Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 98 i Australian Muscle Car

As a teenager I devoured Chevron’s Great Race annuals, poring over every page. By mid 1989, aged 19, I had all eight editions published to that point. I loved Bill Tuckey’s colourful prose painting a rosy picture of the boys’ own adventures that were the privateer attacks of the eighties. Tuckey’s writing often romanticised even the most unpalatable of setbacks, making all-night crash rebuilds on bitterly cold Bathurst nights in breezy and flapping tents sound like unmissable team bonding sessions. Oh, how I badly wanted some of this action. I yearned to be part of a privateer campaign whose story might be told in Great Race 9. Nirvana would be leaning over pitwall with a pitboard. Fortuitously, raceweek in ’89 fell during my uni holidays. Trouble was, I had absolutely…

In an unassuming house, in an unassuming street in Brisbane is one of the best collections of Ford Australia memorabilia in the country… a collection that Ford management are not only well aware of, but have also actively assisted in its development, through various contributions over the years. The custodian and ‘curator’ of this collection is Mark Farry, a Ford enthusiast since he was in primary school. That’s when he started to assist a neighbour who used to repair and restore Falcon GTs – and other performance Fords – when he wasn’t being a high school teacher. Not only did the neighbour start Mark’s mechanical training, he also became one of Mark’s teachers, a couple of years later. The collection started way back in 1971, when he wrote to Ford…

No fewer than 431 Holden Toranas turned out to celebrate the model’s 50th birthday at the Hunter Valley Torana Club’s annual and spectacular Toranafest in September. The weekend culminated with the Ansen’s sponsored show and shine at Maitland Park, with over 400 cars parked up by 9am. Toranas came from as far away as North Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. Special guests for the weekend included Colin Bond, Don Holland and rally ace Wayne Bell. The spanner men were also out in force supporting the event with HDT’s Bruce ‘Nowa’ Nowacki and brother Ian ‘Ned’, along with former Ron Hodgson Racing guru Ron Missen and Maitland’s own Dave McLean. All were a big hit with autograph hunters. This followed twin Friday and Saturday nights functions with 250 enthusiasts in attendance…

In conjunction with SS Auto Memorabilia, Autopics have produced a 30 x 20 inch (762 x 508mm) limited release photograph to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1977 Bathurst 1000. It’s personally signed by four drivers: Allan Moffat, Colin Bond, Allan Hamilton and Peter Janson. It is a unique photograph in that it has the start, the finish and all three placegetters, a copy of the drivers’ patch, a copy of an original entry ticket signed by Allan Moffat and a copy of the program cover. It’s great value at only $177 plus $10 delivery. It’s limited to only 40 and available for pre-order now. Also available is a new release pictorial hardcover book (300mm x 220mm) with 60 pages of images of every Holden Torana SL/R 5000 L34 that…

Issue #95 highlighted the Bush Mechanics exhibition that’s currently touring the country celebrating Bush Mechanics the cult television series. That exhibition includes the intriguingly named bush-punk slot car challenge. The slot car challenge was made by Mark Thomson, creator of ABC TV show The Lost Tools of Henry Hoke with the aim of navigating an old bomb of a slot car around a perilous outback Scalextric track through corrugations, steep corners and taking care to avoid a kangaroo. Love it! The popular and quirky TV show, which first aired on the ABC in 2001, presented an Indigenous Australian take on motor mechanics. It was made by Aboriginal media company PAW Media and directed by David Batty. The five episodes centred on the left-field repair techniques of the show’s stars as…

The racing lives of Steve Perrott’s pair of Philips-sponsored Toranas are fascinatingly complementary when you stop and look through the files. The four-door’s main year of racing was in 1979 in Charlie O’Brien’s hands, though he actually started that year racing his ex-Bob Morris, Ron Hodgson four-door A9X repainted in Philips colours. Period sources account for him running early in the year at Amaroo in the AMSCAR Series and also finishing runner-up in the Sandown round of the Australian Touring Car Championship in the ex-Morris car in Philips colours. He advertised this car for sale mid-season, though we haven’t been able to pinpoint in time for the issue’s deadline at what point in ’79 he moved into the four-door Perrott now owns. O’Brien had further podium finishes in the ATCC…

You’re looking at what may well be the rarest collection of muscle cars in Australia, perhaps even the world. A complete set of single model designation variants – in this case four SS Group A Commodores – owned since new by the one family. All have the same build number, all have less than 5500km on the odometer, and one of the cars has never even been registered. The ‘one-owner’ status takes on even more significance when you realise that the cars were delivered to the family’s own Holden dealership, in the regional Victorian town of Kyabram (since relocated to nearby Echuca). If that’s not enough, the body kit on one of them was painted by another family business that was an official supplier to HSV. The unique collection belongs…

