Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 109 i Australian Muscle Car

It’s been a pleasant and humbling surprise to have received as many messages of congratulations as I have on assuming the Australian Muscle Car editor’s chair. I think it shows how respected this magazine is out there (and rightly so). My immediate predecessor, Luke West, remains on board in the (slightly less stressed) capacity of Editor-at-Large. Luke has expertly steered the AMC ship through its last eight years – and I have to say that the benefit of his knowledge and guidance has made putting together my first issue a much less fraught process than it would otherwise have been. I’m new to this role but I’ve been around the AMC traps for quite a while. Actually, I was there in the beginning, when founding editor Mark Oastler turned up…

It’s understandable if you’re losing interest in – or at least understanding of – what’s going on in the 2019 Supercars championship. On-track it’s been a DJR Team Penske Ford Mustang white-and-red wash… Twelve races run as this was written and 10 race wins for championship leader Scott McLaughlin and his teammate Fabian Coulthard. But it’s off-track where the confusion, disillusion and disagreement has really ramped up, much of it because of misunderstanding about fundamental Supercars technical rules. Maybe a few clarifications can help here. First off, Supercars are not based on production cars. They are built over the top of a control chassis and rollcage that dictates wheelbase, tracks and height. That’s much of the reason – but not all the reason – why the racing Mustang looks so…

Production car racing these days is the domain of all-wheel drive turbos and $150K-plus BMW M3s and M4s. But the production car ranks do still boast plenty of home grown V8s – and this year’s MRF Tyres Australian Production Cars Series includes a separate class devoted to Aussie Muscle. Despite the fact that the latest Holden hardware in the series is at least three years old, HSVs still give a good account of themselves in production car competition. In fact, in the recent Hi-Tec Oils Bathurst 6 Hour, the Chris Lillis/Nathan Callaghan/Matt Holt VF HSV Clubsport E8 was third outright, beaten only by current model BMWs (an M4 and the winning M3). Lillis and Callaghan now have their sights on the new Muscle class in the national series “We have…

Hair model’s recollections I have a pic for you that I have been trying to find for about six years now and my dad finally found it for me! This is me circa 1990 or ’91 when I was about 11 or 12 years old. I was at Portland, Victoria for a TAFE skills expo/ competition as a hair model! As you can see I had a head of black hair to give Elvis a run for his money and if memory serves me correctly the young lady cutting my hair won a gold medal that day. These days I sport a shaved head but fortunately, ahem, still have the good looks. Around this time I was regularly keeping track of Wheels magazine and the upcoming Aussie hot wheels on…

‘Let’s face it, Ford’s new racing car is better than GM’s new racing car. It stops a bit better, it goes a bit better, and it seems to handle a bit better – and that, in motor racing is enough.’ This was the assessment of Racing Car  News’ Adrian Ryan in his race report of the 1969 Sandown 3 Hour. Given what transpired on the day – a glorious one-two-three for Ford and its new XW model Falcon GT-HO, a car which had shown itself to be both faster and better in the braking department than its Holden Monaro GTS 350 opposition – Ryan’s summation seemed reasonably fair. Never mind that the new Holden didn’t have the pace to match the Fords, it didn’t have the braking capacity even to…

1970 Surfers 12 Hour “Look at the road in this shot – you can see the track was breaking up badly. One guy was running Firestones and I reckon he went through about 50 sets in that race! I blew a tyre going under the bridge just on the two hour-mark. That was a fast sweeping right hand corner – not the place where you want to have a tyre fail. We were planning to do two-hour stints, so that worked out OK, but after that I was keeping an eye on my watch, and when I was getting close to the two-hour mark I’d be taking it really easy under the bridge! In the night, you could see the sparks coming off the steel belts on the tyres!” Bush…

