Car watch

When the Cold War was at its chilliest, importing anything from Eastern Europe was difficult. The spies only made things harder.

- TODD NIALL

Rob Elliott had little time to reflect on an enjoyable shipboard dinner in Auckland, when a man from the government turned up.

“We understand that you were on board. What was the topic of conversation?” Elliott recalled being asked. His questioner never said directly, but Elliott knew he was from the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS).

It was 1972. Elliott was then the chief executive of motor vehicle assembler and franchise-holder Motor Holdings. He and other importers had dined at the invitation of the captain of a Polish cargo ship, which had brought Motor Holdings a shipment of Czech-built Škoda cars from Gdańsk. As it transpired, New Zealand's domestic security agency had been watching them for more than a decade.

The grounds for SIS interest was the company’s trade since 1961 with Škoda, during the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR) was then a communist state behind the Iron Curtain.

SIS officers were regular visitors to Motor Holding’s assembly plant in Ōtāhuhu, conducting interviews, sometimes over lunch, and always seeking details of contact made in Auckland and Europe, between the firm and its Czech business partners.

“They were always short of business cards, mumbling something about internal affairs, the government, just making a few inquiries,” said Elliott, speaking several decades later of the secretive inquirers. “They were sort of grey men; they didn't really introduce themselves very well. Typically guys in their late 40s or early 50s, they weren't too formal, usually in Harris tweed jackets and smoking a pipe. You could spot them a mile away.”

At the time, there would have been very few, if any, New Zealand businesses as deeply involved with Czechoslovakia as Motor Holdings.