Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 105 i Australian Muscle Car

The first Perkins Engineering-built Group A VN Commodore raced in Pro-Duct colours by privateer Bob Pearson is set to race again following a comprehensive restoration by owner Jamie McDonald. The car was debuted by Pearson in 1991 and went on to a long life of privateer racing, having its last competitive outing in the Konica Series (now Dunlop Super2) 18 years ago. Now it’s set to return to the track in the Heritage Touring Car category for Historic Group A and C cars. “It’s just out of the paint shop and got the suspension in it and now we are doing the fit-out of the electrical and plumbing,” McDonald told AMC. “We’ve fully refurbished a Perkins slide (injection) motor for it and I’m hoping to have all the running gear…

Fred Morgan is a largely unsung hero in the history of Holden at Bathurst. Not only is he not as widely known as his achievements would warrant, but for many years (until we tracked him down for our feature story in AMC #68), motorsport and Holden enthusiasts who aware of him incorrectly knew him as ‘Frank’ Morgan – which was how the press erroneously described him in reports of the 1963 Bathurst 500. It was in that very first Great Race at Bathurst that Fred Morgan (along with co-driver Ralph Sach) wrote himself into the records books as the first driver to score a top-three result in the October classic in a Holden, finishing second in a Holden EH S4 (today we’d say Fred and Ralph Sach scored Holden’s first…

Our regular columnist Bob Morris read our recent feature on Kingsley Hibbard and his Falcon XY GT-HO Phase III (AMC #101) with keen interest. By coincidence, it turns out that Bob went to Melbourne on that same 1971 Sandown 250 weekend which landed Hibbard in hot water with the local Highway Patrol. Bob headed south down the Hume with a mate of his to collect his new Phase III in preparation for Bathurst. After picking up the car, they then stayed on in Melbourne to watch the Sandown race before driving the car back to Sydney. But they only got as far as Albury before Morris was pulled over by the police. As Bob’s new Phase III was the same colour as Hibbard’s car, the cops had reason to suspect…

Seems hard to believe today but back in the mid-‘70s Ford almost couldn’t give brand new Falcon Hardtops away. Due to a variety of factors (the oil crisis, high theft and crash rates leading to high insurance premiums) big coupes were out of style, and even perceived as ‘cars for old men’. Ford’s marketing chiefs Max Gransden and Keith Horner knew they had to come up with something special to lure younger buyers to showrooms, and that something special was John Goss. Goss was a household name, a star racing driver with a youthful, even flamboyant image – and he had just won Bathurst at the wheel of the very same type of Falcon coupe Ford was having so much trouble selling. The John Goss Special was carefully positioned as…

There’s never been anything quite like the Coupe 4. Not before, nor after it. Holden Special Vehicles’ super coupe is truly unique. After all, it’s the first and only Australian designed and manufactured all-wheel drive coupe. It broke cover as a near-production concept at the Australian International Motor Show in Sydney in October 2003, which means it’s already 15 years old. Today it stands as one of the most collectable modern classics. The Coupe 4 was already on my wishlist 10 years ago when I started looking around for something different to put in the garage. Like most car guys, there were plenty of desirable machines on that list, but getting an Australian muscle car was the highest priority. At the time, third generation Monaro models were between about three…

On 16 December 1968, Scotsman Andrew Cowan, his brother-in-law Brian Coyle and British Rally Champion Colin Malkin, in a Hillman Hunter, won the greatest road race of all time, the London-Sydney Marathon, from Paddy Hopkirk, Alec Poole and Tony Nash in an Austin 1800 by a margin of just six minutes, after 16,694 competitive kilometres in 10 days, seven minutes and nine seconds. Ian Vaughan, a young Victorian trials driver and engineer at Ford, along with Bob Forsyth and Jack Ellis, was third in a Ford XR Falcon GT a further six minutes back. They led home the Australian Ford works team to first place in the Ladbroke’s Team’s Prize, in third, sixth and eighth places, beating the best in the world. The marathon had attracted 98 entries, 25 of…

Fifty years is quite a long time when you think about it.These shots from the ’68 Great Race offer us a graphic illustration of how much things have changed at Mount Panorama in half a century – the venue itself as much as the machinery. It’s also a reminder that in year one of the battle at Bathurst between Ford and Holden, it wasn’t strictly an exclusive V8 fight between the two – Warren Weldon had decided to give it one last go in his ’65 model Studebaker Lark (and there was also a V8 Valiant VE that year, for Clyde Hodgins and Stan Pomroy). While Weldon qualified the big American car a decent 13th, time had moved on – in this magnificent shot (above) at Skyline, the old Lark…

