Southland motorsport personality Ian ”Inky” Tulloch will turn a few heads this weekend – well, his car will at least.
Tulloch, the former mayor of Mataura and Gore District, and a successful businessman, has won numerous national and Australian motor racing titles in his four-plus decades of motorsport, including seven super truck championships.
Tulloch is now entrenched in the Endurance racing and has a new car for the 2014/15 season.
Earlier this year he test-drove a 650-horsepower, 7.9-litre V8 Camaro in Italy.
There are only four Camaro GT3 cars in the world, all produced by German GT racing specialist Hans Reiter, founder and director of Reiter Engineering, which has about 100 customers in Europe, America and Asia competing in Reiter-built Lamborghini GT race cars.
Yesterday Tulloch hired the Teretonga Park race track near Invercargill to give his impressive-looking new car its first test run.
On Saturday he will roll out his V8 Camaro in competition for the first time at Teretonga Park, and it is expected to capture plenty of interest.
He will take part in the first meeting on the Southland Sports Car Club calender this weekend.
On Saturday there will be one-hour and three-hour endurance races, while Sunday’s racing will feature Clubmans Saloons, Pro 7 Saloons, Sports and Racing Cars action.
Tulloch’s growing interest in endurance racing stemmed from competing in Australia’s famed Bathurst 12-hour race and in March he won the one-hour enduro at Teretonga.
The Southland motorsport legend and his new car will be a star attraction in the first round of the ASKO South Island Endurance Series when it blasts into life this weekend at Teretonga Park.
The 2014 ASKO Series is likely to be exhilarating if previous years are anything to go by.
The series has been awarded New Zealand Endurance Championship status for 2014 and it will mean that finishing races, performing well and accumulating championship points will be the key to ultimate success.
The fastest endurance cars in New Zealand are heading south for the series opener which will include household motorsport names such as Craig Baird and Ant Pederson.
The three-hour race is expected to start about 1.30pm tomorrow.
