Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 132 i Australian Muscle Car

It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do. Peter Brock is on record as saying that the midyear livery change was the secret to the Holden Dealer Team’s success in 1972, as Brock biographer David Hassall explains elsewhere in this issue in his revealing feature on Brock’s fairytale first Bathurst win. Hassall also uncovers the truth behind the tyre intrigue at the HDT that year which contributed to the early and spectacular exit from the race of Brock’s team-mate, Colin Bond. It’s quite a story. But back to that paint job. While Brock conceded it defied logic, he actually believed it was the thing that made the difference that year. Certainly the cars looked good: with their new white, red and black colour scheme with the (now iconic)…

Late June members of the Brock Commodore Owners Association of Australia (BCOAA) from NSW & Qld descended on the Macksville for a Friday afternoon at former Holden dealership, Geoff King Eastland. With the Holden signs proudly still on display, it made a great backdrop for the display of some of Brock’s finest. Saturday saw the group head via the sleepy hamlet of Bowraville to The Pub With No Beer at Taylors Arm. While there’s some dispute about whether Slim Dusty was singing about the pub at Taylors Arm or Ingham, there’s certainly no doubt the there was plenty of Slim Dusty memorabilia hanging on the walls, and there was indeed beer on tap! Some people might regard these kinds of cars primarily as collectors’ items these days, but there’s still…

This is a slightly long story insofar as I want to finally write about my recollections of that now watershed day, the day the Chrysler Australia Limited 340/four-speed Charger program died. But to do that justice I’d like to go back a little further to tell why this remains such a strong recollection so many years later. On this day, I was a draftsman in the Product Engineering Department, in the Chassis group, one of a small number working for then Project Engineer Jim Munro. I’d been there from 1968 when I was taken onto staff as a draftsman during the massive expansion in the design group to meet the demands of the then 98 percent content rules for auto manufacturers. My field of drafting was in suspension/wheels/tyres/front frame/steering and…

The Old Road Café is a well-named establishment, because while it’s on the Old Pacific Highway at Mount White, north of Sydney, that section of the old highway is more widely known as the ‘old road’. Away from the traffic flow on the nearby M3 Motorway, the Old Road Café is a popular pitstop for groups of two and four-wheeled enthusiasts, including this group of Holden fans. The weather and Covid permitting, on the first Sunday of every month the North Shore Sporting Car Club hosts ‘Auto Brunch’ at the St Ives Showground (in Sydney’s north). It’s been happening for some years now, and it’s grown to be quite an occasion each month. A feature of this automotive get-together is the diversity of the cars – we’ve picked out some…

Flappy-paddle fingertip gear selection on the steering wheel is the in-thing in modern high-performance cars (well, maybe not next year’s Gen3 Supercars, but that’s another story), but back in the day there was nothing more daggy than having the gearshift up high near the steering wheel. Which was a problem if you were a young teenage rev-head in the late 1960s, ‘70s or early ‘80s about to embark on a life of cars, because the majority of the thousands of six-cylinder Holdens, Fords and Valiants available cheaply on the secondhand car market were equipped with that most unfashionable method of gearshift actuation, the dreaded old ‘three-on-the-tree’. The cool cars, the Monaros, Falcon GTs and (E49) Chargers, were all four on the floor – no self-respecting young car enthusiast wanted to…

As covered in last issue of AMC, 1972 saw the Supercar Scare and the stillbirth of the eagerly anticipated V8 XU-1. This ultimately led to the birth of a legend with Peter Brock claiming his first Bathurst victory at the wheel of the giant-killing six-cylinder XU-1 Torana. As part of the 50th anniversary celebrations a group of LC/LJ Torana owners (plus co-drivers) will embark upon an epic adventure to circumnavigate the continent. The group leaves from Bathurst on September 14 to head ‘Around the Block for Brock’ returning to Bathurst to join in with the ‘GTR and XU-1s on the Mountain’ celebration set to coincide with the running of the 1000. One of the entrants is occasional AMC contributor Phil Walmsley in his Rally Red LC Torana. The car is…

