Each year, the relaxed beach town of Whangamata (part of New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula) floods with classic car enthusiasts in their thousands. Petrol heads, lovers of vintage everything, and families are treated to a week of incredible cars, pin-up themed fashion and an awesome festival vibe. With people from all over the country making their yearly pilgrimage here to pay homage to the god of petrol, muscle, and all things retro, it’s not surprising that Beach Hop is voted one of New Zealands favourite events. For us at BurgerFuel, it certainly takes the top spot and we don't miss it.
This year we didn’t have our portable container kitchen cranking out the burgers, however, our BurgerFuel team was there in full force. We had six classic cars representing the brand's love of Speed & Custom - our head office owned '64 Buick Riviera, '65 Dodge Coronet, '72 Ford Fairmont and '76 Toyota Landcruiser. We were also later joined by our Hamilton team with their Plymouth Barracuda and the newly wrapped Ford Ranchero, see this beauty below. This is the first ever car in the BurgerFuel fleet to step away from the 3-tone pearl fadeaway paint job (courtesy of Steve Levine) and rock a completely new colourway. She turned some heads.
Our days in Whangamata consisted of cruising the locals streets (and giving plenty of BeachHoppers rides) as well as cruises out to Thames and Onemana. On Saturday, the six BurgerFuel machines helped lead the procession of hundreds of classic cars in the main parade, where we then parked up in the main street for the day. Here we played games and interacted with the public, giving away vouchers and merch and spraying BurgerFuel inspired air brush tattoos on willing participants.
We had a rad time and promise to bring the burgers to Beach Hop 2022!
