The Highlands Motorsport Park Museum
MUCH has been made of the delights in and around Highlands Motorsport Park, near Cromwell, on New Zealand’s ridiculously stunning South Island.
From the iconic ‘Loo with a View’ – which is a riot – to the track itself, the place is a wonderland for kids and adults alike.
There’s also a large nod to New Zealand’s remarkable racing heritage with the outstanding National Motorsport Museum, which overlooks the entire circuit from a hill adjacent to the final corners of the circuit.
It’s a wide-ranging collection of road and race vehicles that rather nicely surmises the entire place: bright, colourful, deeply fascinating, sometimes bordering on the eccentric and good fun.
Highlights? Well, the longstanding predication towards old Formula 1 machinery means yours truly was drawn instantly to Tony Quinn’s 1991 Benneton, a car once driven by Michael Schumacher in his formative Grand Prix season.
A stunning Ferrari F40 represents peak road car, but after ogling that you’re drawn immediately to TQ’s hillclimb monster that took on Pikes Peak and the Race to the Clouds kiwi version of the Colorado classic. It’s an insane bit of engineering.
There’s Paul Radisich’s 1994 Mondeo Super Tourer that helped deliver him the FIA Touring Car World Cup at Monza – and it’s a car with Aussie history; it was raced in Aussie Super Touring by privateer Peter Hills, before being sold and restored to its original specification.
The late, great Inky Tulloch’s famous CAT SuperTruck dominates the landscape, while there’s an immersive room that walks you through some of New Zealand’s motorsport heroes and lets you ride with them via an in-car lap, that is quite cool.
And then the walls are filled with the history of Kiwi motorsport and storytelling surrounding some of the biggest names from these parts, as well as those in the official NZ Motorsport Hall of Fame.
Perhaps best of all is the view; the entire circuit sits in full view of the museum’s windows, the dramatic (though at this time of year, not snow-capped) mountain range in the background.
Proving that TRTs resident museum expert Mark Walker isn’t the only one with a predication towards endless ambling through collections, here’s some shots we snapped ahead of this weekend’s round of the Next Gen NZ Championship, and the 69th running of the New Zealand Grand Prix.
Richard Craill (administrator)
Working full time in the motorsport industry since 2004, Richard has established himself within the group of Australia’s core motorsport broadcasters, covering the support card at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix for Channel 10, the Bathurst 12 Hour for Channel 7 and Porsche Carrera Cup & Touring Car Masters for FOX Sports’ Supercars coverage. Pretends to be a PR guy / Journalist and sometimes photographer to make ends meet when not yelling at a television in a padded room.
