Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 135 i Australian Muscle Car

There’s been some recent milestone anniversaries for some important high-performance Ford models. Some of them we covered last year; this issue we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the XA Hardtop GT (perhaps a little belated, we’ll concede, as the Hardtop did go on sale towards the end of ’72). With stories like these, it’s always interesting to be able to look in the rear-view mirror with the benefit of many years’ hindsight. In the case of the XA Hardtop, what at the time looked like a bit of a failure, a car that arrived maybe a year or two too late, and which was then dealt a hefty kick in the guts by the 1973 energy crisis, is today an all-time Aussie classic. A decent example will set you back…

Muscle Maniac The Supercar Scare meant most of us can only imagine what a 308 V8-powered Torana XU-1 was like on the road. Of course, there have been numerous such conversions done on LC and LJ models over the years, but here’s a neat one that’s popped up for sale – complete with ‘personalised’ LJO-308 Victorian number plates. Australian Muscle Car Sales is selling this meticulously done ‘tribute’ V8 LJ Torana. It started life as a ’73 model Torana S, and was rebuilt into a V8 by its current custodian, who has owned it for the last 28 years. It’s not of the exact spec Holden planned for the limited run of Bathurst V8 XU-1 specials – it’s fitted with a Top Loader four-speed, nine-inch Ford diff and four-wheel discs…

I took a deep dive into Nissan Skyline racing history in the last issue of AMC, but it is the story of the pseudo-Skyline (I can’t say ‘Claytons’ Skyline because that’s where the Australian models were manufactured), the Datsun 240K, that most intrigued me. If ever there was a more innocuous race car that made a splash – literally – at Bathurst, the 240K is certainly it. Finishing an amazing seventh outright in a very sodden 1974 Bathurst 1000 in such an uncompetitive class car certainly warrants further investigation. You could mount a strong case for this being one of the greatest performances in the history of the Bathurst 500/1000. And yet only the most serious students of motorsport are aware of it. Very little has ever been written about…

It’s hard to believe for those of us who were around at the time, but 2022 marked the 50th anniversary of the release of the Ford XA Falcon, following the successful XR, XT, XW and XY series of 1967-’71. These were the Falcons that first began to properly challenge Holden’s market dominance, and so it was crucial that their successor build on that. Against serious opposition from Holden’s HQ and its successors, Chrysler with its VH/VJ Valiants and rapidly developing from Japanese manufacturers, the XA Falcon did the job, consolidating Ford’s market share until finally, in 1982, ‘Australia’s Own’ was overtaken when the all-new XD/XE/XF Falcon families outsold the Holden Commodore in the ‘family car’ category. Ford would remain on top for the next six years. But it was the…

Here at Australian MUSCLE CAR, we love Sports Sedans. What’s not to love? Get a car, make it lighter and more powerful, give it some help in the handling department, maybe some aero, and race it. The golden age of Sports Sedans was the ‘70s. Several big-money series were around at the time and a clever car builder/driver could make themselves almost a living, and certainly a name, racing the big bangers. At some point the rules changed a bit and the cars got a bit less attractive for a time; originally you were supposed to use the standard roof, floor and pillars and the rest was mostly up to you. These days, there’s no production parts at all on some cars. One Sports Sedan builder proudly told me he’d…

Muscle Maniac The reinstatement of the Adelaide 500 Supercars event means the Adelaide Motorsport Festival this year also makes a welcome return. The speed component of the festival, to be held over the March 25-26 weekend, uses a shortened version of the Adelaide Parklands Circuit that sees the cars turn right at Wakefield St after the Senna Esses, returning to the full circuit just before the hairpin. The infield section and the expanse of grassed lawns on the outside perimeter (between the old grandstand and where the Victoria Park horse racing track once ran) provide the setting for the event, encompassing the paddock areas for the competing cars, along with static displays and various attractions. The 2023 event has attracted a record number of entries, including a large contingent of…

Usually the owner of a desirable classic buys his or her dream car and then chases the original numberplates. For Sydneysider George Aravopoulos, it happened the other way around. For years George had been besotted by a white Holden Torana A9X shown in widely circulated photos taken back in 1977 in the forecourt of a Holden dealership. In the early noughties he was so smitten by this car – whereabouts then unknown to him – he checked if the numberplates were available. They were… and he snapped them up. George secured the NSW-issued GMH 372 numberplates in 2003. But it would be almost another 15 years before he had car to match. It was quite a quest, one outlined below in more detail, but his resolve to track down the…

Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, when numerous new car dealerships were invested in motor racing sponsorship, the decision to race a particular model was usually determined by the dealer principal. That was understandable given that they were paying the bills, but this marketing strategy only made sense if they could see tangible returns in the form of increased foot traffic through their showrooms and buyers placing orders. Or as the old saying goes: race on Sunday, sell on Monday. In 1972 South Australia’s then largest Holden dealership, City State Motors, used this approach when it insisted on campaigning one of the most intriguing cars ever to appear in the Australian Touring Car Championship. It defied convention by not only being a humble Kingswood, but also employing open-wheeler expertise in…

Old School is Cool A few issues back, I looked at Area 71 3D printed bodies and their state-of-the-art technology. Of course, making limited production slot bodies has been possible well before 3D printing technology, with resin casting and vacuum forming being used by old school body makers for a long time. AMC spoke to Kiwi John Warren of MVD Resins about his resin body experiences. AMC: For the uninitiated, how would you describe the resin casting process? John Warren: Well, to begin with, you need a master shape as your original. Most of the time it will have window openings or wheel arches that need to be closed in. Then you sit it on a flat surface, build a wall around the shape and pour silicone over…

