20 New Zealand Classic Car | themotorhood.com
green reflector on the front bumper. They were popular
accessories at the time, but then they were outlawed and
the man at the warrant of fitness station said that it had
to be removed. Chris’ grandad asked for a hammer. He
smashed the small green lens out, leaving just the mount,
and said, “There you go. Now can we have a warrant?”Space-age branding
Now that the car belongs to Chris (again), he cherishes
its history as much as its originality.
Yes — again. When his grandmother decided to
get an automatic with power steering, she passed the
Hillman on to Chris. He was, naturally, delighted.
He had many happy memories of being driven around
in the car, and then driving his grandparents around
in it in turn, and being told off for riding the clutch
(he says that he wasn’t). He remembers his childhood
fascination with the 3D enamel and transparent plastic
Rootes Group badge on the dash, which looked so
space age.
However, after a couple years, this young man about
town decided that he needed to sell the car, as he was
heading overseas. He wasn’t entirely callous about it,
though. He had vetted the buyers, who were members
of the Humber Hillman Club and decided that they
were the right people to sell it to.
“But I never forgot about that car,” Chris tells us. “I
really regretted selling it.”
Whenever he saw a Hillman Super Minx in red with
a white flash, he’d be looking for the plate or other
clues to see if it was Nana’s old ‘Geraldine’.
Eventually, as Hillman Super Minx sightingsdropped away, Chris decided that he had to try to
find the car. The people he had sold it to had passed
it on. He discovered the registration was on hold, but
it was already past the time when you could look up
owners online from a car’s rego plates. Chris contacted
the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA),
explaining that he wanted to buy the car back and
asking to contact the current owner. He was told that
the authority couldn’t provide details because of the
Privacy Act. Chris was quite persistent and, in the
end, spoke to a senior executive, who agreed to send
the owner a letter on Chris’ behalf. A few days later,
the person who had owned it for the past 11 years
contacted Chris.Another bout of nostalgia
The motor had at some stage given up the ghost,
and the Super Minx had been parked in a carport
ever since, covered with a tarp. The motor had been
removed, and the tarp had trapped moisture on the
bonnet, roof, and boot, blistering the paint. Chris
wasn’t put off; he was in love again. He says that 14
years of nagging guilt were being washed away. “Not a
month went by when I didn’t look at a photo of it,” he
recalls. Chris soon discounted the option of finding a
replacement motor. This was going to be a matching-
numbers car. It even has its original registration plates,
so the motor had to be rebuilt. With the car back in
the family and work to do, Chris’ dad, a mechanic by
trade, got involved, but Chris also put in the hours.
They had already decided that Geraldine, for her
second stint in the family, should be reborn from a
full bare-metal rebuild. Chris stripped the car in his
garage. This prompted another bout of nostalgia when
he came across an old newspaper clipping that had
slipped between the seats: it contained a birth notice
for one of his younger brothers.“I never forgot about that car ...
Not a month went by when I
didn’t look at a photo of it”