July 2021
CENTRAL HAWKE’S BAY BRANCH of the VINTAGE CAR CLUB of NZ (Inc) Lamb Country Branch Email: centralhawkesbay@vcc.org.nz
POSTAL ADDRESS
CHB Branch of the Vintage Car Club (Inc) c/-18 Wilder Street, Waipukurau. 4200
Club Nights—7.30pm 3rd Wednesday of every Month
Rodin Cars and David Dicker—written by Shaun Summerfield
For over a decade, David Dicker has been focused on building a road-legal race car that will go quicker than a current Formula One car. Dicker's delivery is matter of fact, he doesn't just plan to build a road-legal race car with the performance of a Formula One car, he is building it. It's easy to spot the locals as they drive past David Dicker's 550 hectare property in North Canterbury, they are the ones who appear unfazed by the black missile racing across the paddock at close to 300km an hour. The neighbours at Waiau have seen and heard it all before, but not so the tourists in their campervans. Without fail, they pull over to watch with astonishment, as Dicker looks for those extra tenths of a second on his very own test track. State Highway 70 is both a back road and a back-up road. It provided a crucial link to Kaikoura following the devastating earthquake in 2016. The magnitude 7.8 quake also destroyed Dicker's original race-track, ripping cracks in the tarmac big enough to lose a rugby ball. Nearly four years on, the main coastal road is open again and Dicker's circuit is once more billiard table smooth. The 4.8 kilometre long racetrack is an integral part of Dicker’s company, Rodin Cars. “You can't build cars without a test track, it's as simple as that,” he says.“Plenty of guys do it, or try to do it, but it's just crazy because you've got to be able to test and the only way you're going to be able to make something good is to test to see where it's not right. And you can't build cars near a built-up area because of noise issues, so you've got to move out of the city." Dicker’s race centre location in Waiau had nothing to do with the country air or the scenery, or even New Zealand's motorsport heritage. Sydney born and raised, Dicker believes his home country has fallen out of love with cars, meaning it is no longer the place to undertake this sort of project.