Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 89 i Australian Muscle Car

Welcome to our Peter Brock: the untold stories issue. It’s our way of marking the 10th anniversary of his passing, on September 8, 2006, as this edition will still be in newsagencies on that date. I’m sure this issue won’t be on its ‘Pat Malone’, with other specially-themed magazines on the market at this time. I’d be surprised, though, if another publication presents the level of previously unexplored territory that you’ll find here. I hope that last statement doesn’t come across as arrogant. Instead, it’s to highlight that the AMC team has gone to great lengths to come up with fresh stories and angles on the most written-about figure in Australian motoring history. Thinking there will be much rehashing of old Brock stories and angles elsewhere, we’ve thought outside the…

The racing histories of both the Ford Motor Company and New Zealand were foremost in many minds at the Le Mans 24 Hours this year. Ford’s crushing 1-2-3 victory in 1966 was mentioned continuously. Nothing unusual about a manufacturer trying to leverage off past glories – except that Ford had more reason than most to be proud of its history. Its late 1960s assault on the Le Mans 24 Hours stands with the 1930s Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union grand prix projects as three of the most dramatic and remarkable corporate campaigns in the entire history of the sport. There were certainly strong echoes from that day 50 years ago; for a start, the four Fords had racing numbers #66, #67, #68 and #69 to commemorate the four wins. More significantly,…

Last issue’s focus on the South African-assembled Fairmont GTs brought to our attention a couple of GT-HOs that headed to the Dark Continent when brand new. According to the Fairmont GT Register, two new Australian-built and complianced XY Ford Falcon GT-HO Phase IIIs made their way to South Africa in 1971. One, a Monza Green example, was soon destroyed in a motor vehicle accident, while the other long ago returned to Australia and survives today. This Raw Orange painted Phase III rolled off Broadmeadows’ production line in June 1971 with black trim, a sunroof and a 240km/h speedometer instead of the standard 140mph type. It had ‘For Export’ marked on its windscreen as it was sent to Ford Southern Africa for sales and marketing director, Dennis Smith. He chose Raw…

Another whole pile of bricks will come together at Mount Panorama this October to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cooper S’s domination of the 1966 Gallaher 500, the flying Bricks filling the first nine places. Muscle Car Events’ Todd Martin has pulled together a full field of road, Group N, genuine Series Production and Group C Minis “from sheds and third bedrooms from around Australia.” Included in the Bathurst 1000 weekend event is a replication of the first to ninth-placed ’66 cars. Bob Holden will be on hand to present period magnetic race numbers to all those entered. Bob will lead a parade on Saturday of approximately 70 cars, then will back up Sunday pre-race with a selection of the genuine Bathurst-campaigned cars. The Minis will be displayed in…

The so-called Supercar The Holden Camira was a good car. There, I said it. And I mean it, to this day. But, before we go any further, I have to qualify what I’m saying by pointing to the timeline and the Camira model that won me. It was the very first one from 1982, the Australian version of the global J-Car from General Motors, with the baby 1600cc engine. I liked the car because it was taut and responsive, and quite a tidy drive for its time and considering it was a front-wheel drive car. It wasn’t as effective or responsive as an Alfasud from Italy, but still pretty good for a homemade Holden built by a company which was all about the top selling Commodore. But this column is…

Sydneysider Rob Losurdo’s own VH Group 3 High Output – well his pride and joy, out of the four Group 3 High Outputs he owns in total – has just 20,000km on the clock, and it looks like it just rolled from the hallowed operation’s HQ. Losurdo found the Maranello Red three-owner car advertised on Australian Muscle Car Sales in early 2015, flying up to Brisbane to complete the purchase in February, before driving the car home. “It was one of the best drives I’ve ever had,” he recalls. Rob set about tracking down the original owner in Queensland, who helped fill in the back-story. The VH was sold new on September 30, 1983 by Noel Gould Townsville Pty Ltd and cost $26,525. Exercising remarkable forethought, the original owner kept…

Bob Gracie was part of the small Gown-Hindhaugh crew for the 1975 season alongside a young Les Small. Gracie fondly recalls his time working at the small automotive workshop – which, incidently, still exists today – in the outer south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Box Hill South. “In 1974 I’d been working overseas and when I came back a mate of mine Norm Gown asked me if I’d work for him because he had a new young driver who might come and drive a car for him,” Gracie told AMC. “Norm said he’d go a buy one of these new L34s and that’s what he did: picked it up, brought it back to the workshop. I said yes, I’d be quite happy to work for him as long as this new…

