Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 102 i Australian Muscle Car

In April the extravagant new Tailem Bend motor racing facility opened for business, the inaugural race meeting taking in the opening round of the CAMS National Racing Championships. The Heritage Touring Cars were on the bill, and as their first race also happened to be the first event for the weekend, Jack le Brocq earned the distinction of becoming the first driver to win a race at the new South Australian venue (le Brocq was driving the ex-Colin Bond ’92 Sierra RS500). Reports from those who attended the debut of ‘The Bend’ say the place is lavish almost beyond belief, and that the only drawback were the strong winds which turned the place into a dust storm (despite the best efforts of the venue’s managers, who apparently exhausted the state’s…

Issue #100 included a comprehensive listing of the major stories and contents contained in AMC’s first 100 editions. Now we’re pleased to offer readers a free digital version of that issue guide. This PDF document features a keyword search function – an absolute godsend, believe us. Enter, say, ‘A9X’ in the FIND window and you’ll be directed to the AMC issues containing stories on the hottest of hot Toranas. To receive this free digital guide, simply send an email to us at sales@chevron.com.au with responses to five simple questions: 1. If you could have any muscle car what would it be? 2. Do you maintain your own vehicle? 3. Are you a member of a car club or clubs? If so which club(s)? 4. Tell us one story in AMC’s…

Who in their right mind would say ‘no thanks’ to Harry Firth to join the Holden Dealer Team? Barry Arentz, that’s who. Arentz simply wasn’t prepared to sacrifice his lifestyle and work commitments to make a career as a race driver. He just wanted to enjoy his motorsport. Barry grew up in a motoring family – his father Martin was Casino’s Ford dealer for 30-odd years from the 1940s. Arentz Snr entered three Redex Trials from 1953 in Ford Customlines and a Zephyr, with young Barry navigating in 1955. “I was conned into being a navigator but got carsick,” Barry laughs today. “So I took over the driving but was too fast for my father’s liking. He got cranky, withdrew the car and we came home!” The duo entered different…

This is a Holden racecar which Holden would have preferred never existed. It was, effectively, the first Commodore VL Group A SV to hit the track, its debut at Amaroo Park in July 1988 predating the official 1988 Sandown 500 rollout of the brave-new-era post-Brock TWR-run Holden Special Vehicles factory team cars by almost two months. But this first ‘Walkinshaw’ to race was not a Group A touring car, but rather a Sports Sedan. And one which had started life as a Torana A9X! This is the unusual tale of Bob Tindal’s Commodore VL Sports Sedan, now magnificently restored and resplendent in the trim in which it so infuriated the then-fledgling HSV, 30 years ago. It’s owned today by John Alcorn, an entrant/sponsor in Sports Sedans and V8 Supercars for…

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…

Located on the edge of the Great Lakes, Detroit seems to be afflicted by some remarkably unpredictable tides. The fortunes of the Big Three have ebbed and flowed dramatically in the decade since the Global Financial Crisis. Plans one year have often been washed away the next, as General Motors, Ford and Chrysler struggle to keep their heads above water. April brought more evidence of how quickly the tide can turn in the Motor City. After years of silence and seeming intransigence, Ford Australia was suddenly returning to Supercars – and with the Mustang which so many (including this writer) had argued for. Particularly striking was that the announcement was fronted by Ford Australia President and CEO, Graeme Whickman. This is the man who had presided over the closure of…

A Falcon XB GT coupe sold for $121,000 at the recent Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic auction. That was the top price achieved by any of the cars on offer, but it was not the most expensive item to go under the Shannons hammer. The highest-priced auction purchase was a set of number plates – and they went for more than four times as much as the XB GT! Victorian registration plate number 101 attracted an astonishing $510,000. The record-breaking figure was end result of a furious duel between floor, phone and online bidders that opened at, believe it or not, $300,000. And the VIC 101 plates weren’t even the only number plates to attract six figures: $157,000 was paid for number VIC 453, while VIC 752 made $150,000. Even the…

Last issue, in my first column for AMC, I briefly mentioned how special the Torana A9X is to me because it was the model with which I won the 1979 Australian Touring Car Championship. The magazine was keen for me to elaborate on the ’79 title this time around. Winning that year against Peter Brock in an identical car, against the HDT, with John Sheppard running it, and without the special Bridgestone tyres they had, personally I felt that was a real achievement. Beating the HDT was never easy. One big difficulty we had was we were racing against the team that did the homologation for our car. Harry Firth always used this to his advantage: with new parts, he would keep things to himself rather than pass them onto…

