over because his skills are in demand and there are ever decreasing numbers of veteran & vintage workshops in Auckland. The workshop is packed with clients’ cars and there is a steady trade in vintage Ford parts, which he manufactures if they aren’t available.  

Eric Livngstone founded West Auckland Engine Reconditioners in the Henderson Valley industrial area 27 years ago. They specialise in repowering and restoration of Chrysler brands, think Chargers and Challengers.

What started as a local business serving local customers grew quickly as their reputation spread, “Westies love their cars but these days our customers come from all over Auckland, the rest of the country and even the Islands. “Typically, customers are buying cars for road and track use, so the cars are road-legal, but people like to be able to take them to the drags, and we do the modifications” Eric says. I didn’t see any laptops plugged into diagnostic ports here, just hoists, engine blocks, wrenches, and mechanics wearing oily overalls. 

Chuck Etherton started Chucks Restoration Supplies in 1990 in his West Auckland home. He sourced Chevrolet parts and still does although nowadays, operating out of a 10,000 square feet warehouse in Swanson, distributing multiple brands including Ford and MOPAR, and importing U.S. cars for Kiwi buyers.

On Westies and cars Chuck says there is, “A big contingent of petrolheads out west, and West Auckland is a real pocket for people with cars.” Chuck says his business is in the right place. 

West Auckland has a wealth of skilled automotive engineers and craftsmen, people at the top of their trade and whose skills are in high demand.

Westies’ cars these days aren’t restricted to American or Aussie V8s. The wheels of choice of many a budding petrolhead are Japanese. The trickle of Japanese imports in the mid-1970s became a torrent by the early 1990s. Tariffs were lifted and the used Japanese imports flooding in had instant appeal among a new, younger generation of westie petrolhead.  

The dyed-in-the-wool petrolheads regarded these ‘fun-sized’ Japanese four, six-cylinder and rotary powered cars as being well-made but underpowered. Good for the kids to cut their car chops on before graduating to V8 power but as one crusty V8 racers told me, ‘If you want more power you need more pots’. The kids did want more power and wanted a lifestyle, so they created their own tuned car culture around modifying imports and ‘expressing’ themselves through their cars.

They set about modifying their smaller cars, so they could compete against dad’s V8, and in the process spawning a competitive modified car culture and rivalry between fours, sixes and V8s, which endures to this day. 

It’s a no brainer for me. Westies have a distinct relationship with cars. Westies are ‘do-ers’ and they ‘do’ on their cars. A local workshop owner told me recently that because younger Westies don’t have a lot of spare cash or get around that much, they have time to work on their cars.

That might be oversimplifying it but whether modifying a pocket-rocket Jap import or restoring a Model T from a rusting hulk to how it left the factory gates in Dearborn, Michigan, Westies just love their cars spend large on them. It could be a weekend show & shine, or just a Saturday or Sunday morning drive to the dairy, or a race. It sustains a talented, vibrant industry of specialised workshops across West Auckland, with highly skilled people, catering to a shared passion for cars and speed.   

You do see more hot rods and classic cars in West Auckland than other parts of Auckland, which speaks to a can-do attitude pervading westie thinking that goes something like: If you build it you can probably make it go faster.