Brian Wormald Car: Pontiac G8 GXP Hometown: Vancouver, Canada What is it? “It’s a 2009 Pontiac G8 GXP with a LS3 6.2-litre V8, 6-speed manual transmission and sunroof. It’s Liquid Red in colour with Onyx leather interior. It’s a numbered vehicle: #1285 of 1829. It’s #55 of only 77 made with this trim level combination. I hope readers will enjoy the fact that an ex-pat is still enjoying his Australian-built muscle in the land of the Canuck. The only modifications from stock are limited to the solo unbalanced cat-back high-efficiency exhaust; VG ‘Sharkfin’ antenna, window tinting (35%), CAGS shift-bypass, TRS/Morimoto HID headlights, K & N air-filter and Xpel paint protection on front of car.” When did you buy it? “After a car-guy ‘drought’ of some years, late in 2017 I…

Barjarg 1958-1961 A 1.4km oil-bonded circuit that lay in the shadow of the Strathbogie Range, run for a few short years by the Benalla Auto Club ahead of developing Winton as its principal track. Among the challenges facing drivers was a rocky outcrop in the middle of the main straight. Benalla 1936 A 4km triangular circuit of existing roads on the northern outskirts of Benalla was used for a one-off race held as part of the town’s centenary celebrations. Once the chequered flag flew on the 40-lap race, the Benalla road circuit was never used again. Bright 1959-1961 T he Bright Car Club built an oil-bonded one-mile track near a footy oval on the town’s eastern outskirts, a track where competitors headed flat-out towards a cliff face before turning at…

We’ve cast a keen eye over the various Group C XD and XE Falcons in these pages over the years and can now account for all but two of these boxy brutes. Back in issue #99 the call went out for information on the whereabouts of the Frank Saracino XD Falcon that raced briefly from late 1982 into early 1983. However, 18 months later we are none the wiser as to what became of that car. Another XD Falcon racecar from the early 1980s of which little is known is the Ray Allfordbuilt #26 machine that debuted in 1980. It was brought to our attention by racing historian and researcher Scott Mackay. Scott had spotted Allford’s name and vehicle on entry lists and results sheets from ’80/’81 but couldn’t ever…

Here’s something to ponder. HSV had to crash three Chevrolet Camaro ZL1s to gain certification for Australian sale. Imagine that; three of these beaut 480kW supercharged V8 beast being run into a wall! “It was super-painful,” says HSV boss Tim Jackson. It’s all that sort of stuff going on behind the scenes that racks up the dollars and makes HSV’s right-hand drive ‘remanufacturing’ Camaro project such a difficult business case to get across the line, even with the original MY18 2SS gaining a strong response in Australia. But ticked off it has been, and around now ZL1s are rolling in to HSV dealerships valued at a cool $159,990 plus on-road costs for the six-speed manual.The new 10-speed auto adds $2200. The 2SS is also updated for 2019, priced from $86,990…

Two-turning and two-burning looks set to become a thing of the past for the German hooligan tuners AMG. Traditionally almost Australian in its passion for V8s and rear-wheel drive, the Mercedes-Benz hot-up division looks set to transition to all-wheel drive for all its models. That includes the next generation of the thundering C63 – which is very popular in Australia – and even the GT flagship. It’s a sad move if you are a rear-drive purist, remembering AMG first came to fame courtesy of the ‘red pig’ 6.3-litre V8 300SEL sedan that raced in the Spa 24 Hours and the European Touring Car Championship in the early 1970s. The good news is various tunes of the company’s 4.0-litre biturbo V8 seem set to stay part of the company’s long list…

In our Monaro GTS 350 50th anniversary feature elsewhere in this issue, Colin Bond reflects on how his life changed overnight after winning Bathurst in 1969. It was, he told us, a little like when Michelle Payne rode Prince of Penzance to victory in the 2015 Melbourne Cup – the day before Payne was well known within horse racing circles as a top jockey, but all of a sudden she was an Australian sporting superstar and known throughout the land. Yet for all the public recognition and adulation, life for a Bathurst-winning factory Holden driver in the early 1970s wasn’t always as glamorous as it might have seemed from the outside. As Bond explains, the drivers weren’t paid an actual wage, but rather were paid in prizemoney. He and Peter…