Turbocharging was still in its infancy when Nissan Australia decided to go touring car racing in 1981. Three years and 60 blown turbos later, the company had made its point, and ushered in the era of turbocars. Naively, the Bluebird was originally intended to merely win the domestic Group C touring car category’s three-litre class, but it didn’t take long for the team to realise the potential of turbocharging. As forced induction took hold in Formula 1, rallying and at Le Mans, the small crew at Nissan Motor Sport’s rented factory in Melbourne’s southeast unleashed more and more power from its 1.8-litre four-pot. Soon it was matching the big V8s like Peter Brock’s Marlboro HDT Commodores and Dick Johnson’s Greens-Tuf Falcon. And these were touring car upstarts. The crew came…

A single row of armco railing between the cars and the drop off the Mountain, and no convenient run-off road for those that get it wrong over Skyline. There’s also no annoying advertising hoardings to block the view of the fans – and how about the packed spectator areas? For all the talk of record Bathurst crowds in today’s Supercars era, we don’t think we’ve seen any recent pic showing a bigger Skyline crowd than this. For the record, the Stanmore Auto Port Falcon of Chris Brauer/Murray Harrod was the highest placed XT GT in the ’68 Hardie-Ferodo (ninth outright) on what was a rather bleak day for Ford.…

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first NASCAR race outside of North America, which was held on Bob Jane’s Calder Park Thunderdome in February 1988. It was a particularly exciting and colourful time on the domestic scene, with NASCAR and the homegrown AUSCAR quickly gaining a foothold, before interest and Jane’s financial backing began to ebb away. But for a few short years the Thunderdome attracted packed crowds as a host of stars from the national racing scene took on the challenge of this vastly different motorsporting discipline. These prominent racers added to an amazing chapter in our sport’s history. To get into the ‘stock car spirit’, here’s a list of 25 local stars who all had a crack at these forms of racing at some stage. Some…

Greg Toepfer “On reading Alan Sheehan’s letter in issue #100 about the 1995 Mobil Round Australia Trial, it took me back to when I was part of the service crew for John Williams’ three-car Holden team sponsored by Meriton Apartments. This consisted of two HT Monaro GTS 350s and a Torana XU-1 in the Historic Classic Class. Barry Ferguson, a star of the Repco version in 1979, and others were with John in his car. We also can’t forget Mal Rose, ex-Supercar driver, as he was giving us a hand in service. Our transport manager was none other than Greg Lynch, one of the three guys from the Pagewood story in issue #98. As Greg still had many contacts, he organised the service vehicles – Rodeo Dual Cabs and a…

Dicky’s 1980 Tru-Blu Falcon What is the most important Australian touring car in our nation’s rich history of tin-top competition? Holden fans would argue it to be Peter Brock’s HDT Torana A9X, given it crushed the field at Bathurst in 1979 by six laps, while Ford fans may say Allan Moffat’s amazing Coca-Cola Mustang is the standout from the Blue Oval, as it kick-started his career. When it comes to Dick Johnson fans, his 1981 Bathurst-winning Tru-Blu Falcon XD and 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship-winning Palmer Tube Mills Falcon XE are often pointed to as their all-time favourites, but bizarrely – in our opinion here at AMC – we have never heard much at all about the car that really launched his career. Literally! The original Tru-Blu Falcon XD, built…

The last Australian-made Holden rolled off the production in October, 2017. But that final manual Commodore SS-V Redline sedan won’t be the last V8-powered Australian-made high-performance car to emanate from the industrial areas of northern Adelaide. Literally just down the road from the now-closed Holden plant at Elizabeth is where a new Brabham hypercar will be manufactured. The aim of Brabham Automotive, headed by Le Mans winner David Brabham, the third son of triple world champion Sir Jack, is to produce the new Brabham BT62 out of a 15,000 square-metre facility at Edinburgh Parks in northern Adelaide. Funding is said to be in place to begin construction of a planned initial run of 70 cars. According to Brabham Automotive’s director of manufacturing, Christian Reynolds, the car has been tested and…

