2010/03/22

Stylish newcomer

Stylish newcomer


Local content meant jobs and business for component suppliers, and was a vital criterion in the granting of import licences. For the Fiat 500, the fact it reached a local content level approaching 50 per cent would be waved around for years as a goal that other manufacturers should be achieving.
Starved of cars, New Zealanders quickly took to the stylish newcomer. Women especially fancied it – partly because they didn’t face a wait of months or years for a Mini.
This was trend spotted by Torino Motors, which provided  the car as part of the prize package in the Miss New Zealand beauty pageant. Thus 1966 saw Aucklander Heather Gettings become the first title winner to receive a car. A Bambina was given as a beauty pageant prize for three years, and the model was used extensively in the nationwide promotion of the pageant, with dealers assembling convoys of cars to carry parades of contestants through the main streets.
Torino Motors also entered an all-women team in the 1965 Wills Six Hour production saloon car race at Pukekohe. The Wills was one of the prestige race events, and was for cars in showroom trim. The women’s team of Margaret Hough and Evelyn Hadfield was supported by an all-women crew of refuellers, mechanics and supporters. Like the men who ran a 500 in the previous two years, the women finished last – but they finished, retaining the 500’s 100 per cent reliability record.

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