You could say it was cool while it lasted. But it’s more accurate to declare ‘it was cold while it lasted.’ Canberra joined the V8 Supercar schedule in 2000, after the ACT government saw what the Adelaide 500 achieved for South Australia. It was a unique event with a demanding racetrack around the Parliamentary Triangle, held at the start of winter just as the Federal politicians were breaking from their slumber and heading back into their electorates. The driving force behind the event was ACT chief minister ‘Can Do’ Kate Carnell. In announcing the ‘National Capital 100’ in 1999, Carnell’s political spin included the absurd notion that Canberra had edged out bids from Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand to secure the staging rights for the race. Oh please...…

Howard Smith Howard Smith is a long-time fan of last issue’s Muscle Man profilee Spencer Martin. Initially, the ‘old school ties that bind’ drew Howard to the two-time Australian Drivers Championship (Gold Star) winner. Howard attended the same school in Sydney’s suburban north as Martin, what’s now Marist College Eastwood [ED: Me too!]. “As an ‘Old Boy’ of his school, I was always a great fan,” Howard writes. “He was about two years ahead of me and I followed his racing career with great interest. I have included my collection of photos of him.” We are especially taken by the side-on shot of the #1 Brabham Climax 2.5 which magnificently conveys the sensation of speed. Danger is written all over another shot, with a very brave Kevin Bartlett attempting to…

The Grand Sport Rally Pack was a factory option available on a range of models, from the XW to XC. With a tick of a box on the order form the customer could add several sporty features to his (or her) new Falcon without going to the expense of buying the GT. The features included GS side stripe and badging, GS insignia on a three spoke - deep dished steering wheel, GT dash featuring speedometer, tachometer, odometer, oil pressure, water temperature and fuel gauges, stainless steel wheel covers. It was available on the Falcon 500, Futura and Fairmont sedans and wagon. The actual GS options remained the same, including the GT dash, but some other items crept onto the general option list, like sunroof and a stereo radio/tape player. For…

An auction of the largest single collection of Peter Brock cars and memorabilia in existence, held at Bathurst on the night before the Bathurst 1000 – Lloyds’ ‘Brock Collection’ auction of Peter Champion-owned cars was an event in itself. As an auction, it set new records; it was, in fact, Lloyds’ biggest Australian auction ever. Total sales on the final fall of the auctioneer’s hammer amounted to just under $6 million, although Lloyds spokesperson Kirstie Minifie expected that figure to rise considerably during post-auction negotiations with some of the under-bidders. “The total from the sale will hit $10 million,” Minifie said. “We’re expecting the rest of the cars to sell in the next few days.” On the night, the best was saved till last. The final item to go under…

In the ’07 Bathurst 1000 the Owen Kelly/Matt Halliday Ford Performance Racing Falcon BF wore a white-with-blue-stripes retro livery reminiscent of the Falcon XC Cobra released in 1978. A little over ten years on and the same team (known now as Tickford Racing) decked out its Mark Winterbottom/Dean Canto Falcon FG-X entry in a similar Cobra-inspired theme. But just as Winterbottom’s 2018 Bathurst 1000 Bottle-O Falcon Cobra livery was a nod to the past, in recognition of the XC Cobra’s 40th anniversary, it also ushered in a brand new Ford muscle coupe as Tickford took the wraps off its new Cobra-themed TSV-535R Mustang road car package. If the TSV-535R looks a treat in its iconic Ford ‘Cobra’ colours, the latest Tickford Mustang package is a lot more than just a…

It has been a lengthy and at times fraught gestation process, but finally the new S5000 is set to go. What began as an idea for a kind of neo-Formula 5000 has evolved into what will likely become Australia’s premier openwheeler formula – and one which should prompt CAMS to reintroduce the Gold Star Australian Drivers’ Championship award. While a brand new control Onroak-Ligier chassis gives the class a contemporary look and feel (it is also the first racing car in Australia to feature the controversial ‘Halo’ protection driver device), the ‘old school’ aspects of the original concept remain: Ford’s 5.0-litre Coyote V8 tuned to 560 horsepower, a modest downforce package and huge 17-inch rear tyres. S5000 will run at selected Supercars and Shannons Nationals race meetings next year –…

John Goss was recognised for his services to motorsport in this year’s Queen’s Birthday honours. He was presented with his Order of Australia medal by the Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, at a special ceremony at Government House in Yarralumla, Canberra. As it happens, this was not the first meeting between Goss and the governor general – it turns out that they’d actually met over a beer in a Sydney pub some decades earlier! The governor general even recalled their previous meeting when time came for Goss to step up to receive his award. “He remembered meeting me about 30 years ago in a little pub near Victoria Barracks in Sydney,” Goss told AMC. “At the time he had just returned from active service as a major general in the…

