Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park marketing manager Paul Fallon contemplates the arrival of the first Formula One racing event ever to be held in New Zealand.

Taupo's Bruce McLaren Motorsport park has scored a major motor racing coup with classic Formula One motor racing to take place there early next year.

It will be the first F1 motor racing ever to take place in New Zealand and will feature about 15 rare and very expensive F1 cars that raced in the sport's heyday of the 1960's and 1970's. Many of those cars are worth upwards of a million dollars.

A similar event in Monaco each year draws racers and fans from all over the world and rivals the Monaco Grand Prix for its popularity.

Chris Amon - a Kiwi F1 driver who was prominent in the golden era of 1960's and 1970's - said he was looking forward to the arrival of the vehicles from his era, when "the sound and visual experience was so much different from today".

Englishman Ron Maydon is hoping to compete in the rare 1974 Amon AF101 that dates back to Amon's time as both a Grand Prix driver and constructor.

Amon, who now lives in Taupo, has driven a number of the models and makes of car that will be represented at the race meeting and organisers will also be honouring Chris and his achievements.

Amon celebrates the 50th anniversary of his 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours win this weekend. He and Bruce McLaren took Ford's first-ever victory in the French classic.

The racing will be held January 28-29 at the aptly-named Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park and will feature a revival of the Race of Champions that was held each year from 1965 to 1979 pitting F1s against the muscular Formula 5000s, that are the mainstay of historic single-seater racing in this part of the world.

There will also be a large field of historic muscle cars lining up to race and for fans to drool over.

Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park executive director Tony Walker said it would actually be the first time that Formula One racing had been held in New Zealand.

"We are bringing back the entertainment and romance and sounds of an era when it was hugely popular. McLaren really was at the cutting edge of the experimentation era."

Even though some of the cars were worth millions of dollars and irreplaceable, the racing would be "no holds barred" and would reflect the competitive personalities of many of the wealthy owners and drivers.

Each vehicle and its associated team equipment would arrive in shipping containers at the Port of Tauranga before being trucked into Taupo for the event.

Walker said the schedule would be designed to combine hot racing with plenty of opportunity for spectators to get amongst some of the cars.

The 50th anniversary of the world championship title of New Zealand's only Grand Prix World Champion, the late Denny Hulme in 1967, is to be celebrated next January in special style with the first ever visit to this country of a field of Formula One cars from the 1960s and '70s.

Scheduled for the weekend of 28th and 29th January 2017, and hosted appropriately by the Taupo circuit named after Hulme's teammate for much of his career, the late Bruce McLaren, Formula One's inaugural visit to New Zealand will be for the period-correct pre-1978 cars that featured in so much of the careers of Hulme and McLaren as well as their fellow countrymen and heroes of F1 racing in the 1960s and '70s, Chris Amon and Howden Ganley.

Among the F1 cars expected from overseas is the McLaren M26 that was driven by 1976 world champion, James Hunt. The M26 now belongs to Irishman Frank Lyons, President of the Historic Sports Car Club which is responsible for much of the historic racing in Great Britain.

Also likely to appear at Taupo is an example of the M23 McLaren in which Denny Hulme took the last of his eight Grand Prix triumphs, the Swedish Grand Prix in 1974. The M23 was part of the storyline of the 2013 Ron Howard film Rush which depicted Hunt's season-long battle for the title against Ferrari team leader, Niki Lauda.

The event will also provide an opportunity for Auckland father-and-son Peter and Aaron Burson to run the 1974 BRM P201 and 1976 BRM P207 Formula One cars they own.

Doubling as a round of the extremely popular F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series, the Race of Champions revival will no doubt see the local F5000 drivers trying to repeat the historic victory of Englishman Peter Gethin in 1973, the only time a F5000 beat the lighter and more nimble F1 cars. At least two examples of the F5000 Chevron B24 used by Gethin on that day are expected to race at Taupo.