Hammer Hardware

Our spy in Queenstown - a man we'll call 'Mike Hammer' - tells ALASTAIR SLOANE how he stumbled on strange goings-on in the mountain snows.

Snow high above the tourist resort swirled around the two prototype vehicles as the German drivers parked them on a rocky plateau off the private mountain road.

Testing was over for the day. Dusk was falling and the weather was turning moody.

Icy gusts of wind whipped at the drivers' fleeced jackets as they got out of the cars and made their way to the hired four-wheel-drive vehicles waiting to take them back to their lakeside hotel.

Their six support crew worked quickly, just as they had done the day before.

They chocked each wheel with steel cradles and unfolded two heavy-duty covers, slipped them over the vehicles and tied them to the cradles.

The covers had been used many times before, in sand storms and snow storms. They were the best money could buy. It was time to go.

One of the men jogged the few hundred metres to unlock the private gate. As the last vehicle slipped through and stopped on the crunchy snow, he clicked the heavy padlock and chain together and jumped into the passenger seat. He could see the lights of the resort in the distance below. Tomorrow he would be back on the mountain again.

Switzerland? The Austrian Alps? Norway? The Canadian Rockies? No, Lake Wanaka a couple of weeks ago.

The region has become a favourite testing ground for the world's carmakers. If offers varying conditions summer and winter - and security from the prying eyes of European photographers, who can make thousands of dollars from one scoop shot of a prototype.

Land Rover tested an early Discovery there. Citroen did the same with the Xantia, so did Honda with the Accord. Mitsubishi arrived soon after the Germans left.

The Germans in question were believed to be from Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche. No one is saying.

Testing is often done without the knowledge of the New Zealand office.

But an Auckland businessman, who knows his cars backwards, figured something was up when he spotted a VW Lupo and Bora, Audi A6, A4 and TT, and an odd-looking Mercedes-Benz M-Class on the roads around Queenstown.

He doesn't want to be named, so as he did a pretty good investigative job, staying at the same hotel as the Germans and picking up gossip, we will call him Mike Hammer, just for fun.

The Lupo, VW's smallest car, is expected to go on sale here next year. So too is the Bora.

Hammer said the VWs and Audis were easily recognisable. "But the gossip I picked up was that they were testing different motors. The Audi TT was apparently using a 2.7-litre motorsport engine."

The Audi TT on sale here uses a turbocharged 1.8-litre, 20-valve four-cylinder engine. The Quattro version, which arrives soon, uses a more powerful version of the same motor.

But the M-Class really raised Hammer's eyebrows. "It looked like an M-Class from a distance but when you got closer all the wheel arches looked different," he said.

"From what I heard, underneath the M-Class body was the prototype of the four-wheel-drive VW and Porsche are developing."

That's not all. Under cover on a mountain near Lake Wanaka were two vehicles, so secret that they were towed there on trailers at night.

"That's what I heard anyway. But what made it more intriguing was that there was a bit of a flap on one day. One of the secret vehicles had apparently been damaged in testing and the Germans were arranging to fly out a replacement straight away."