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Kaiwaka’s Nikita Mitchell, 10, is spending her weekends getting a rusted go-kart up and running again.
She has help. Her Dad, Mike, owns Mike’s Autos mechanics and her Mum, Emma, is a former panel beater.
Mike jokes that with a 1000cc Daihatsu car engine it is his “daughter’s first turbo”.
Nikita decided she wanted a project to work on after watching her mum fitting a Toyota van with a V8 Lexus engine, and her dad work on a Mitsubishi Evolution Six.
“You are basically required to have a project in this workshop family,” Mike says.
Her parents believe that only so much can be gained through explanation, and the best way to learn is by taking an engine apart.
They agreed that if Nikita saved up half of the cost for a go-kart, they would match it.
She earned money by washing cars and selling jewellery made from resin at a market in the Mangawhai library. She sold more than 20 necklaces in a couple of hours.
The family then went on a late-night mission to Penrose to pick up the kart, which they found online. It had been sitting outside rusting.
So far, Nikita has water blasted the kart and is using a grinder to remove excess rust. It needs rewiring before it will be running again properly.
Once it is operable, Nikita expects she will be driving it around paddocks at home and racing the horses.
“We might put a speed limiter on it at first. It will probably be faster than most road cars,” Mike says.
He suspects that Nikita wants to learn to drift in the kart like her hero racer “Mad” Mike Widdell.
It would be fair to say that by the time Nikita turns 15, she will be ready to sit her driver’s licence test.
“She already thinks she will be picking up her mates in her kart,” Emma says.