A1972 LJ Torana GTR XU-1 changed hands at the recent Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic Auction for just under $200,000. At $183,000, the ‘Strike me Pink’-coloured XU-1 sold for around double its pre-auction guide estimate range of $80,000-$100,000 after a prolonged duel between two determined enthusiasts, one bidding online and the other by phone. The car been stored for 24 years prior to going under the hammer at Shannons on April 29. The car was the first documented LJ-model XU-1 produced at GM-H’s Elizabeth plant in South Australia; later in its life it was raced in Sports Sedan competition in Western Australia. Also starring at the Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic Auction was a ’69 model HT Monaro which, despite being a non-original example (being fitted with a 383ci V8 engine and…

In the previous issue I was taking about some of the psychological games that go on with drivers, and the sorts of things that happened when I was driving. There were also a lot of drivers back then – and there probably still are – who were superstitious: things like not wanting to drive green cars, different race numbers that were supposedly lucky or unlucky, that sort of thing. I wasn’t superstitious, but I did like the number 7, so it worked out nicely when we became sponsored by Channel 7. The very first time I raced my Ford Cortina, at a hillclimb at Amaroo Park, I had number 7. It was my favourite number, and the reason for that was because it was the number used by my hero,…

David Prettyman We featured some of David Prettyman’s shots in Punter Pics last year (those fantastic finish shots from the 1968 London-to-Sydney Marathon at Warwick Farm), and here are some more gems from the 1960s and early ’70s sedan racing at Bathurst, Calder and Sandown Park. The various Falcon XYs in the pics below covered three different classes: Moffat’s Series Production GT-HO Phase III, Geoghegan’s Improved Production ‘Super Falcon’, and John Mann’s 4.1-litre six-cylinder Sports Sedan. Lloyd Thies “As the ad says, ‘I’m still loving it’ – the AMC magazine, that is! I thought that after seeing my car in the last , I try my luck for the record. So I have attached a photo taken in the park at the river head in Devonport while waiting for the…

Colin Bond was not exactly an undiscovered talent when he got the call from Harry Firth to join the Holden Dealer Team in 1969. Bond was already well established and was generally considered a rising star of the sport. Even at this fairly early stage of his career, the trademark Colin Bond versatility was clearly evident – whether in rallying, hillclimbs, motorkhanas or circuit racing in NSW, more often than not Bond was the driver to beat. By then he was a three-time NSW Hillclimb Champion (so dominant was Bond in this type of competition in NSW that he had become known as ‘Mr Hillclimb’), and he was a frontrunner in the forests, rallying a Mitsubishi Colt on a semi-works basis. Indeed, the tie-up with Mitsubishi might have taken Bond…

My working arrangement with Ford had become difficult by the end of 1968. I could not work with the new competition manager, John Gowland, and then with Al Turner arriving from America it was obvious they had their own ideas of how it should run. Things were changing at Ford. There was a new breed coming into Ford then; they had university degrees and they spoke beautifully but they didn’t know anything. At the same time there was a bloke named Peter Lewis-Williams at Holden. He was in their public relations department and he was a motorsport person. I knew him pretty well and I said to him, “these Ford people better get their act smartened up or I’m gonna piss off, I’ve had enough”. “Oh,” he says, “I’ve been…

I In the three months following the ’69 Bathurst 500, Colin Bond was undefeated on the track, adding victory in the 1970 Surfers Paradise 12 Hour to his Bathurst win back in October. That’s not a bad first three months as a factory driver in a brand new factory team. Sandown and Bathurst had been Harry Firth’s first two races with the HDT. Barry Ferguson was the existing Holden rally ace and continued with the new Monaros as Firth pressed Bond into service for the remaining year’s racing programme, as well as the odd rally. Of the Bathurst squad, Bond, Roberts and Brock were retained, although it would be well into the new year before Brock was making regular race appearances for the HDT. “Just after the Bathurst race,” Bond…

The Falcon GT Nationals is one event which should be pencilled in the diary of every blue-blooded Ford fan. It’s held on a bi-annual basis, and shared between the capital cities of the five mainland states (and hosted by the respective Falcon GT club of that state, in this year’s case, the Falcon GT Club of South Australia). The two-year capital city rotation means the Falcon GT Nationals comes but once every 10 years to a city near you. So any South Australian Ford fan who missed this year’s Falcon GT Nationals will be waiting a long time before the event returns to the City of Churches. For 2019 the South Australians put on an undercover concourse Show ‘n’ Shine at Adelaide’s Wayville Showgrounds on the Saturday (where the judging…

