"The second person I am mentioning is
not even a club member. George Spratt
decided to travel down from Auckland after
I contacted him about the show way back
in April of this year. I had been asked by the
committee to provide 18 historical cars for
the show and George was one of the many
I contacted. We had met once before back
in 2009 when I turned up on his doorstop
to interview him for the book “New Zealand
Cars – A Cottage Industry”.
George was one of the main players in the
creation of a little known sports car called
the Aspen Siris. Sadly only three of these unique cars were
built. Killed off by the threat of new design
rules and the flood of Japanese imports
before it even had a chance to prove itself.
The Cortina provided the front suspension
with the 626 front subframe becoming
the rear suspension albeit with the front
wheels fixed in place. For two of the cars
the 626 motor was also used with very
little modification. However George was
an engineer who liked solving problems, he
decided to mount a P76 4.4 litre V8 to the
Mazda gearbox in an east-west configuration.
It was shoehorned into the space available
with some compromises, but without having
to flare the clean bodylines. The five speed
Mazda gearbox proved to be quite capable
of taking the power of the bigger motor and
is still in the car today. This was the second
car and was completed in 1994.
The Siris had not been out of the garage
in some years and getting it out was the
start of many issues. The first was when theit was going to involve a major amount of
work as the entire drive train would have
to come out. Time restraints meant that it
would have to wait until after the show. This
ruled out A-framing the car to Wellington.
Unable to get hold of a car trailer it had
to come down on the back of a truck.
Fortunately George was able to locate a
truck and driver and even a hoist to put the
car on the truck.
The car had to be placed on the truck
backwards as it was mid to rear engined.
More problems occurred on the way down
as the car was being towed backwards it
proved to be quite hazardous for the softtop
which had been designed to withstand
buffeting when going in the forward direction.
After much grumbling and muttering a way
was found to solve this problem and the
journey proceeded more reasonably.
LVVTA in Porirua had initially offered
to help George get the car off in Porirua
using their hoist but were unwilling to have
the truck on their newly painted floor. On
arrival in Porirua George went around all the
nearby factories until he found a company
that had a forklift that he could use to lift the
car off the truck. When I first saw him on the Friday he
shook my hand and said that he was
honoured that I wanted to include his car
in the show. Knowing his story I found this
quite humbling."
clutch would not disengage and looked like