Allan Moffat XB Falcon – 1974 Sandown 250 winner One of the last race starts for the ‘old’ car. Allan Moffat took a handy win at Sandown and went to Bathurst three weeks later with ‘Project B52’, the supposed be-all and end-all of Falcons. The car was a failure, suffering a litany of dramas on its way to an ignominious DNF. But the old car, that was another story. It won Sandown at a canter, the Toranas, mostly still XU-1s, unable to match the pace of the V8s. The model is a beauty. The boot shows only the racing essentials, the large capacity fuel tank with no wheel well and extended roll bars. Inside, there’s a highly detailed steering wheel and dash featuring full instrumentation and components. The XB door…

The rear window louvre. It’s one of those automotive fashion accessories that’s gone a bit out of style these days, but back in the day it was almost as if every other car on the road was fitted with one. These Aunger ads (which are literally 50 years old) demonstrate just how popular these things were: with Aunger’s extensive range, not only could you dress up your XA Falcon Hardtop GT with ‘a bit of Lamborghini style’, but even the humblest HQ Kingswood, Datsun 1200 or Toyota Corolla could get the same treatment. The Lamborghini model to which Aunger is referring no doubt is the mid-‘60s Miura, which not only is widely regarded (still) as the world’s most beautiful sports car, but is also possibly the first production car to…

Muscle Maniac John Bowe has announced that 2023 will be his last full season in Touring Car Masters. For what amounts to a TCM testimonial tour, Bowe’s Torana LX four-door will feature a unique technicolour livery – designed, he says, as a tribute to a classic era of music, TV and entertainment. “There’s a bit of a ‘The Partridge Family’ theme about the new livery, in that they travelled around, having fun and loving life,” he says. “That’s what we’re trying to do with this final TCM tour in 2023. “I’ve got no artistic ability, so I handballed the job of the livery over to my partner Lesley. She and Aaron from Mint Signs in Bendigo came up with this design. I think it looks terrific, certainly not something that’s…

Muscle Maniac James Laing-Peach may have been a modest, self-deprecating man but he was a significant figure in the Australian motoring media from the 1960s through into the ‘80s. He was pretty handy behind the wheel, too, enjoying a solid career in rallying and on bitumen. Laing-Peach was an early editor of Auto Action magazine but over the years filled a variety of journalistic posts in motorsport publications as well as general motoring. As a driver, Laing-Peach raced and rallied to some solid results. In a Renault 10 he was second in the Series Production class in the 1966 Southern Cross Rally (then Australia’s premier rally event), and made the finish in the gruelling 1970 Ampol Trial, driving a Ford Cortina MkII GT. He made nine starts in the Great…

Godzilla 1 This magazine always delivers and so I intend to keep on purchasing it and with Supercars Gen3 around the corner, who knows what we’ll see? I would like to add my two cents’ worth to the discussion on the GTR Nissan Godzilla’s. No, I wasn’t a fan of the car but I think ‘hate’ is a bit strong in language. The booing at Bathurst was a disgrace, and Jim Richards put it pertly and bluntly to the moronic offenders. For the record I am a Ford fanatic, but I draw the line at booing any winner even if I do not hold that person in high regard. The GTRs were not at fault for their performance capabilities, and as reported in the last issue Fred Gibson and team…

“I loved doing that work; I was really digging into the heritage of the V8 line of cars. It was almost a renaissance of Ford muscle cars inspired by the ‘60s and ‘70s,” says Mark Behr, reflecting on his pivotal role as Product Planning and Brand Marketing Manager from 2002 to 2007 during the halcyon days of Ford Performance Vehicles. That exciting era welcomed the return of evocative names from Ford performance history including GT, GS, Pursuit, Super Pursuit, Boss and Cobra. And if history had followed a different road, we also could have seen the return of the iconic Super Roo and the high-performance legend for which it was created – the GT-HO. When FPV was formed as a joint venture between Ford Australia and Prodrive in 2002, it…

You couldn’t have scripted it better. A clean sweep of wins for Holden on the streets of Adelaide in the brand’s final final start in top-level professional motorsport. The first was a one-two for the Walkinshaw Andretti United team – which, of course, had been the original Holden Racing Team, as well as HSV. The second win the next day went to Triple Eight Race Engineering, the team which replaced the Walkinshaw group as the current nominal works Holden banner. Just as it was a last win for the Holden marque, it was also a first for the driver of that final-victorious Commodore. To be the centre of the commemorations of Holden’s last ever championship race victory at the same time as you celebrate your first Supercars race win will…

When you’re a car maker going racing, it’s vital that you are able to align the racing programme to the road cars you’re selling. In the case of Nissan in the ‘80s, the fire breathing Bluebird Turbo added lustre to the pedestrian 910 Series Bluebird – remember the TR-X? The HR31 Skyline GTS-R initially helped push the R31 Skyline Silhouette before Nissan Special Vehicles Division (NSVD) was set up in 1988 to build the limited-edition high-performance Silhouette GTS. The story of NSVD, the special Skylines and its guiding light Paul Beranger was recently told in the pages of AMC #129. Australian production of the R31 Skyline was phased out in 1990, and was not replaced. Its little sister, the Pintara, went front-wheel drive, and its sporty TR-X derivative was anything…

Scenes from a pre-Christmas gathering of Queensland muscle at Bundaberg. If you’ve got a car club or rally happening and would like to get the word out in AMC magazine, contact our club directory manager Mat Clancy – mclancy@nextmedia.com.au Our #carparkmuscle featured lensman this issue is Bundaberg-based Peter Hurn Photography. Contact Peter on Mb: 0448 590 217 or Em: Peter.hurn@phurnphotography.com. You can see more of Peter’s shots at www.facebook.com/PHurnPhotography…