[promax]

Originally Posted by Mark Petch

Promax,
A lot of 'water has gone under the bridge' since Kerry Cooper's advise to the MSNZ Race Commission, 6 months ago.

For a start, TMC are no longer joint venture partners with VEEGA in NZV8's Ltd.

NZV8's Ltd is now a wholly owned subsidiary company of VEEGA.

The new "Car Of Tomorrow" COT, is managed by a sub committee of VEEGA and the COT prototype and its development are privately funded.

TMC and or MSNZ have no stake in the new car, however they have both endorsed the concept.

The COT car has been designed and built by Paul Ceprnich, of Pace Innovations Pty Ltd, who have also designed and are currently building the first two V8SA Car of the future prototypes. Our car retains a live rear axle, albeit of the three link kind.

The VEEGA sub committee responsible for the COT project is Gary Pederson, Wayne Anderson and myself.

The prototype COT is running approximately 10 weeks late, largely because of the considerably deeper 'pockets of V8SA. However we are not unhappy at this delay as it has allowed us time to re-evaluate our end objectives, and as a consequence of this we will end up with a more resolved concept, that will significantly lower the cost of the Car of Tomorrow, both in terms of its cost and more importantly its running costs.

At this point in time the photo's of the prototype build have only been revealed to VEEGA shareholders, however we do plan to reveal the car and its final specifications to the general media by the end of January 20011.

A complete 'turn Key' Car will cost slightly less than NZ$200,000 [about A$150,000] This is only possible because the whole car is a control spec, and other than Teams being able to do the final assembly, no modifications can be carried out whatsoever.

At the present time you can choose between the FG Falcon Body or the new VE2 Holden Commodore. The rolling chassis is designed to take any approved body, the current Toyota Camry body has already been approved, however the cost of developing the Areo kit will probably prove to be to costly for any New Zealand team, at this present time.

The New Zealand COT will also share the current V8SA approved body work in its entirety.

Whilst the NZ spec car will not be quite as fast as the current Australian V8 Supercar's, the gap between the the two will be much closer between the two than it is currently.

Until the NZ COT prototype has been signed off by the shareholders of VEEGA, no further details or final specifications will be made available.

Mark Petch.
CEO NZV8's Ltd.

hmmm