Targa New Zealand 2025: Our Production 4WD Class Win

Targa New Zealand is one of the toughest tarmac rallies going - a multi-day event run over hundreds of kilometres of closed public roads. 2025 marked the event's 30th anniversary, and it didn't hold back. Crews faced five days of competition covering more than 900km of closed-road stages, stringing tight sections, fast country roads and technical hill climbs into one relentless week.

Unlike a single-day sprint, Targa is a test of consistency as much as outright speed. You need a car that survives, a co-driver who reads the notes cleanly stage after stage, and the discipline to keep pushing without throwing it away. That combination is exactly what a five-day tarmac event exposes.

We contested the Production 4WD class in our GD WRX STI, and when the dust settled we'd taken the class win - and finished 6th outright. Sixth against a field that included purpose-built, big-budget machinery is a result we're genuinely proud of, and it's rare air for a production-based car run by a small team.

The Production 4WD class is where road-derived all-wheel-drive cars go head to head - closer to what you can actually build in a home workshop than the exotic outright contenders. Winning it meant beating cars of the same breed over five hard days, and backing that up with a top-six overall placing showed the STI had the pace to run with cars well above its pay grade.

Anyone can be quick for one stage. Being quick - and clean - for five straight days is a different sport. Targa NZ rewards preparation above everything: a car built to finish, a service plan that keeps you rolling, and a driver-and-co-driver pairing that stays sharp when the fatigue sets in on day four.

Our week was about managing the whole event, not chasing hero moments. Look after the car, hit the notes, bank the times, and let the result come. By the final day the numbers told the story - the preparation held, the STI kept delivering, and the class win was ours.

Winning Production 4WD at Targa NZ proved our preparation was right. That's the sentence we keep coming back to, because it's the whole point of a season like this. You don't chase a class win for the trophy alone - you chase it to prove the build, the process and the crew all stack up under pressure.

With that box ticked, we're taking everything we learned on tarmac and applying it to gravel for 2026. Different surface, different challenge, same team and the same standard of preparation. The 2025 result gave us the confidence to make that jump - and if you want to see where it's heading, our 2026 season is already underway.