There is always someone thinking outside the square. Someone on their ‘Pat Malone, eager to take the road less travelled and to do things another way. With 14 Falcon GT-HOs in the 1971 Bathurst 500, it would be easy for a privateer team to get lost in the crowd. To be obliterated by the factory Ford team. Why not then look at racing a lesser Falcon? It had been done before. In 1968 Mike Champion and Barry Arantz almost won their class (and finished 11th outright) in an XT Falcon 500 V8 (see AMC #102). A year later Charlie Smith and Bill Ford went two places better in finishing ninth outright, but still missed a class victory in an XW Falcon GT. A V8 Falcon in a different class from…

Hornsby Slot Car Swap Meet Last month I was invited by the Australian Scalextric Racing Collecting Club to attend their annual slot car swap meet at Hornsby in northern Sydney. The event has been running since 2013, implemented after some of the committee members experienced similar events in the UK, where swap meets are a big deal. Much like classic car swap meets, they are places for collectors to trade those hard to find items, or grab a bargain on a new car or spare parts. The invitation came from Dominic Grimes, president of the club, who you may recall was also instrumental in entertaining our British visitors Martin and Gary Cannell when they came to Bathurst last year. The club itself has been around since 1992, formed by a…

The legendary Aussie Bolwell Nagari is back… again. First launched in 1969 by brothers Campbell and Graeme Bolwell and then totally overhauled for the 21st century as the Toyota V6-powered Bolwell 300 in 2009 (top), the third iteration of the Nagari will be all-new and drive its rear wheels via a mid-mounted 373kW 6.2-litre Chevrolet LS3 V8 and six-speed manual transmission. A bonafide attempt at an Aussie supercar, the original Nagari was an automotive sensation down under. The 920kg two-door (insets) was usually powered by a Ford 302 Windsor V8, which meant it could accelerate from 0-100km/h in 6.4 seconds and dash across the quarter mile in 14.3 seconds. In 1970 these were stunning numbers and a little bit terrifying considering the steering came out of an Austin Tasman. Later,…

Our Sacred Sites section this issue recalls the colourful history of a string of club-level race tracks that sprang up around the north-eastern region of Victoria in the 1950s and early 1960s. Most of them used an oil bonded dirt surface rather than actual bitumen (which few of the small local car clubs could afford) and they were usually not much more than a kilometre in length. These country tracks were a bit rough and ready, but importantly they provided an inexpensive way for car club members to go motor racing. Not that the ‘big time’ tracks of that region – Winton and Hume Weir – were all that flash on the facilities front, as Ron Gillard (our featured Muscle Man this issue), recalls from his first visit to Hume…

It was difficult to pick the bigger hit with spectators at Barbagallo Raceway’s Perth SuperNight meeting: racing under lights or the Camaro in the GT races! Dale Paterson Motorsport’s rare sortie outside Victoria for the Australian GT Championship’s Wanneroo round was rewarded with the overall Trophy class victory for older GT3 cars. And in the quick to be superseded world of GT racing, the crowd favourite Camaro is positively ancient. The Camaro GT3 model first hit the track in Europe in 2013. Developed by the independent German outfit Reiter Engineering with the approval of Chevrolet, its homologation was based on a ‘tuner’ version of Chevy’s Camaro. Hence, its 7.9-litre naturally-aspirated V8 engine, when the biggest donk in the fifth-generation Camaro road car was a still sizeable 7.0 litres. Reiter developed…

I If I was giving out medals for outstanding contributions to Australian motorsport, the first would be placed around the neck, figuratively speaking, of the Bathurst Regional Council. Council has carefully nurtured the Mount Panorama circuit for 80-plus years. Those supreme and ongoing custodian efforts had their origins in the 1930s with Mayor Martin Griffin’s great ruse: securing national unemployment relief funding from Federal and State pollies during the Depression for the construction of a, wink, wink, scenic tourist drive. A tourist drive, that is, appealing to those holidayers who like to race during their time off! The iconic track has been Council’s baby from day one. It funds its upkeep and it’s the sweat of its workers – that sometimes forms icicles – that keeps it looking spick and…

