Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 136 i Australian Muscle Car

In this issue of AMC we’re focussing on two pivotal moments in Australian touring car racing, half a century apart. Well, half a century plus one year, to be precise, as the XA Falcon GTHO Phase IV was scheduled for a mid-1972 release, whereas the Gen3 Camaro-vs-Mustang era has just kicked off this past month (even though it was meant to have happened in 2022, but that’s another story…). But the Phase IV and Gen3 are linked in an odd kind of way. Each was responsible for heralding in a new dawn in Australian motorsport (the XA wasn’t a part of the new era it helped create: it was the model’s sudden and unexpected demise that was the catalyst for the change). The Supercar Scare of 1972 didn’t just kill…

Muscle Sport Now there’s a headline… The last time the names Moffat and Grice made news like that was probably as far back as 41 years ago, when Allan Moffat downed Allan Grice to win the Sandown 400. Well, on the day no one was really sure who had won, Moffat or Grice, following an ending to the pre-Bathurst enduro that was farcical almost beyond belief. Late in proceedings Moffat was shown the black flag for speeding in pit lane. He came into the pits, as required, only to find no official there to greet him, and so rejoined the race – and then ignored the next black flag. He took the chequered flag first, but was immediately demoted to second place behind Allan Grice. It was Moffat after the…

Our readers’ interest in Australian touring cars tapers off probably somewhere between 1996 and 2000. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when, but there are a number of touchpoints. The change of name from the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) to V8 Supercars when Tony Cochrane and his IMG mates bought the promotional rights from CAMS for a pittance. Cochrane’s ambivalence towards Bathurst when he famously stated, ‘there are no sacred sites’ (ED: could this be the least insightful thing anyone’s ever said in the entire history of Australian motorsport?) and how the 1000 that was once religiously held on NSW’s Labour Day long weekend (in either the first weekend in October or the last in September) now takes place on a different weekend. Maybe it was slotting the Chevrolet V8…

Walking towards the car from a distance, the sheer presence of the XA GTHO is huge. Not only is this XA the last of its kind with respect to it being a GTHO, but it is unequivocally the only of its kind. A unicorn. To many, a fabled creation, one that many never believed existed. But it does. Following the curves of the car, it’s an XA four-door like any other, but because of what it really is, your mind can’t help but ponder what might have been had the car gone into production and had gone on to be Ford’s frontline Bathurst contender in 1972 – the role for which it was designed and built. The vibrant Calypso green paintwork captures your attention, drawing you in, and as you…

Bob Jane owned some classic race cars in his time. From the early Maserati 300S and Jaguar MkII and E-Type, to the Mustangs, the legendary 427 Camaro ZL1, the Improved Production and Sports Sedan HQ Monaro GTS 350, the Repco-Brabham V8-powered Torana XU-1, the Repco-Brabham V8 openwheelers, the Bowin P8 Formula 5000, the Series Production HT Monaro GTS 350 and Torana XU-1, the Group C Torana L34 and A9X, the Chev Monza Sports Sedan… And the car Bob himself chose as the display centrepiece for his T-Mart stores: the McLaren M6B sports car. John Harvey drove this sleek sports racer to two Australian Sports Car Championships before Jane retired it from competition at the end of 1972. It’s the one race car that Jane never sold. Clearly, of all the…

Best laid plans… It looked good on paper. It was powered by a turbocharged 3.0-litre six that was 50 percent larger in capacity than the four-cylinder turbo engines in the dominant Ford Sierra RS500. It was a full works-built Group A race car from Japan, a brand-new chassis, and it would enjoy factory support from Toyota Australia. At the wheel would be John Smith, unquestionably one of the fastest drivers in the country. All the elements looked in place to make the Supra Turbo a formidable Bathurst contender. Toyota itself seemed excited about the prospect of taking on Nissan’s Skyline HR31, Holden’s new VL Commodore SS Group A SV ‘Walkinshaw’ and the aforementioned Sierras, as the Japanese manufacturer prepared to step up to the big league of Australian touring car…

Carpark Muscle this issue features Sydney-based club Oldskool Muscle Car Cruises. Formed in 2021 by like-minded, family-orientated car enthusiasts, the club now has over 150 members. The club’s Breakfast Show & Shine events are held every second Sunday of the month at Bungarribee Park, Doonside in Sydney’s west from 7am to 9.30am. It’s a great way to enjoy a Sunday BBQ breakfast and coffee, chat with some fellow car enthusiasts and check out some of the very tidy muscle on display. The club celebrates its second birthday in May; check out their Facebook group for more info. https://www.facebook.com/groups/592044424704681/ If you’ve got a car club or event that you’d like featured in AMC magazine, contact our Club Directory Manager Mat Clancy – mclancy@chevron.com.au Torana Nationals 2023 What do you get when…

