On Amon's legendary lack of good fortune during his Formula One career, American driver Mario Andretti, a Formula 1 champion and Indy 500 winner once joked: "If Chris Amon was an undertaker, no one would die.''
Frustrated, Amon quit to join March in 1970 - and missed out on Ferrari's new flat-12 cyclinder engine which was to become one of the best engines of the 70s.
Amon says he never got the car he needed from Ferrari because they were too diversified.
"They were trying to do Formula One, Formula Two, sports cars, CanAm cars, and even the Tasman series out here. A lot of people say I was very unlucky and I suppose in terms of results, I was,'' Amon said.
"But one thing I do always say to people is that I am very lucky to be here.''
In a reference to the deaths of his peers such as Jim Clark, Lorenzo Bandini and McLaren, he said: "It was such a dangerous era and I don't look back with any sense of frustration. I am eternally thankful that I survived.''
Amon never won a championship F1 grand prix, but did win eight non-championship GPs.
"It was very frustrating sometimes - we were so close and yet so far on so many occasions right through my career really. But I did have a reasonable amount of success in sports cars and that sort of balanced it up a bit.''
His other major wins included the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series.
The highlight of Amon's success in sports car racing came with the 1966 win at the Le Mans 24-hour race in a Ford GT40 Mark II with McLaren as his partner. Hulme was second in another Ford with Briton Ken Miles.
Amon started 96 F1 races, achieving five poles, led 183 laps in seven races, reached the podium 11 times and scored a total of 83 championship points.
After stints with teams such as March, Matra, Tecno, Tyrrell, BRM, Ensign, and Walter Wolf Racing, Amon retired, returning home to run the family farm. His last F1 race was the Canadian grand prix in 1976.
Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.