Peter Brock’s greatest performance on the international stage wasn’t at Le Mans in 1984 in the much-hyped Bob Jane T-Marts-backed Porsche 956 assault. Nor did it come during the equally high-profile V8 Commodore attack on the 1986 European Touring Car Championship with his own Holden Dealer Team. Instead, his best result from his many, if sporadic, sorties overseas was a giant-killing performance a decade earlier – for a very different dealer team. Brock and Brit Gerry Marshall’s second place in the 1977 Spa 24 Hour touring car classic long ago fell off the bottom of Brock’s racing resume and into obscurity. This was largely because there was little reportage of the feat back home in Australia. And disinterest from those ignorant Holden enthusiasts who struggled to grasp that GM-H was…

Engine revs rise and the ground begins to shake as a packed grid of Sports Sedans prepares for the start. On pole position it’s John McCormack’s Ansett Team Elfin Valiant Charger. Alongside is Pete Geoghegan’s HJ Monaro GTS 350. Jim Richards’ Big M Falcon XC Hardtop is on row two, flanked by Colin Bond’s Holden Dealer Team Torana LH. Behind them are Mark Trenoweth’s Jaguar XJS, Bryan Thomson’s Chev-powered Mercedes 450SLC, Tony Edmondson’s Alfetta-Chev and Allan Moffat’s Cologne Capri. If that sounds like the ultimate all-star Sports Sedan fantasy grid, think again: because a field just like this could, in fact, be a reality. All of the abovementioned legendary muscle racers have survived the test of time. Some of them have already been restored to their 1970s or early ’80s…

Last issue we outlined the history of the original, 4.82km incarnation of the seaside Phillip Island circuit that operated between 1956 and 1978. This issue we tell the story of how the facility was reincarnated as the slightly shorter, 4.45km Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in time to host the 1989 Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix. Fans of four-wheeled motorsport can thank the ‘blokes on spokes’ for the miracle that occurred in the late 1980s, as without the quest for an Australian round of the world championship the track’s revival simply would not have taken place. In fact, if we take a step back, a bloke from Wollongong deserves a slap on the back for rising to the top of world motorcycling and capturing the sporting public’s imagination. As Jim Scaysbrook,…

It’s an idea that pops up from time-to-time: hold a big-time motor race on a circuit in the opposite direction. It’s also an April Fools Day chestnut witness speedcafe.com’s April 1, 2014 news story (illustrated with the shot above) declaring that, “Racing traditions will return to Bathurst in Easter 2015 with a five-day event for V8 Supercars using the full 6.213 kilometre Mt Panorama circuit in reverse for the first time ever.” You would pray for a good firm pedal heading uphill into Forrest’s Elbow from The Chase, likewise downhill from Griffin’s Bend into Hell! Of course, in this day and age it’s totally impractical from a safety point-of-view to run any circuit in the reverse direction. All current circuits feature such immovable objects as sandtraps, run-off areas and crash…

To say Lexington, Ohio, USA is a long way from Cessnock, NSW, Australia is an understatement, but brothers Aaron and Philip Lewis made the trip to compete in the Mid-Ohio Vintage Grand Prix in late June. Originally conceived as a trip to take on circuits at Indy and Mid-Ohio, plans were derailed by a comedy of errors that would see their racecars hung up on a Los Angeles dock for weeks, eventually missing the Indy meeting but recovering in time to make the grid at the Mid-Ohio Sportscar Course. Once there, the brothers enjoyed a fruitful weekend in their Matich A50 F5000 (Philip) and Lola T163 Can-Am racer (Aaron). Philip was returning to the US after running Watkins Glen, Road America and Laguna Seca last year, while Aaron was making…

An original shape GTS Monaro need not be V8 powered to attract big dollars at auction. That’s the message from Shannons’ most recent Sydney auction when $80,000 was paid for a well-preserved Warrigal Black 1971 Holden HG Monaro GTS 186S that had been in the same family since new. Meantime, a 1984 Holden VK Commodore SS Group 3 that was the personal car of nine-time Bathurst winner Peter Brock, while he ran HDT Special Vehicles, sold for $81,000. That’s the same result achieved for a Walkinshaw VL Group A. As to the Monza HDT prototype, despite keen interest, bidding did not meet the reserve. On the Ford side of the ledger, a 351ci 1978 Falcon XC Cobra (#77) sold for $100,000, while a nicely executed XY ‘Replica GT’ based on…

Until we read the new CAMS – The Official History book, celebrating 60 years of the governing body, we had no idea the infamous 1983 Brock Monza startline crash cost the circuit manager his job. Adelaide International Raceway chief Geoff Sykes convinced circuit owner Bob Jane to provide his massive-winged Chev Monza for Peter Brock to drive at the track’s 1983 Australian GT Championship round. It’s part of local racing folklore that the Monza broke a driveshaft off the startline and chaos ensued. “He put it on pole in a big field of cars,” Sykes explains in the new book. “When the flag dropped Brock shot into the lead - but only for a few metres. Then the car turned hard left across the front of the field collecting 12…