AMC: Did you have a good relationship with the Geogehgans? John Sheppard: Yeah, Pete was my mate, and we got on better and related better. Leo was a little more aloof, a bit up himself! Eventually Tom and I got to be quite good friends, but in the first place I thought he was an old oaf, but he was clever, and a lovely old bloke too. AMC: Who do you think was better out of Pete and Leo? JS: I don’t, to be honest. For someone so clever, Pete was very humble. Leo was more pompous, but he could drive really, really quickly. He had to train himself a bit whereas Pete would just hop in the car and go for it. Pete…

Among the many highlights at the three-day Baskerville Historics meeting (September 21-23) was the track reappearance of the John McCormack Valiant Charger Repco-Holden Sports Sedan which has been lovingly restored by Mark Trenoweth and his team (and featured in AMC #92). In a fitting touch, Tasmanian-born former Elfin factory driver Mark McLaughlin drove the Charger (McCormack had been the factory Elfin driver when he raced the Charger in the mid-’70s), while Trenoweth took the wheel of his ex-McCormack Unipart Jaguar XJS. On track, a healthy field of Heritage Touring Cars turned it on, although the weekend’s highpoint was the duel between the ‘86 Benetton Formula 1 machine driven by Josh Kean and the Can-Am McLaren M8F of Jason White – ‘80s 1.5-litre turbo power vs ‘70s 8.4-litre Big Block Chev…

For many Holden fans the idea of a Holden race machine not powered by a V8 engine is unthinkable. And yet, for all the glorious history of V8-powered Monaros, Toranas and Commodores in Australian touring car racing, the real heritage of Holden’s motorsport history lies with its six-cylinder engines. It’s a six-cylinder legacy that runs deep. Let’s not forget that for the first 20 years of Holden’s existence, there was no V8. And even when the first V8-engined Holdens did appear, with the 307 and 327 Chevys that became available in the HK range, it was some time before they began to find their way onto our racetracks en masse. Even as late as the mid-1970s, for example, a well-developed six-cylinder Torana XU-1 Sports Sedan was likely to be just…

Biante Model Cars has released a new model of the Holden Dealer Team LC Torana GTR XU-1 driven to victory by Colin Bond at the 1971 Sandown 250. This 1:18 die-cast model boasts fully opening parts, highly detailed engine bay, interior and undercarriage along with beautiful finishing throughout. Coming in a limited edition of only 402 pieces with a numbered Certificate of Authenticity, it’s a release that shouldn’t be missed. The LC missed out on winning too many big races – outgunned by the bigger Fords mostly, so Bondy’s win at Sandown is certainly one for Holden enthusiasts. The LC and LJ Toranas were (and remain) great-looking cars and this model captures that beautifully. It also shows off team boss Harry Firth’s minimalist attitude at the time to signwriting –…

Way back in 2016’s issue #91 we covered the Australian-built Morris Cooper S in great detail, from the road cars to the boys in blue and, of course, the mighty Mini’s giant-killing racing exploits in the 1966 Bathurst 500. In that issue’s Whaddayaknow section we pondered the fate of the winning Bob Holden/ Rauno Aaltonen #13C Cooper S, as well as the other eight Cooper S entries that finished second through to ninth. Sadly, not one of those nine cars is known to have survived. And that latest request for info, not surprisingly, drew a complete blank. Thus, some two years later we are no closer to finding one of the magnificent nine from ’66. Yet at least we can report on the spectacular demise of one of these super…

“Go on, open it up,” urges Holden Special Vehicles managing director Tim Jackson. So, I do. And suddenly, the cabin of the Chevrolet Camaro is awash in luscious, deep and loud V8 NOISE. “Hello,” laughs Jackson. Our Camaro is now rapidly gathering pace, so instead of merging seamlessly into the traffic meandering along Melbourne’s Eastlink we’re making a rather more obvious, louder and faster entry. It’s as if Pavarotti has arrived on stage at La Scala riding a rocket-powered skateboard and using Metallica as his backing band. But then the Camaro is made for grand and obvious entrances. Its sleek two-door coupe exterior is a stunning, sharp-edged expression of muscle. It is intended to be the centre of attention. But in Australia right now it’s the interior that’s occupying centre-stage,…

The Lansvale Racing team was a Bathurst regular in the 1980s and ‘90s and now one of its former Group A VL Commodores has been rebuilt and is almost set to go – across the ditch. Current owner of the ex-Trevor Ashby/Steve Reed machine, Rodney Heads, has spent the last 12 months working on the yellow Commodore in New Zealand to bring it back to its former glory, its 1988 Bathurst-spec and corresponding livery. “All the signwriting is done, the wiring should be finished soon and all the fuel lines are about to go into it,” Heads told AMC. “I can’t wait to get it running again, we should be firing it up within the next month.” The privateer-run Commodore was originally built new from a Holden Motor Sport race…