Coming soon are two books which together will represent the complete and definitive Bible for the Phase I ½ and Phase II Falcon GTHOs. Painstakingly researched and compiled by Falcon GTHO historian Ross Vasse, the books – both of which are officially licensed by the Ford Motor Company – contain the build specification details for every single 1970 Falcon GTHO built, including each car’s paint colour and trim combination, the factory options each was fitted with, the final assembly and retailed dates, unusual build anomalies and one-off Falcon GTHOs. “Even the production specifications for the one-off GTHO Phase II made in Fanta orange is included!” Vasse says. It’s illustrated with many never-before-seen period photographs, and includes information known previously only to insiders. Mysteries surrounding these cars are solved, myths are…

Max was born in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield in 1935, with his family moving to Sydney in the early days of WW2 due to anti-German sentiment towards the family name. There he would grow up with his father helping him along in both after-school enterprise and his school studies. As a student he worked hard and went first to Opportunity Classes at the end of Primary School and then to the prestigious Fort Street High School. But by the time he was out of school his father had died. With others he saw fun in motor sports and was an early member of the Eastern Suburbs Sporting Car Club. Max competed in small rallies and he then started racing in his everyday-transport Simca Aronde. Working in advertising, he found…

amceditorial@chevron.com.au | Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards NSW 1590 Fake vinyl Being a lover of HQ coupes and the owner of one, I very much enjoyed the Q-ship Coupe article in AMC issue #130. I just have one slight correction as you showed that Holden ad with a Linamint HQ GTS and a black vinyl roof. Monaro guru Warren Turnbull pointed out some time back that that is in fact a photo manipulation of a base-model coupe with GTS and vinyl accoutrements cleverly (given it is pre-Photoshop days) drawn/pasted on. He provided the picture attached comparing the two versions, albeit the original is in black and white. There is a second black-and-white shot of presumably the same car (same numberplate, at least) in the second photo I have included. GM-H…

It was either a case of impeccable timing, or it was one of the most ill-timed media releases in the history of the Australian motor industry. Or maybe it was both… Either way, on the Monday morning of June 26, 1972 – the very next day after the Evan Green Sun-Herald front-page ‘160mph Super Cars’ story which ignited the Supercar Scare, came a press release from Chrysler Australia proudly proclaiming that the new E49 high performance variant of its Charger R/T model was the most powerful six-cylinder car in the world. For NSW Transport Minister Milton Morris, Chrysler’s media release was much-welcome grist to the mill in his crusade to rid our roads of these ‘bullets on wheels’. As for Chrysler, while the E49 – unlike the V8 XU-1 and…

Howard Marsden cut a dejected figure at the end of the Chesterfield 250 at Adelaide International Raceway on August 27. The opening round of the Australian Manufacturers’ Championship had just been run, and won – but not by either of his works Ford team Falcons. Their race had been ruined by excessive tyre wear as Allan Moffat and Fred Gibson fought a losing battle trying to match the sheer speed of the HDT Torana XU-1s of Colin Bond and Peter Brock. Bond led his team-mate to a convincing one-two; Gibson was fourth, but seven laps down after a litany of tyre stops. Moffat was a retirement, hitting the wall heavily after blowing a tyre. Running on their new, wider Globe alloy wheels and ‘experimental’ Dunlop slicks, the fleet-footed HDT Toranas…

CHEVROLET Z28 CAMARO 1980 BATHURST POLE POSITION Limited Edition of 1000 Kevin Bartlett finally got to drive his Camaro at Bathurst in 1980. While the results show the car finished comparatively poorly (11th, and 11 laps down), after several stops to replace the useless rear drum brakes, KB had put the car on pole the day before – a brief moment of glory. A year later he’d put the car on pole again, this time in pouring rain. But that’s another story. The interior of the 1:18 scale model features unique dash instruments that cover the original road car gauges. The boot interior looks very neat and tidy with the fuel filler contained and few parts to clutter the area. The cabin roll bars continuing into the boot are a…

Due to a production issue in AMC 130 (ED: more like a contributor’s issue) a couple of paragraphs of part two of the Andrew Miedecke Muscle Man feature didn’t make to it print. In the interests of completeness, we have included them here – they both involve the Sierra. In 1987 Miedecke finished second in the Surfers Paradise ATCC round but a post-race inspection of his turbo saw him disqualified and a four-week suspension was retrospectively applied, which saw him excluded from the next two rounds. “The early RS Cosworth (pre RS500) had a turbine wheel which couldn’t take much boost,” recalls Miedecke. “Andy Rouse was our supplier and sent out an upgraded unit which were submitted to the FIA and were in the process of approval. In Europe, they…

