Pre 78 Classic Saloons

Since the early 1980's the Classic Motor Racing Club has both regulated and encouraged the use of production style original saloons in classic and historic racing throughout the South Island of New Zealand. This has been at the four permanent circuits of Levels, Teretonga, Ruapuna and Highlands as well as the airfield circuit of Wigram plus the road race circuits of Dunedin, Queenstown, Waimate, Lyttleton and Ryal Bush(1990).

As a broad generalisation right from the beginning it has always been for cars of standard appearance with all steel bodies, glass windows with most of their interior and exterior trim running the original type of engine and running gear with original diameter wheels (or plus one inch) fitted with treaded competition tyres. The ongoing intent over the last 4 decades has always been to allow vehicles from the 1950's, 60's and 70's to race alongside each other in visually similar vehicles as regards presentation and performance parity.

In 2020 these production type saloons of the Classic Motor Racing Club were formalised as a group called the Pre 78 Classic Saloons with the Clubs Executive Committee delegating full and exclusive control to the new Coordinator Wayne Perkins who controls and independently promotes the group to this day. One of the new measures that was introduced at that time was the '3 strike' rule whereby if a competitor was involved in a panel damage incident and found to be at fault then they were deemed to have a strike, if they accumulated three at fault strikes they are then removed from the group and are no longer welcome. Wayne has appointed three Pre 78 competitors being Blair Bishop, Steven Pauling and Ewan Macpherson to be part of an Incident Committee who investigate the very rare panel damage (or off track) incidents and proportion responsibility accordingly.

To reduce the emphasis on overall outright placings the entire Pre 78 group is broken down into classes based on cubic capacity or alternatively 'Invited guest' status with the intent to make multiple class winners and placegetters throughout the field. Those classes are as follows...

• 0-1200cc
• 1201-1500cc
• 1501-1900cc
• 1901-2400cc
• 2401-4200cc
• 4201cc +

Invited Guests: Schedule K (Historic Cars) CR3 (Replicas and Specials)

There is no absolute right of entry for either cars or drivers and any saloon that has an enormous performance advantage over the rest of the field will cease to be invited so parity with the other existing cars and also driver compatibility with the other Pre 78 group members will always be the major consideration,  Primarily the Pre 78 group is about the sheer fun and pride of owning and racing a period saloon car in a parity based, safe environment whilst enjoying the comradeship of the fellow competitors and their cars.

For a full copy of the latest pre 78 regulations please make contact with Wayne Perkins.

Follow all the Pre 78 action on social media via our Facebook page by following the link below.

PRE78 FACEBOOK PAGE