The dirt on Brock Everyone knows that Peter Brock the racecar driver had talent, determination and luck, but what’s never asked is ‘in what ratios’? A man who was able to win so many major races and championships must have had more than his fair share of all three attributes, plus large sized servings of many other factors that combined to make the man. So, when GM-H decided to fund a three-car team to tackle the 1979 Repco Round Australia Trial with major commercial backing from Marlboro and Castrol, Brock was an obvious choice as one of the team’s lead drivers. But when he was taken out of his natural element (on bitumen) was he expected to make the transfer with as much ease and success as his former teammate…

These days Michael Rowell is director of a transport company on the Gold Coast in Queensland, his home of the last 30-plus years. In his younger days, before the move north, he was a car-mad Tasmanian with a passion for Toranas and going fast on the Apple Isle. He was convinced to take his love of speed onto the speedways of the island state and did so after owning a Bathurst-winning Torana road car that very nearly killed him. Yep, that’s right – a Bathurst-winning Torana. It was the very same L34 model that Peter Brock and Brian Sampson had used to win the 1975 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 at Mount Panorama for the privateer Gown-Hindhaugh team. The same car that, legend had it, was converted for road use and later written…

With this issue’s cover story theme being ‘Brock: the untold stories’, what better topic for our regular Top 25 section than ‘Brock: the unseen photos’? Our compilation here has been put together by long-time AMC contributor Aaron Noonan’s AN1 Media team mostly from the company’s own photo archives. Visit an1images.com AN1 Images has acquired a number of photographic collections in recent years, including Ian Smith’s Autopix archive and Graeme Neander’s Conventry collection. These contain many images that have not previously appeared in the pages of AMC. In fact, some may not have seen the light of day at all before. On the grid A study of concentration. Brock sits on the grid in preparation for the 1977 Australian Touring Car Championship’s finale. This was the November 20 Ready Plan Insurance…

When it comes to barn finds, it doesn’t get much better than this. In 1989, Tony John, a Welsh car enthusiast serving in the British army, spotted an Australian Charger sitting on the top of a stack of cars in a wreckers’ yard in Wales. It had a broken oil pump and the body was in very poor condition, the victim of the UK salted roads, no doubt. It had 10 previous owners and 90,000 miles on the clock. Tony bought the Charger with the intent of getting it back on the road, later purchasing a new crankshaft and camshaft from Australia. He never did get the Charger back on the road, though, and it remained in storage in his ownership for 13 years. He would have known that this…

Simon Pfitzner grew up around Sports Sedans. His father, Bernie, along with Simon Aram and Peter Finch, operated the Develco Engineering company that built so many Sports Sedans in Adelaide in the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s – including the McCormack/Trenoweth Jaguar. “When my dad was building cars we had a business that was basically in the backyard of our house,” Simon explains, “much to my mum’s disgust! “I would walk out the back door at home when I was seven or eight years old and walk across the grass 10 feet and then you’re in the factory. And in there, there’d be cars – Peter Finch’s Monaro is one I remember being built.” Today Simon runs his own engineering concern, Pfitzner Performance Gearboxes. As it happens, PPG in…

1991 Mobil1 Racing VN Commodore Biante is offering this VN Commodore SS Group A replica in 1:18, Peter Brock and Andrew Miedecke’s 1991 Tooheys 1000 challenger. They finished seventh in a year when the turbo cars were unbeatable. It forms part of the Peter Brock Collection, RRP $250.00. Available to purchase online at biante.com.au and in stockists. 2016 VF II Commodore SS-V Holden’s VF II Commodore SS-V Redline is a fitting way for the red lion to bow out and a car that Australia can be proud of. That’s why Biante is equally proud to announce that 1:18 and 1:43 replica versions of the SS-V Redline are now available to pre-order in stockists, ahead of a third-quarter 2016 release. Two colours are available in each size: Red Hot with a…

Falcon Place, Fairlane Drive, Capri Court and LTD Lane could all become part of a new landscape at Broadmeadows in Melbourne. The Ford-focused street names are already being considered as various parties jockey for the future rights to the land beneath the Ford Australia factory that closes in the first week of October. The last Falcon is due to roll off the production line on the same day that the Supercars version of the FG-X hits the track for Bathurst 1000 qualifying. It’s going to take an estimated three years to clear and cleanse the Broadmeadows site, which became a car manufacturing plant long before current standards for occupational heath and safety were even considered. Asbestos is just one of the potential hazards from the construction and by-products of a…