Good news for Falcon Hardtop fans is the return of the Ford Coupe Club’s Hardtop Anniversary event. In recent years Covid has put the kibosh on the Hardtop Anniversary, normally held every two years. But big plans are being made for this year’s event, the HTA Reunion, to take place at Mildura on November 18-20. A packed programme is being offered that will include the opportunity to put your coupe through its paces on the Aust-Link circuit (under Motorsport Australia supervision – but it’s not a competitive event, with no lap timing) and a run on the eighth-mile Sunset Drag Strip – under lights on Saturday night. There will also be cruises, a trip to the Trentham Estate Winery, and a Show & Shine on Sunday and lots of other…

Sadly, we are no longer able walk into a Holden new car showroom and drive out in a new Commodore SSV or HSV model. But if you walk into the Sydney showroom of Australian Muscle Car Sales, you could become the owner of what is effectively a brand new HSV GTSR. The car in question is a 2017 model, in Spitfire Green with six-speed manual transmission. It was originally sold by McRae Motors in Wodonga, Victoria, and has been kept in a secure, climate-controlled environment ever since. It has never been registered, and has travelled a total of just 64km. The asking price is not cheap at $249,500, but then this is a brand new HSV, five years after the last one rolled off the production line... If Fords are…

Gossy – from go to woah! It’s funny how interviews can start off on one topic and somehow manage to totally change tack onto a completely different tangent. Mostly the interviewer’s task it to get things back on topic but occasionally the tangent can produce an unexpected outcome that can unlock the keys to a previously unsolved mystery. Such was the case when I interviewed Greg Foster, an ex-Grace Bros employee, about his recollections of Hans Tiepermann. Along with his memories of Hans, Greg was able to bookend John Goss’ Bathurst history from the beginning to the end as well as the unsolved mystery of Max and Dawn Dickson competing at the 1969 Bathurst 500 in their McLeod Ford Cortina 240 that I mused about in a Whaddyaknow piece for…

In a way it was doomed from the start. Because if the Super Car Scare hadn’t have killed off the 340 E55 four-speed ‘Bathurst’ Charger, then Chrysler Australia’s newly installed managing director William Balthrop no doubt would have. But early in 1972, behind closed doors at Tonsley Park, it was on, as preparations were being made for a proposed V8 Charger R/T to be released ahead of the following year’s Bathurst enduro. In many ways what they were planning at Chrysler was not so different from what was happening Holden with the V8 XU-1 project. Like the XU-1, most of the basic elements were already there in the existing E38 and the new E49 which was still being developed in the early months of 1972. While Chrysler’s commitment to the…

Anniversaries can be interesting moments. Things have a habit of being revealed because time changes our perspective. What was once secret is now an anecdote that can be shared. It’s a bit like that with the Ford EB Falcon GT 25th Anniversary, which this year is marking the 30th anniversary of its 1992 build. David Orchard is sitting relaxed in his home in Melbourne’s glorious outer east and over tea and cake we’re discussing a car with which he is intimately familiar. He’s discussing stuff that was once closely held. Such as: how come the EB GT wasn’t as powerful as it was supposed to be? The Englishman was the chief engineer at Tickford Vehicle Engineering when the GT was in development in the early 1990s. TVE was the brand-new…

Today it’s a small three-bedroom house in a ‘rat run’ street on the southern side of Canterbury. It’s one of a number of smallish 1920s houses stepping down towards the concrete lined drain that today is the Cup and Saucer Creek. Its frontage onto the narrow road has been modestly updated – the brick front fence cement rendered, security blinds fitted to the windows, a varnished horizontal wooden slat gate, a scattering of ‘fashionable’ plants in the small front yard – and inside a young man sat earnestly working away at a laptop computer. But half a century ago this slice of 2020s Sydney inner-west urbanity was a hot bed of motor racing ingenuity and good times for a floating population of financially strapped young enthusiasts determined to wring the…