TE KAUWHATA - Elva Shepherd is about to become the second member of a very exclusive club of New Zealand drivers.
When she celebrates her birthday on Monday, the Te Kauwhata resident will be one of only two 99-year-olds still behind the wheel.
The Land Transport Safety Authority has recorded a 99-year-oldAuckland woman who renewed her licence in September.
Mrs Shepherd has already passed her eyesight test - she does not even need to wear glasses - and is perfectly confident as she motors down the Waikato town's main street in the 1957 Austin A35 she bought new for sterling 634 ($1268).
She flicks the indicator switch on the dashboard and heads on to a country road in her little blue car, nicknamed Bubba.
The needle creeps up to 40 miles an hour (64 km/h) and Mrs Shepherd giggles as she looks in the rearview mirror and sees the New Zealand Herald photographer's car in the distance.
"Ooh, I've left your partner behind. I just wanted to show you what the car could do."
A resident of Aparangi Retirement Village, Mrs Shepherd is full of energy. She is determined to keep driving so she can still go shopping and make trips into the countryside to do sketches for her oil and watercolour paintings.
She has never had a crash in 84 years of driving and her closest scrape was a hair-raising "adventure" she had when she lived in the Auckland suburb of Titirangi in the early 90s.
"There's a corkscrew hill in Titirangi and my hydraulic brakes had gone out at the top of the hill," she says.
Mrs Shepherd had just enough time to cut the gears back to second. She then kept the car on the road as it raced to the bottom.
She has been extra diligent in checking her brake fluid levels since.
Mrs Shepherd has been a keen member of the "Flying A" Austin enthusiasts' club since it formed in 1991 and proudly shows off her club T-shirt.
Apart from two repaints and the odd bit of rust removal, Bubba is in original condition.
"Lots of people would like to buy it, but they will have to wait."