The HT Monaro was there at the birth of Harry Firth’s Holden Dealer Team, and the GTS 350 was good enough to see off Ford’s XW Falcon GT-HO at Bathurst in 1969. It is, therefore, a rather special Holden model. But the HT Monaro of 1969 shouldn’t be remembered only for those two things. In a competition career as a frontline contender that only spanned 12 months before the new LC Torana XU-1 took over, the GTS 350 enjoyed enormous success on the race track. And off track, too, because despite its hefty size and weight, it proved to be remarkably fleet of foot in the forests. Colin Bond went close to winning the 1970 Australian Rally Championship, and with a bit of luck might have won that year’s Ampol…

Driving for the factory Holden team half a century ago was a different proposition from what we see in today’s Supercars racing. Here Bond recalls what it was like to become a works driver for the Holden Dealer Team with Harry Firth at the helm: “Even though it was a big team by Australian standards, factory supported with full-time mechanics and a national program, driving for the HDT was only semi-professional – at least in my case. “Harry would have known that any one of a dozen up-and-coming young drivers would have jumped at the opportunity he was offering. It was a team manager’s market, as motorsport usually is, and if Harry was better at anything than being sly with the rulebook it was being shrewd with money! “He was…

All Aussie adventure Launched in June 1969, Holden’s HT Monaro range initially consisted of just the two models, the Monaro (161ci and 186ci engines) and Monaro GTS (186S, 253ci and 307ci powerplants). The GTS 350 model would follow a couple of months later. When it did, it stole the limelight from the rest of the range. And it did so forevermore. Yet, within the initial June offerings was a car of huge historical significance – the first all-Australian V8 Monaro. The GTS fitted with the Holden-designed and built 253 (4.2-litre) V8 was as Aussie as burning your tongue on a hot pie at the footy or drying your ‘Reg Grundys’ on a Hills Hoist. But history has overlooked this beast. AMC too, if we’re honest. So being overlooked and under-appreciated…

Terry Walker in his book Fast Tracks: Australia’s Motor Racing Circuits 1904-1995 used some colourful phraseology to sum up the proliferation of small country racing circuits in north-eastern Victoria in the 1950s and ‘60s. He wrote of such tracks being sprinkled through the region “like currants in a bun!” An apt description indeed given the region included the Ovens Valley! The earliest of these circuits was the Wangaratta air-strip track that sprang to life in 1953. Over the next eight years it was followed by Barjarg, Bright, Hume Weir, Tarrawingee, Undera and Winton. All of these were CAMS affiliated. There were ‘unofficial’ tracks too, such as Shepparton, Wahgunyah and Beechworth. Combined, they made for an especially sweet and fruity bun. So what drove this, erm, rise in motorsport activity? A…

What we call the Great Race evolved through three stages to get to the event we know today: its Phillip Island origin, the shift to Mount Panorama in 1963, and the expansion (and metrification) of the race distance from 500 miles to 1000 kilometres 10 years later. But of course, while today it remains a 1000km enduro held early October, a great many things have changed since 1973, as these shots so graphically show. The lack of a wall between the track and the pits on Pit Straight is unimaginable in 2019 but it never seemed to bother anyone back in the day; likewise the rudimentary pitlane carports – and we can’t ever recall seeing a Supercars star help push his ‘Commodore’ , ‘Falcon’ or ‘Mustang’ onto the track as…

1973 Ford XA Falcon GT RPO83 sedan in Wild Violet Early in 1972 Ford released the XA GT Falcon in four-door sedan and two-door hardtop versions. It was the first Falcon to be totally designed by Australians, as production of the Falcon in the US had ceased some 18 months earlier. The XA was the biggest Falcon yet, with the boldest styling, designed for wider appeal with its less aggressive look and more creature comforts. Ford built 129,473 XA Falcons between March 1972 and September 1973, including the construction of 129 RPO83 sedans. That’s 0.01 percent, and that means they’re rare. The GT Specials – that’s their official title – were Regular Production Option 83 on Ford’s options list for Falcon GTs. And personally, I always preferred the sedan to…