The annual MG Car Club Auckland's Tour of the North will celebrate 50 years of the event this weekend.
The annual MG Car Club Auckland's Tour of the North will celebrate 50 years of the event this weekend.
What started as a casual trip to Taipa from Auckland 50 years ago has turned into an annual roading adventure.
The MG Car Club Auckland ‘Tour of the North’ is celebrating an epic milestone this weekend, marking half a century of MG car enthusiasts making the trip north.
As always, the event will start in Auckland and make its way up the East coast to Cape Rēinga, before returning to the Super City via the west coast.
Each year the tour attracts people from all over, including the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, central North Island, Wellington, Oamaru and even Australia.
MG Car Club Auckland club captain Paul Walbran has been the event organiser since its inception in 1972.
The MG enthusiast said one of his committee colleagues had proposed a weekend trial (doubling as a break from their parents), which fell on Walbran to organise.
“I was a trainee teacher at the time with a teaching practice section at Taipa Area School, so volunteered to plot a route on my way there and back,” Walbran said.
The MGs on tour.
“That’s how the event came to be in the direction it has and it worked so well it stayed.
“We have received great hospitality from the Far North and I even met my wife a few days after the first event, so she has been on all of them since too.”
Walbran described how he almost didn’t make the inaugural event after taking his brother’s Morris 1100 to Taipa for work.
On the day of the event, Walbran explained how the car had broken an axle just as he was about to return to Auckland to start the event.
He said there were “all sorts of dramas” that ensued, resulting in the event starting late and Walbran being forced to hitch a ride with various competitors along the way.
There had also been times when the tour didn’t make it all the way to the North, due to a variety of challenges beyond their control.
The first was during the fuel crisis of the late 1970s when for three years, all Saturday fuel sales were banned.
Walbran explained that during that time, the tour didn’t get much further than the mid-North.
Last year’s Covid-19 lockdown also meant the event only made it up to the Auckland border on the east coast, before tracing the roads along the border to the west coast in Kaipara.
For this year’s event, 120 people and more than 60 cars are expected to take part, around twice as many as usual.
Walbran said participants ranged from young children to seniors, some of whom had attended the first event 50 years ago.
Bob and Debbie Francis of Doubtless Bay were two of the original tour participants, with Bob an MG Car Club member since 1968.
The couple said at the inaugural event they’d driven in a non-MG car.
This was because Bob was restoring their 1954 MG TF in preparation for the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
The pair said they had thoroughly enjoyed the early tours and were looking forward to the weekend’s activities.
“On the first Far North Tour we camped at the Coopers Beach Camp Ground and we now participate as Far North residents assisting in local arrangements,” Debbie said.
Bob Francis in his 1954 MG TF, which he and wife Debbie will drive as part of the MG Car Club Auckland's Tour of the North event this weekend.
“We have fond memories of those early tours and will be joining everyone on the Sunday trip to Cape Reinga this year in our MG TF.
“That’s done numerous miles over the last 50 years from the Cape to the very south of the South Island.”
Walbran said the tour had evolved with time, offering a number of options for people to choose from.
“The route options vary from cruisy touring, precise navigation, or from tarmac main roads to single-lane gravel,” he said.
“On some sections of the route, average speeds are set, typically around 50km/h on the open road, to allow for stops.
“Generally, those coming sort themselves into smaller groups of similar interests rather than everyone going in an enormous convoy which could be problematic for other road users.
“Socialising at breaks along the way is a vital and much-enjoyed aspect.”