The secret is out as supercar power is readied for the homegrown Commodore to create the fastest Holden of all time in 2017. But it won’t be cheap. The Commodore with the most power and the fastest top speed since the car hit the road in 1978 is rumoured to have a pricetag in the $165,000 region, with some HSV dealers asking for deposits of up to $10,000. The headline numbers are huge: 475kW, or more than 600bhp, with too much torque for any of Holden’s automatic gearboxes. Between 200 and 250 will be built. The key to the conversion is the supercharged LS9 V8 engine from the latest Chevrolet Corvette, which will be shipped specially from the USA and then installed on a revised production line at Clayton in…

The Falcon GT-HO has long been overshadowed in Touring Car Masters competition by its American cousin and younger brother, but that all changed when Steven Johnson won at Hidden Valley. The son of a gun won two of the three TCM sprints in Darwin aboard an XY GT-HO presented in a Pete Geoghegan Super Falcon tribute livery. The similar car of Wayne Mercer stormed to victory in the reverse grid race, making it the first time the GT-HO model has won all three races over a TCM weekend. While Ford dominance is not unusual in the retro category, it’s the Mustang and Falcon hardtop that traditionally provide the Blue Oval with success. Johnson’s fine form in the Top End means he has closed dramatically on Torana SL/R 5000 driver and…

The real deal? – part 2 In the last few years, seeking out original Gibson Motorsport racecars and restoring them for on-sale to new clients – either people who want to race in their own right or enthusiasts who want another addition to their collection – has become one of the cornerstones of what we do at GMS. Picking up on my last column, I want to help you understand what we do to protect the integrity of our original cars, and therefore our own name, and the guarantees we offer to prospective buyers and collectors. There was one founding principle of this part of the business. We wanted to work, as far as possible, with the people we worked with in the first place: original employees of GMS, original…

Meet the most powerful – and, for those in the know, most desirable – factory Brock Commodore built. As you can see from the multi-slat grille of our photo-feature car, it’s no early-issue VC HDT or, with its Maranello Red paint, certainly no Blue Meanie. But because so few of them were built – not even the die-hards are sure of the exact figure – not many know about it and, in fact, back in 1983 few within GM-H even knew it existed. “It’s actually the king of the Brocks,” says Rob Losurdo, owner of the red HDT VH Group 3 High Output pictured. “Just like the GT-HO Phase III is the king of Fords, the High Output is the king of the Brocks – it’s the most powerful Brock.”…

The car that went on to claim victory at Bathurst in 1975 didn’t show signs of being a Mountain beater earlier in the year. Peter Brock’s ’75 ATCC campaign was a tough one, highlighted by runner-up results at Calder, Surfers Paradise and the Lakeside final round, though retirements in the other four rounds meant he finished only seventh in the pointscore. But victories in the Sandown, Bathurst and Phillip Island endurance races meant the year finished with a flurry of silverware. The 1975 Sandown 250 was Brock’s first big win in a car bearing his signature #05, actually #.05. Three weeks later at Bathurst, the car reverted to #5. The 1975 Hardie-Ferodo 1000, compared to the two 1000s which followed, was a largely straightforward affair for the winning team. The…

During the 1970s, Sports Sedan racing was a big deal, with huge crowds turning up to watch some of the most powerful and innovative machines in the country. For drivers interested in moving up from club racing to big-time racing it could also be reasonably affordable, as its explosion in popularity meant that two divisions were available: Division 1 for the high-profile, hero cars, the big V8s, and Division 2, the domain of the backyard special builders the heartland of Sports Sedans. For a young Garry Ford, 1977 was the time to upgrade from his trusty XW Falcon V8 – used for sprints and hillclimbs – into something better suited to track work. He chose a Mk1 Escort that Ron Whitaker had been racing at Oran Park and Amaroo. As…

If you’re a regular reader of this magazine you will have seen our stories over the last four years on the Leukaemia Foundation of South Australia’s fabulous initiative – the Aussie Muscle Car Run. Four of these annual week-long touring fundraisers have been held so far in the event’s home state, each starting and ending in Adelaide. The Aussie Muscle Car Run concept is best described as Getaway meets a car club run on steroids. This, folks, is no quick doddle in the countryside. The philosophy is simple: classic cars from our country’s vast heritage of homegrown high-performance stretching their legs while raising much needed funds for the treatment and care of patients with blood cancers. The 2500-3000km long-haul journeys encompass motorsport tests, visits to motoring attractions and soaking up…

Some muscle cars are bought by loving owners who pamper them like members of the family. Other muscle cars, though, aren’t so lucky. Some get stolen, smashed or thrashed. Some get parked and lost under a layer of dust in an old shed, others get left outside to brave the elements and slowly rust away. Sad, but true. We eyeball plenty of beautifully maintained and/or fully restored muscle classics in AMC, but as serious car pervs we have to admit there’s few things more intriguing – or exciting – than spotting an old classic in a paddock, or a shed, or under a shady tree, that’s seen better days and in need of some TLC. Some are beyond saving, but they all have a story to tell. So, get out…