Surviving Chrysler Valiant Chargers that raced in the Bathurst classic are rare enough, but this machine has other strings to its bow. It’s the only Charger to run the Great Race that also contested a round of the Australian Rally Championship. It also went down Calder Park’s quarter mile and competed in hillclimbs. The full story of the very versatile ex-Brian Ovenden Hot Mustard VH was outlined in AMC #68. It told of current and long-time owner Peter Scales purchasing the car in 1992, none the wiser to its race and rally adventures. When Peter started investigating the car’s history, he discovered it finished 11th in the 1973 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 in the hands of Ovenden and Max McGinley. The next revelation came as a bit of a shock. “I was…

So just who is this ‘Phantom Hunter’ and where are they now? Every sport has them. The ‘whatever happened to’ guy or girl. In Australian motorsport, such a list would regularly be made up of any number of privateer entrants, those that spent every last penny just to scrape their way onto the grid at Bathurst in the 1960s and ’70s. Theirs are names only the true anoraks of the sport would likely recognise – the regular person on the street wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at any of them. But there’s a name from this era we don’t know, and not only do I want to know it but I’d also love to know more about the person involved. They’ve become something of a mythical figure over the years, but…

Landmark model The 1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500 was the first time that the Ford Motor Company of Australia and General Motors-Holden went head-to-head in a fierce, take-no-prisoners battle for muscle car supremacy at Mount Panorama. It was the race that started the Ford versus Holden Bathurst legend – and the XT Falcon GT was the Blue Oval’s official representative in this milestone race. Fantastic plastic No less than 78 XT GTs left the factory sporting that most bizarre of late sixties US-influenced automotive styling trends, the vinyl roof. Unsurprisingly, black was the colour of choice for 74 of the cars fitted with this option, while four cars had a white vinyl roof. One of these was Candy Apple Red in colour, another GT Gold. Would love to see these unique colour…

The trio of XT Falcon GTs that represented the Ford Motor Company of Australia in the 1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500 all experienced significant delays en route to reaching the finish in an uninspiring 12th (Geoghegan/ Geoghegan), 31st (Gibson/Seton) and 42nd (McKeown/Martin) respectively. Their tales of woe have been well documented. Yet, what the history books and Ford enthusiasts have largely overlooked is that these three burly works GTs weren’t just trounced by the Monaros on October 6, 1968, they were also beaten home by the fourth factory-entered Falcon – a plain-jane rep mobile. One could argue that this three-on-the-tree Falcon 500, with a potent 302 Windsor V8 upfront, is the Great Race’s ultimate sleeper – a car and campaign largely forgotten by both race historians and Ford tragics. When this machine…

Bratkovic family Car: 1968 HK Monaro GTS 307 Hometown: Sydney, NSW What is it? “It’s a HK Monaro GTS 307, Silver Mink in colour, and with all matching numbers and all panels as it left the factory. My parents, Karl and Lee, purchased it new in July 1969 from Clintons Motors in Campbelltown and they still own it today,” Myro Bratkovic (right) told us. What can you tell us about its life? “The Monaro brought out the street racer in Mum – thankfully the car was optioned with front and rear belts! Not that she ever crashed it, but when she was at the wheel the Monaro regularly reached the legal speed limit in as short a distance as possible time – and many times beyond it when lined up…

Sierra Low Sierra High For those with a slot car addiction, Scalextric is now offering two impressive Australian-based touring cars, the Peter Brock BMW M3 and the Allan Moffat ANZ-backed Ford Sierra. These two editions add to the series of quality slot cars that represent the high watermark period of Group A racing in Australia that lasted until the advent of ‘Godzilla, the Nissan GT-R. Although the Sierra eventually became dominant during this period, any race team could buy or develop the bits to be at the front of the grid. The M3s were immediately competitive, though soon outgunned. That said, they could still give their competitors a fright at twisty circuits such as the unmodified Winton Motor Raceway and the now defunct Amaroo Park. Both cars were introduced in…

Regular readers will have noted that the Driving Quest page is not the place to read hardcore reviews of high performance machines pushed to their limits. It’s just not our bag. There are many, many media outlets performing that function. Instead, with AMC’s heritage bent, we look at the cars we access from car company media fleets with one eye on the past and the other on the road ahead. As the page’s name suggests, we seek answers to questions on our mind as observers of the performance motoring market. In the case of the Kia Stinger GT: is it a worthy replacement to Commodore and Falcon in the performance, rear-wheel drive sedan segment that Holden and Ford have abandoned? And what reaction does the Korean-built rocket bring from those…