It’s 50 years this year since I made my Bathurst debut. I was part of the AMI works Toyota Corolla team [ED: car #56] in 1968. I was the junior driver and so I just did what I was told. I never had any say in anything. It was just: this is your car, this is who you’re co-driving with, go out there and do it. That was fine by me; I was there to learn. The others, people like Bruce Hindhaugh, Brian Sampson and Barry Ferguson, had been in the factory team a while; they were older and a lot more experienced than I was, and I looked up to them. How that drive came about was that Bill Buckle was one of the factory drivers, and he kept…

To successfully explain this car’s role and purpose in life, first we need to outline what it is not. Despite what you might have read online, this Falcon is not a historic Group C touring car. This car has no period racing history; it is not eligible to race in Heritage Touring Cars (although it would presumably become eligible in Group N when/if the cut-off year is extended beyond 1972). It was not used during the 1970s to help develop the road-going John Goss Special road car nor the XBs John Goss raced on the Mountain in the mid 1970s. This XB is not powered by a 302ci engine, unlike the 600 or so JGS road cars. Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take look at what…

The Holden Racing Team’s victory at Bathurst in 1990 with the unfavoured ‘Walkinshaw’ Commodore VL Group A SV will forever remain one of the greatest upsets in the history of The Great Race. The road that led to that popular victory at Mount Panorama was a particularly long and bumpy one, with the new-for-1988 fuel-injected ‘Batmobile’ having been on the racing scene for just over two years before it finally reached the summit of the greatest mountain in Aussie motorsport. A handful of cars – including the Bathurstwinning car itself – had been the pioneers for that program. One of the vehicles that helped make the development gains that eventually resulted in that famous win was the 1989 Bathurst HRT Commodore driven by Neil Crompton and Win Percy. This car…

Danny Goldspink Car: XC Fairmont Hardtop Hometown: Tumbarumba, NSW What is it? “My hardtop is a 1976 XC Fairmont model with a 351. The colour is Ford’s Sparkling Burgundy Pearl from the AU range in 2000. It was originally Red Flame.” When did you buy it? “A mate I played cricket with in the 1990s decided to sell it and I made him an offer that he accepted, albeit some 12 months later, in 1994.” Why did you buy it? “I fell in love with the muscular shape, especially with big rubber under them, when I first saw the hardtop range. Then, after the 1977 Bathurst one-two, even more so.” What can you tell us about its life? “I had to do the engine up, as that was in poor…

Scalextric XW gets the ’Gong With Scalextric’s release of a Diamond White XW Falcon road car, I just couldn’t resist the temptation to transform it into a racecar. The prospect of creating it made for an interesting project, as the non-works GT-HOs were plastered with all manner of sponsor graphics and hi-vis stickers to differentiate them from their showroom appearance. These were the early days of advertising on cars and the results were certainly distinctive of the period. You can just imagine the volunteer crews festooning their cars in ways that would have made today’s graphic designers cringe. Doing a bit of research, it appeared to me that there were only two Diamond White XW racecars wearing GT stripes at Bathurst, both in 1969. Neither were factory cars, both being…

Love ’em or hate ’em, street circuits have revolutionised modern motor racing. Bringing racing to the people, rather than vice versa, temporary venues have changed the landscape more than any other development in the sport’s history here in Australia. Purists suggest that the government funding that brings them to life should be redirected into permanent circuits. Nice idea, but politicians move in mysterious way. They are motivated by promises of financial returns or in the very least economic stimulation. And blinded by the lure of glamour and action in a spectacular setting. The racing game changed in October 1985 when Formula 1 rolled into town for our country’s first World Championship Grand Prix on our first modern-era temporary track. The scenic and action-inducing Adelaide Parklands circuit has since spawned many…

This will be a lot of fun. Held every couple of years, the Diecast Expo is on again, in Sydney. It’s not only an opportunity for collectors, traders and dealers to get together with the makers of our favourite model cars, but also a chance to get hold of some exclusive models. It takes place at the Rydges Hotel in Parramatta over the weekend of November 10-11; for more info go to www.diecastmodelexpo.com.au There will be room trading, there’s a dinner on the Saturday night, and there’s even a competition for people who like to modify their die-cast models (going to have to enter that, I am.) In past years, collectors have gathered from all over Australia for these events. They’re a lot of fun and can also be quite…