There seems to be people in the world who attract good fortune and an exciting life like others attract mosquitoes, hay fever or excess debts. Talk to someone like retired Melbourne mechanic Colin Russell and you start hearing stories about Hollywood celebrity Fred Astaire and touring car veteran Allan Moffat and Ford’s legendary Lot 6 race workshop and you begin to think that no matter what you’ve done you’ve been living an extremely boring life. Colin set out to be a simple mechanic, but fate seemed to have other things in mind for him. His natural skills as a very competent mechanic and his likeable, easy going nature made him a standout in any crowd, and soon he was seemingly falling into the most unlikely but dreamlike jobs. These days…

He took an Australian-developed car, with an Australian engine, to the other side of the world, to a Formula 5000 scene much bigger and much more competitive than ours, and came out on top. It’s fitting that Matich was the first Australian to try his hand in US Formula 5000. After all, Matich’s F5000 programme began off the back of his US Can-Am sports car effort. Things mightn’t have gone to plan with the sports cars, but the experience of running in the ’67 Can-Am at least meant Matich knew what he was in for racing in the States. For his brief 1971 US F5000 campaign, Matich would be driving a McLaren rather than one of his own Matich cars (the first Matich A50 F5000 was still on the drawing…

Expatriate Australian Horst Kwech was among the Lola T300 runners in 1972. The sedan specialist (and the man who would be responsible for Allan Moffat’s DeKon Chevy Monza), parked his regular Alfa touring car to take up the F5000 challenge, partly because you could win “half a year’s salary in one afternoon”. But with little openwheeler experience, Kwech was cognisant of the inherent risks driving cars his then-wife Dotty cheerfully described as ‘rolling coffins’. “In the Alfa,” Kwech observed, “I can keep my thoughts on going faster. In the Lola, I think about those guardrails.” It was the sponsor of Kwech’s Alfa that led the push to go F5000. They got themselves a Lola T300, which Kwech described as ‘not a very good car’. “Before our first race we had…

Tragic end to Bathurst racecar The ‘Patto hatch’ that appeared on last issue’s cover is owned by the ACT’s Russell Stenhouse. Many moons ago Russ also owned an XY Falcon GT-HO Phase III, a car that had raced in the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500. This machine was later involved in a horrific road accident in Canberra in 1977 – after Russ had sold the car – that claimed the lives of two young men. The car in question was the Phase III driven by Des West in the ‘72 Bathurst classic. This was when West hooked up with American drag racer Lee Drake for a serious attack on event. Drake had originally ordered a GT-HO Phase IV, but the Supercar Scare that erupted mid-year scuttled those plans. The team was forced…

If the name Hugh Primrose doesn’t ring any bells, his stunning photograph from Bathurst 1970 of Tony Roberts’ XW Falcon GT-HO Phase II flying over the Armco backwards most certainly will. Hugh was spectating, camera in hand, between Skyline and The Esses late in the race when he reacted instinctively to a screech of tyres and captured the #67E Falcon two metres off the ground as it sailed over the side the Mountain, ahead of it plunging into the gully below The Dipper. We were delighted to hear recently from Hugh still a resident of the NSW Central West, in Lockhart, after his ‘Kodak moment’ opened our story in AMC #84 on Roberts’ great escape. He then sent us another couple of photographs that, if not nearly as stunning as…

Did you hear the one about the Monaro GTS sedan raced by the famed McLaren team in the mid 1970s as the GM Dealer Team? Well, several key members of Team McLaren, at least. This was a Phil Kerr-led assault on New Zealand’s biggest production car endurance race, the 1976 Benson & Hedges 1000 at Pukekohe. Kerr was an instrumental figure in the formative years of McLaren, leading the team through the difficult period immediately following Bruce McLaren’s fatal Can-Am testing crash in 1970. By ’76 he had left the squad and was back in his native New Zealand operating a mechanical workshop in Auckland with friend and former McLaren F1 driver Mike Hailwood. The lure of racing soon had the pair hatching plans to race in the nine-hour B&H…

The Holden Torana A9X’s deeds at Mount Panorama are now being celebrated by the brilliant artist Peter Hughes with this epic limited edition collector's print. It depicts the hatchback and four-door versions that raced at Bathurst in 1977, 1978 and 1979 in a form never seen before. All the stars are shown. Hughes has out-done himself with this piece of art! Each print is 840mm by 640mm on 250gsm matte finish paper. It’s $99.95 for print, plus $17 for postage in tracked solid mailing tube. Visit www.v8sleuth.com.au…

