New Zealand has a few icons - the haka, eathquakes, rugby, the shy little Kiwi, jetboats, some of the most beautiful scenery on earth ... but not the Trekka. This Land Rover look-alike is a real head-turner. People look the other way. I did when I first saw the Trekka in Pete’s Pioneer and Transport Museum at KeriKeri near the Bay of Islands, at the upper end of the North Island.
It makes a Series 2 Landy look positively graceful. Yet, the Trekka hides an intriguing history and was New Zealand’s only mass-produced vehicle. Sort of. It’s not all Kiwi. Just the steel body and the canvas or fibreglass canopy. The powertrain and chassis is pure Skoda - Skoda Octavia Combi, a vehicle produced in communist Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s.
The Trekka hardly set the NZ motoring scene alight - about 2500 were sold in seven or eight years although the vehicle was also exported to Australia and Indonesia. Some 46 made it across the ditch to Australia before sales flopped. The are some interesting parallels between the Trekka and a vehicle produced in Australia at almost the same time, the VW Australian Country Buggy, featured in our classic car section.
Australian VW Country Buggy
Both were aimed at farmers, both were based on a chassis and powertrain from a major manufacturer, both were aesthetically challenged, and both failed dismally. The Aussie vehicle did even worse than the Kiwi selling less than 1000 units. Both vehicles now seem to enjoy cult status.
The Trekka came about as a result of New Zealand’s highly-regulated import policies of the early 1950s which made new cars both expensive and a scarcity. A local car industry was needed to manufacture produced cars that were affordable. The viability of starting from scratch - designing and manufacturing drivelines and chassis - was questionable. At the time the NZ Skoda importer, Phil Andrews’ Motor Lines looked at the Trekka concept.
A company called Motor Holdings, which operated as an independent car assembler, took up the project. Motor Holdings was owned by the Turner family who imported in knock-down kit form and assembled cars in preparation for sale. This was a way of creating local jobs in the motor industry, when you have no motor industry. The same happened in Australia.
The company screwed together VW, Skoda, Jowett and Bradford commercials.
To be able to get access to cheap imported Czech mechanicals the company needed to show a high degree of NZ content. The more NZ content the more local import licences. Coach or body building was the easy part. The Skoda parts were brought into NZ in kit form, at a bargain price, assembled, and than bolted to the locally produced body. As you can see from the images not a lot of thought went into the body design, perhaps a sideways glance at a passing Series 2 Land Rover.
By the early 1970 the writing was on the wall for the Trekka in the form of moderately priced, reliable cars from Japan. Trekka was powered by a 1221 cc four cylinder engine connected to a four speed manual gearbox with synchromesh on second, third and fourth gears. It did not have 4WD but offered two types of tyres: ‘suburbanite’ or ‘mudgrip.’ The driveshaft was fully enclosed. There were two colours standard: Trekka Green and Autumn Gold.
Optional extras included a ‘Balanced Traction’ differential, various bodies, rear seats, towbar, windscreen washer, heater, radio, chains, power brakes, passenger sunvisor and a wing mirror for the passenger side. Trekka, like the Australian Country Buggy, now has a place in motoring history and a handful of those willing to keep the memory alive. |
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