Akaroa Drive

On a fine and bright Sunday morning, several members and even prospective members of the club met at the top of the Port Hills for a scenic drive to Akaroa Harbour. After some confusion over the meeting place (my fault), three MkIs and three MkIIs headed off.

We dropped down into Lyttelton Harbour first, since the road over Gebbies Pass is such a great drive. It certainly does look so cool to have so many MR2s on parade!

We lost one car in Little River, when the owner (a non-member) remembered he had something to do in Christchurch and turned back. I don’t think he knew how far it was to Akaroa.

When we arrived in Akaroa we trundled up through some of the side streets into the ‘burbs’ (ie about one block from ‘down town’), then onto a newly sealed street with about a zillion little stones jumping up and bouncing off the paintwork. Fortunately we didn’t have to go far before we turned into someone’s driveway - at this stage I had no idea what we were going to see. We spread our cars all over the lawn and driveway and hopped out to be greeted by none other than TV celeb, Bob Parker.

Turns out Bob Parker is a bit of a car enthusiast...in fact he keeps himself busy handling the promotion of Citroen cars. Parked out front was a Xantia Diesel Turbo...but then he took us over to the garage which he opened to reveal two other cars: on the left a Porsche Boxster with just 400km on the clock; on the right was another car still under cover...obviously very low and wide...he pulled back the cover to reveal a very polished, very red, NSX.

We spent the next half hour or more talking about each of the cars, both his two supercars, the MR2s and the Citroen. Bob obviously approved of the MR2 mid-engine layout, and told how he’d had a chance in Brisbane to drive a range of Porsche models. He felt that the mid-engined Boxster was better balanced than even the latest 911 incarnation (which is rear engined with the engine’s centre of gravity behind the rear axle). We had demos of the Citroen suspension system and the hard top and automatic soft top of the Boxster. Great stuff.

So how do these supercars compare to MR2?

Porsche Boxster

Mid-engine two seater convertable sports car

204 Hp flat six 2.5l engine

0 - 100 in around 7s

Honda NSX

Mid-engine two seater coupe

270 Hp 3l v6 with VTEC

0 - 100 in around 5.5s

So how does a MR2 GT compare (1990 - 1992)?

Toyota MR2 GT

Mid-engine two seater Coupe or T-Top

225 Hp 2l Turbo charged

0 - 100 in about 5.9s

So MR2 compares well...but MR2 achieves its prowess through forced induction whereas both the Porsche and the NSX manage without. Whilst I love the power the turbo affords, it’s definitely more fun to have a powerful normally aspirated engine.

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A Honda NSX

Sadly, we took our leave of Bob’s place, and headed into town for that all-important commodity - FOOD! We didn’t manage to park all together, which would have looked great, but we did take up a sizeable portion of the bakery downtown. It was a real chance to get to know each other better, and I think some lasting friendships might have been forged.

After a nice long yakka, we turned back to Christchurch and departed the little French settlement. It was a great day, and hopefully we’ll do the same again soon.

Craig Saunders and Deb Webb