Golden Bay High students build and race production saloon car!

Speedway fans across the Marlborough region should keep an eye out for a racy ‘new' Honda Prelude at future production saloon car race events. It's the final product of a hardworking senior engineering class from Golden Bay High School, who've rebuilt the car as a project all the while achieving engineering unit standards using Tools4Work resources.


When a disused Honda Prelude was gifted to the school earlier in the year, technology teacher, Ben Knoef, wasted no time rallying his senior engineering class together to get it up and running again. Their goal - to make a race-worthy machine that would test their skills and help them learn mechanical engineering in the best way possible; hands-on.

‘The students totally stripped down and rebuilt the car, complete with a certified roll cage," says Ben. "They also added a fuel cell, several other safety-related fittings, and had to exercise a very high level of workmanship to meet the strict regulations of the NZ Speedway.

"This has been a great engineering challenge for our small team of students. I believe we are the only school involved in the National Speedway sport of racing.

"The other positive spin off is we're encouraging and supporting the idea that racing is OK for the track, but not on the street," says Ben.

Although Ben and his students hoped to have the car ready for the start of the season at Nelson Speedway, they've managed to get the car on the track every fortnight since its completion a few weeks ago, with only a minor ‘running repairs' required to keep it track-worthy.

"We now race the car every fortnight at the Nelson Speedway Track, and hope to race it to other tracks in the top half of the South Island."

And who's at the wheel of the finished project?

"Our driver, Patrick, is a Year 12 student at our school - before this experience he had never even been to the speedway as a spectator, let alone as a competitor, so we've created a number of firsts with this project!" says Ben.

The team at Tools4Work congratulates Ben and his students on their achievements, and we'll report on their track progress as they start building up a tally of results!



Above: This Honda Prelude was completely rebuilt to National Speedway regulations by Golden Bay High School's senior engineering class.  They now race this car in the production saloon class at the Nelson Speedway every fortnight, and hope to race in other centres in the top half of the South Island.