Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 121 i Australian Muscle Car

There is no more successful European manufacturer in the history of the Bathurst classic than BMW. The Bavarian marque is one of just three ‘continental’ brands to win the race outright – Jaguar and Volvo are the other two – after the Brabham brothers, Geoff and David, claimed the 1997 AMP Bathurst 1000 in a 320i. Factory-backed efforts were mounted in the October classic’s Group C, Group A and Super Tourer eras, while private entrants flew the spinning propeller flag at other times. The first of these was 50 years ago, a milestone that went largely unnoticed, understandably, in 2020. But not by AMC. Victorian car dealer Jack Nougher had the honour of debuting the German brand in the 1970 Hardie-Ferodo 500. His ride was a BMW 2800, a full-sized…

New heavy duty suspension Improved shock absorbers More powerful engines Smoother, more durable three-speed manual transmissions Stronger clutch Heavy-duty, increased diameter axle shaft Electric two-speed wipers Self-adjusting brakes Extended service intervals Extra body and engine insulation – reduced noise level Toughened windscreen More powerful headlights Extended anti-corrosion treatment Smaller diameter steering wheel Reinforced springing in seats Power operated rear window in station wagon…

In 1960’s Brisbane there wasn’t much for a car-crazy kid to do except hang out on the street and use the public roads to test himself against his mates. It’s not something that is in any way condoned, then or now (even if the roads were much emptier back then), but if that’s all that’s open to you then you take your chances. Just occasionally, though, such illegal behavior can in fact lead to constructive outcomes – and in this case, ones that would flow on to influence thousands. And so it was for a young immigrant’s son: Dennis Syrmis. Syrmis was one of a group of kids who hung out at the C&V Café, in Melbourne Street, South Brisbane. They were all car mad, and would boast about their…

The 2000 Great Race also saw the first appearance of Jason Richards in a V8 Supercar. Team Kiwi had entered the 777 Commodore as a precursor to joining the championship full time in 2001, and Richards qualified the car 23rd and finished 16th with co-driver Angus Fogg. But it was a memorable weekend for non-racing reasons for JR. On the Thursday night he took his fiancée Charlotte to McPhillamy Park with the intention of dropping to one knee and asking her a life-changing question. Of course, a few inebriated locals couldn’t stay out of it, so they eventually got back in the car and went down to the quieter Conrod Straight, where Jason popped the question. Charlotte said yes, and Jason was a very happy man on Friday, and 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…

The Chrysler 300 will soon no longer be sold in Australia. Even though it’s expected that importer Fiat Chrysler Australia will fulfil existing 300 SRT orders from the NSW Police Force (the NSW Highway Patrol uses the 300 SRT as well as the BMW 530d), it has told its dealer network not to take any new orders for the big Chrysler four-door V8. The only way to buy a Chrysler 300 SRT in 2021 is to find a dealer that happens to already have one in stock. The axing of the Chrysler 300 SRT down under means the end for the only remaining ‘affordable’ (under $100,000) rear-drive V8 sedan on the Australian market. The 300’s exit from Australia is mainly the result of a shortage of Chrysler Hemi V8 engines…

While researching our cover story for the previous issue of AMC we stumbled upon some video footage from the 1971 Macau touring car race. About 16 minutes into the Japanese movie Hairpin Circus is a few seconds of vision of what appears to be the opening lap of the race, showing Peter Brock’s HDT Torana XU-1 and Allan Moffat’s Falcon in action (with a slip-sliding Moffat struggling for grip on road tyres and almost taking out the camera operator!). We already knew that Brock’s car was not his then-current (white) race HDT machine, but rather the yellow one he’d raced in Australia the year before, dusted off (and then sold off) for Macau. But the footage also showed that the car Moffat was driving was not the current model Falcon.…

Sandown memories I am a fellow ageing witness of the 1975 Sandown Tasman Cup crash of John Walker’s Lola (an amazing survival). The Dandenong Road esses were the scene of several accidents before and after this incident, including Alan Moffat’s ‘off’ in the Mustang in February 1972, ‘as he lost his brakes at Lukey and smote the armco at Goodyear’ (Dandenong Road Corner) and damaged the left front of his car. This crash could have had a much worse outcome. I have a query about the mention of a Porsche running at a Bathurst 500 (or 1000) (page 11 of issue #120). At Sandown in September 1968 I witnessed the first of the revived long-distance series production races at Sandown, where Alan Hamilton’s Porsche Sportmatic claimed pole position and, after…

Back in the late ‘60s Daryl Seidel used to race an old Falcon. He and his mates would drag race the car out at Fisherman’s Bend, as well as racing it at the Calder circuit. Whenever they went to Calder they’d flat-tow the Falcon, and often on that 20km journey from Reservoir in Melbourne’s west the younger brother of one of Daryl’s mates would be riding up front in the passenger’s seat of the race car; a youngster enjoying the trip of a lifetime as they towed the Falcon to the track to go racing. That was the then 10-year-old Graeme Whincup’s introduction to motorsport. As an adult, Graeme would try his hand at racing himself, and in Daryl Seidel’s old Ford, as it happens – although not the Falcon,…

Car makers notice what people do with their cars – even years after they’ve left the new car showroom. The designers and the marketing people will pick up on things they see on the street, performance modifications or external changes people make, personal touches aimed at improving their car’s appearance – maybe a stripe or two, a blacked-out grille. Car designers and marketers will especially notice these kinds of owner-mods if they see the same thing done on more than car. They’ll think about this when they’re back in the office and, sometimes, some of what they’ve seen finds its way into the future models. A classic case here is the brightly painted disc brake caliper. Coloured brake calipers are standard fare on the performance models of pretty much all…

