Australia's Richard Muscat, who was paired with Craig Baird, appeared to have the 101-lap race sewn up in his Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3, after leading for more than 90 laps. However, a fast-charging Tander passed him on the last lap as he ran out of fuel around 200m short of the finish line.
Tander's team had radioed him to keep an eye out for the Mercedes as it had slowed up.
''Coming out of the hairpin going up to the bridge, it wasn't going at all, so I was yee-hahing on the radio as I went past and that was it,'' Tander said.
Quinn piloted the same Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in which he won the inaugural Highlands 101 last November with Kiwi star Fabian Coulthard.
Driving with V8 Supercar star Tander, Quinn also won the Phillip Island 101 earlier this year, making this weekend's victory a record-making three-peat of 101 race wins in Australasian GT racing.
Quinn complimented Tander's ''never say die attitude'', which saw him smash the Australian GT (AGT) class lap record three times in the race's later laps. Tander's new AGT lap record is 1 min 31.716sec.
''Garth, you did a sensational job,'' Quinn said.
A hard-fought second place went to Rod Salmon, who took the Australian GT Trophy class victory at Highlands on Saturday and drove his Audi R8 LMS GT3 with Nathan Antunes for the 101 podium finish.
Third went to the Lamborghini Gallardo FL2 GT3 pairing of Justin McMillian and Steven Richards.
Perhaps the biggest talking point of the weekend was the performance of Inky Tulloch's (Southland) Chev Camaro GT3. The impressive-sounding, front-engined Camaro stormed home in fifth place, driven by three-time V8 Supercar Champion Craig Lowndes. It was the first Kiwi-owned car to finish and Tulloch was ecstatic.
''We had a lot of fun, I didn't expect to be where we are,'' he said of starting 15th and making his way up to sixth before the driver change, which saw Lowndes claim the top five result.
Lowndes said he loved driving the 478kW, 7.9-litre V8 ''monster'', which he dubbed a ''supercar on steroids''.
Meanwhile, Kiwi star Shane van Gisbergen, who qualified second with Quinn's son Klark in a McLaren MP4-12C, suffered the disappointment of gear selection issues after leading or holding second for the first part of the race.
The Bentley Continental GT3, in its race debut, was driven by its owner Peter Edwards and John Bowe. Unfortunately it lost acceleration and had to be towed to the pits, but rejoined the race briefly before retiring permanently around the midway point.
Local hopes were dashed when the only home-built car, the Chev Corvette C6R of Alexandra's Bruce Davidson and Dave Garden, failed to finish. Davidson said although the Australian GT car-dominated field was ‘‘in a different league'', they had fun getting out there and having ''a crack''.
The second edition of the Highlands 101 saw 20 of the 34 starters complete the high-speed endurance race, which required each team to complete two pit-stops.