Dick would have to take this bastard child of trans-Atlantic parents and on the sweat of his own brow turn it into a winner Dick Johnson had every reason to begrudge the introduction of Group A in Australia. After years of struggle, he had finally made the big time, piloting big hairy-chested 5.8-litre Falcons under the homegrown Group C category that turned him into the poster boy of Ford fans across the country. The humble Daisy Hill mechanic had indeed done good, yet found himself in a seemingly dire situation. Johnson simply had to accept the controversial new formula – and embrace it. Even though he had won three Australian Touring Car Championships and the Bathurst 1000 in his beloved Falcons, he’d never been comfortable with the argy-bargy and backroom…

With our landmark 100th issue just two issues away, we are getting all nostalgic here at AMC HQ and digging up behind-the-scenes pics from our earliest days. Here’s issue #2’s GT-HO Phase III cover image ‘unplugged’ from its early 2002 photoshoot at Oran Park Raceway. Oddly, only two colour images of this stunner from Helmut Mueller’s shoot made the cut and appeared in the magazine. The dropsheet created a clear line of definition between the spoiler and the ground, assisting graphic designer Mat Clancy with his digital wizardry in deep-etching the car from its background.…

Mt Panorama at home W hen I took over the reins of this column, Mr Ed was inquisitive about the track I had at home. Surely I had an interesting permanent set-up? As it turns out, I do. So here, dear readers, is my home track, an interpretation of the Mt Panorama circuit. To my way of thinking, permanent home tracks are a real window into the personality of the owner, so no doubt you will have your own opinions of me by the end of this month’s column. Creating a home track is usually born of the need to get up off the carpet and not have to pack your slot set away after every use. To get there, you can go two ways: a proprietary plastic set, or…

Photographer unknown Phil Rizzo passed on images given to him a few years ago by a bloke whose name he now can’t recall. Should our mystery snapper we reading this, we’ll be happy to acknowledge you next issue. Oran, Amaroo and Catalina Parks are depicted. Gordon Smith Gordon is a Kiwi with a thing, clearly, for XD and XE Falcons. “While in Australia in the late 1970s to early ’80s I attended races meetings at Bathurst, Oran Park, Amaroo Park and Lakeside,” he says. How good are his shots of Dicky Johnson on the edge in Tru-Blu?! Alan Quinlan By November 1972 I had enough money saved to buy an XU-1,” writes Alan. Paying with cash earned him a $200 discount on the RRP of $3759. His mother, though, had…

Kevin Bartlett saw the US scene not just as a way to make some money from racing but also a place where he might sell his McLaren M10B-Chev. As it turned out, there was no shortage of good F5000 cars available in the States, so the McLaren would be returning unsold to Australia. Still, it attracted some attention in its only US appearance, in 1972 at Laguna Seca, where Bartlett qualified seventh and finished fifth overall from the two heats. And it could easily have been better than that: in one heat he was forced up the escape road on the last corner of the race when his brakes failed. Had that not happened, KB would have been third overall. “I did pretty well at Laguna Seca,” Bartlett says, “but…

1996 Pack Leader EF Falcon Pack Leader Racing was the start of a long line of Supercars (and V8 Supercars) teams and history. Alan Jones recruited Ross and Jim Stone from Dick Johnson Racing and nabbed the Phillip Morris money from Glenn Seton, for whom team owner Alan Jones had driven. While they couldn’t advertise cigarettes any more, it was pretty obvious that the colour scheme referred to Peter Jackson, as did the style of the initials of ‘Pack Leader’. Jones and teammate Paul Romano made progress through 1996, enough that Jones got himself a good lead in the Bathurst 1000 and was pulling away before the car burst into flames (where there’s smoke, there’s fire, as they say). Anyway, the Apex Replicas 1:18 scale Falcon looks sensational. All the…

Baskerville hounds The Baskerville Historics race meeting took another step forward in 2017 with records broken both in attendance and on the track. The bumper crowd witnessed multiple Targa Tasmania winner Jason White set a new outright lap record of 50.1516 seconds driving a Lola T192 F5000. White lowered John Bowe’s long-standing 1982 benchmark in one of a number of exotic cars brought to Tasmania by the Dutton’s Group. He also turned laps in a fearsome McLaren M8F Can-Am car. Over 40 mainland competitors came to experience the recently upgraded circuit, the result of tireless efforts by the Baskerville Foundation. “With the track resurfacing, control tower upgrades and new footbridge all now complete, it’s safe to say Baskerville Raceway has never been in better condition,” Baskerville Historics chair Mike Ellis…