Knocked flat by the one-two combination of Holden’s demise and COVID-19’s rise, there were plenty of pundits predicting Supercars Australia would be out of business by the end of the year, leaving hundreds of drivers, engineers, mechanics, administrators, broadcasters and sundry others looking for something else to do. Yet, against the odds, Australia’s only fully professional motor racing series enters 2021 in reasonable shape, all things considered. It has a (apparently) better TV deal, new naming rights sponsor, renewed backing from state governments for a shorter but more sustainable calendar of events, and agreement that the category will switch to (hopefully) more affordable V8 Mustangs and Camaros under new technical regulations. And while these commitments haven’t eliminated doubts in the minds of some about the series’ long-term market relevance, it’s…

A Galaxie long, long ago A few years ago I had a rare catch-up with my uncle. We got to talking about motorsport, and he mentioned that he was present at the Sandown Six Hours in 1964. What he best remembered of that race was the Sir Gawaine Baillie Galaxie – and proceeded to give a less than glowing reference to its driver Lex Davison, who had out-qualified the field by a whopping 10 seconds. The Galaxie was a very impressive touring car for its day, a product of Ford’s Total performance era and packed with a host of go-faster bits. Even with the knowledge of his advantage, Davison went for the jugular, blasted away at the start and managed to lap the whole field in 12 laps, and without…

Fred’s Treads was a tyre retail outlet on Sydney’s Parramatta Road in the 1970s. The company was a regular advertiser in Racing Car News back in the day, and pretty soon became slightly famous for a series of quirky and at times risqué ads. And never the same ad twice. Clearly a lot of thought went into coming up with something different and catchy each month, because in one issue the Fred’s Treads ad is blank, save for the tag line ‘this space reserved for, followed by an apology from Fred’s Treads for being late with their copy! Sometimes the ads featured Fred’s Treads staff members, such as Steve, who we’re told posed naked on Parramatta Road to promote the company, and another fellow, Vince, who is shown ‘road testing’…

Despite various Covid outbreaks in various states across the summer, the Australian Racing Group managed to get its 2021 season under way at Symmons Plains on Australia Day, as scheduled. The spectator-limited (but with a sell-out crowd) Symmons season opener hosted the first rounds of TCR Australia, the Australian Drivers’ Championship for S5000 openwheelers, Touring Car Masters Series and the TA2 Trans-Am Series. Jordon Cox and Supercars refugee Lee Holdsworth shared the honours in TCR, while Nathan Herne topped them in Trans-Am after a hard battle with Aaron Seton in all three race. The S5000 races culminated in an inspiring victory for Thomas Randle in the feature race, Randle triumphing in style just weeks after completing cancer chemotherapy treatment. Tim Macrow and Joey Mawson shared the honours in the earlier…

Spencer Martin’s racing career was short but it was certainly sweet. He was a dual Gold Star winner, successful in a wide range of cars and a factory driver for both Holden and Ford in late ‘60s Series Production. Spencer’s new book takes us through his career, his post-retirement racing activities, and his reflections on the huge array of cars he has driven and raced – this being a man who went almost straight from a hot Holden humpy racer to a Le Mans-style Ferrari 250LM.…

Port Lincoln had never seen the likes of it. It was February 1964 and the tuna fishing town at the tip of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula was the unlikely centre of attention for the Australian automotive industry. Led by American managing director Wallace Wray Booth, the executives of Ford Australia had flown in, bringing with them no less than 50 motoring journalists from around the nation. Including luminaries of the day such as David McKay of The Daily Telegraph and Trevor Davis of The Age, the motor-noters were wined and dined and even given a mayoral reception. Ford was pulling out all the stops. And no wonder, the future of the company’s relationship with Australia was at stake. At the heart of it all was the Ford Falcon. Launched as…

Why do we still have touring car racing? The question is directed to the sport generally, but is particularly relevant in Australia, where this branch of motorsport has been undisputed top dog since the 1970s, and is now facing a crisis of major proportions. And how did we get to the position of having three branches of motor racing – openwheelers, sports cars and touring cars – anyway? The three categories clearly started to diverge between the two world wars. In the 1920s, touring cars made a very substantial and dramatic claim to their place in the sun when the Le Mans 24 Hours was created for them. It was an innovative but simple concept: see how far ordinary road cars could travel in 24 hours. Charles Faroux and the…

As far as sporting events go, everything in 2000 was going to be overshadowed by the Greatest Olympics Ever, featuring our Cathy, Thorpedo and little Nicky Webster. A shame, because the 2000 Bathurst 1000 was one of the toughest races, with one of the most unlikely endings, in its history. It’s also the last of its kind, in a sense, as the race began its move from the all-comer event to the closed shop, professional championship round that it is today. Indeed, this would be the final Bathurst 1000 with a full entry of 56 cars, made up of a combination of the full time drivers, second cars driven by either international guests or non-regular touring car drivers, the regular privateer entries, and finally the once-a-year warriors who cobbled together…

Ford XR Falcon GT in Sultan Maroon Ford wasted no time in 1967 tying the new-shape XR Falcon to the already-legendary Mustang – ‘Mustang Styled’ yelled the print ads. And you could certainly see a family resemblance in the ‘Coke-bottle’ swoop along the rear doors of the local product. Also like the base Mustang, the first XRs had an anemic six-cylinder engine with a three-speed and drum brakes. Ford fixed this by adding the Mustang’s 289ci V8 and a four-speed, some disc brakes and some extra style to create the first Aussie GT. Available in almost any colour you like as long as it was GT Gold (more on this in a sec), the GT won hearts, minds and Bathurst. As to the colours, there were, as we’ve covered in…