Chargers continue to command impressive prices at auction – and not just RT versions built for Bathurst. A Vintage Red 1972 Charger E55 coupe fetched an impressive $80,000 at a recent Shannon’s auction, showing that V8 Chryslers are becoming much sought-after. The Holden highlight of the same Sydney auction was an LJ Torana GTR XU-1 in the rare period colour of March 17 Green that went for $140,000. Yet it was the Fords that commanded top dollar. The highest was the $215,000 paid for a well-documented and cosmetically-refurbished white 1970 XW GT-HO Phase II sedan after a protracted duel between two floor bidders. Its final price was almost matched by a very well-presented late-1970 delivered Falcon XY GT Sedan finished in Vermillion Fire, which triggered another bidding frenzy before selling…

A 40th anniversary Repco Reliability ‘Retrial’ is set for 2019. Unlike the original event, vehicles will mostly travel on tarmac over 14,000km and 28 days, including rest days. Organisers are targeting pre-1979 two-wheel drive vehicles and are planning competitive club-style elements, civic displays and other fun activities. Vehicles will travel over many of the original transit/dirt stages, albeit shortened to give retrialists a taste of the ’79 event but without the fatigue and strain on vehicles of that gruelling encounter with ‘Terror Australis’. With a minimum of two and maximum of four drivers per car, this event will include some of the original drivers and vehicles in a fully supported mechanical breakdown service, ensuring cars and owners won’t be left stranded. “Club and special interest vehicles are welcomed in all…

Holden’s A9X Torana is one of Australia’s most iconic racecars. It helped define a golden era of Australian touring car racing, winning two Bathurst titles and waging war against the last of Ford’s Falcon hardtops. Last issue AMC marked the 40th anniversary of the mighty A9X and our feature touching on 25 of the surviving hatchback and four-door A9X racecars generated plenty of interest. Continuing our celebration of the A9X’s major milestone, this issue we take a closer look at a pair of privateer cars we haven’t stopped before to closely examine; the Roadways/Gown-Hindhaugh four-door and hatchback A9Xs that were running mates in 1979, the last year of the A9X in action. It’s not just their race histories that make these cars extra special, but how after nearly 40 years…

Ford won its Australian Touring Car Championship with a Falcon in 1973, and I was at the wheel. That year was absolutely epic. It started with my ATCC title win in the GT-HO Phase III, then we passed the ball to a new car, the Falcon coupe dubbed the Superbird, which delivered me my third Bathurst victory, but the season then ended with me in hospital after an inexcusable call by Howard Marsden. Above all, it was the year that could be said to have started what became known as the Brock versus Moffat era. Ford pulled out of motor racing at the end of the season. Now who would ever have predicted that, given that they’d just won the touring car championship and Bathurst? The new set of rules…

Sometimes it’s the simple ideas that are the best. And in the complex world of top level openwheeler racing, they don’t come any simpler or easier to understand than Formula 5000. A large Formula 1-style openwheeler with a powerful race-tuned 5.0-litre stock-block V8 in the back – what’s not to like about that? Indeed, what made the idea appealing when Formula 5000 began in the late ‘60s holds true today, nearly 50 years later, as we get set for a modern-day rebirth of the original F5000 concept (the new FT5000, or S5000, depending on which name Supercars Australia settles with). Not that the attraction of such a formula was readily apparent back in the day. Australia was initially reluctant to embrace F5000, when in the late ‘60s the search was…

Max Stewart was killed in a Formula 5000 crash at Calder in 1977. Forty years on and he remains one of our most decorated openwheeler stars, with multiple Australian Drivers’ Championships and Australian Grand Prix victories to his name. Stewart was among the Aussie contingent in the US in 1973. In fact, he was arguably the most successful of all of them that year, being both the highest placed Australian in the points (12th) and the highest paid (Max took home $6800 prizemoney). Indeed, just as Stewart saw the US sojourn as an adventure to be enjoyed (and by all accounts the man they called the ‘Jolly Green Giant’ was quite adept at enjoying himself) the primary goal was to make it work financially. Like a lot of his compatriots,…

The 1976 season was a pivotal one in Alan Jones’ career. He might have already been a Formula One driver, but by no means was he a star. In 1975 he’d raced for privateer Harry Stiller and the team owned by former dual world champion Graham Hill. For ’76 he signed with another ex-world champion team owner, John Surtees. But these teams were among the also-rans. For the moment in F1, Jones was relatively unknown; a mid-field driver at best, making up the numbers at worst. These were frustrating times for Jones. His spells with Hill and Surtees were unhappy experiences. In AJ’s view, both Hill and Surtees had not come to terms with the fact that they were no longer driving, and neither was willing to accept the opinion…

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…