Muscle Maniac O ran Park’s 1971 Australian Touring Car Championship final round was dubbed the ‘greatest day in Australian motor racing’. Some say it still is more than 50 years later. Bob Jane’s 427 Camaro ZL1 vs Allan Moffat’s Trans-Am Mustang Boss 302, the winner takes the title. Two brutal muscle racers and two heavyweight big-name drivers – who really didn’t like one other. This clash of touring titans with so much at stake was a hugely anticipated event, and it attracted by far the biggest crowd the Sydney track had ever seen. As our retro feature in AMC #125 on this classic race meeting showed, the place was packed to rafters. So big was the crowd that all roads leading to Oran Park that Sunday were gridlocked for hours.…

For many readers of this magazine, the name Bob Muir conjures up images of the Army Reserve XD Falcon and its striking army camouflage livery. However, that brief spell in Group C ‘taxis’, as Muir used to refer to them, was but a small footnote in what was really a career spent in openwheelers. Muir was very much a single-seater man, and Formula 1 was the dream. His age and circumstances (a young family and a used car business on Parramatta Road) counted against that realistically happening, but he did come close during his time in Europe. One word to describe the pint-sized Muir is ‘quick’. At his peak he was as fast as Frank Matich; there were times when Muir’s blue Lola T300 had the measure of the dominant…

Muscle Spor Steven Johnson’s 2023 TCM campaign has kicked off in unprecedently fine style with four consecutive round wins. It’s the first time in the series’ history anyone has gone four-up; previously Johnson, John Bowe and Gavin Bullas each scored three rounds wins in a row. Johnson took honours on the streets of Newcastle after having also won at Symmons Plains. It was a case of picking up where he left off last year, the Mustang driver having ended 2022 with round wins at Bathurst and Adelaide. Johnson went close to clean-sheeting the Newcastle round but was denied by Marcus Zukanovic in the trophy race. It was a solid performance from Zukanovic, just two rounds into his comeback after taking nearly a year off while he recovered from a badly…

Smithy’s Surfers crash I was reading the article detailing John Smith’s motor racing career when his reference to an incident in his Formula Ford at Surfers Paradise sent me down memory lane. During the 1970s and ‘80s, a long-time friend Michael Germain and myself were members of the Queensland Crash Rescue Squad. We were directed to park the utility on the inside of the back straight at Surfers’ Paradise near the access track to the Air Strip. I was standing on the tray of the Ute and Michael was in the cabin. We saw John’s Bowin bearing down on us… I would’ve been one of the ‘fellows jumping in all directions’ that John described in the story, as his car struck the front of the Ute and then veered off,…

For those unfamiliar with the term ‘Sliding Doors’, it means the theoretical result of changing seemingly inconsequential moments that nonetheless alter the trajectory of future events. The term was popularised by the 1998 film of the same name, starring Gweneth Paltrow. How is a Gweneth Paltrow movie relevant, you may ask? The infamous Supercar Scare front page news article was the ‘sliding doors’ moment for the 1972 Bathurst 500. Had the story never made the front page, and as a consequence did not ignite the media and political firestorm which resulted in the stillbirth of the XA GTHO and the 5.0-litre V8-powered LJ Torana, the 500-mile race at Mount Panorama on Sunday October 1 that year would have been a very different contest. Without the Sliding Doors moment that was…

What is it? The car is a 1974 XB GT Sedan, colour is Apollo Blue and Silver. When did you buy it? I purchased the car brand new on the 15th of August 1974 when I was 20 years old. What do you know about its history? Built 06/74 it is a matching numbers GT bought from Harrigan Ford Wollongong. One of 12 sold by this dealer. It’s build number 976 of 1930 XBGT’s built by Ford Motor Company. Why did you buy it? A friend saw the car on Monday 12th being delivered while he was picking up a spare part from Harrigan’s, he drove me to the dealership that night and I first saw the car parked in the showroom. It was locked up and no lights were…

Muscle Woman Introduction There’s no doubt that ‘Charlie’ is one of the great talents in Australian motor racing. Very controversial; a lot of the other drivers don’t like her. Some of it is because she is a girl. A lot of fellows don’t like getting beaten by a girl who is so quick. She has been involved in a few bingles. People like John Harvey reckoned that she used to be dangerous. I don’t know whether she has overcome that, but she is fearless and she is very fast, and when a driver as great a judge as Frank Gardner says she has great potential then I’m on her side. So said legendary motorsport commentator Evan Green in 1980. Yet a few months later she had disappeared from the scene.…

What makes a muscle car a sought-after collectible? Lots of things, but age is a big one. As a rule of thumb, we’d say the starting point is at least 20 years. And with the passing of time, that takes us into the start of what might broadly be called the modern era of high-performance Commodores and HSVs, with the late ‘90s introduction of the LS-series Chev V8s. We’re already starting to see rising prices for early 2000 HSVs, and low-km SS Commodores in pristine condition. As that trend continues, as it will surely will, there’s a window of opportunity to grab some pretty good buys. Here is one: a VXII-series HSV SV300. If ever there’s been a sleeper in the HSV range over the years, this it. As a…

Set for release later this year is a new book on the XW Falcon GTHO Phase 1 that features the complete factory records for each of the 260 Falcon GTHOs built – information which until now had been seemingly lost in the mists of time. The long-lost build specifications for the original GTHO series include each car’s paint colour and trim combination, its factory-fitted options, the day it rolled off the assembly line and the Ford dealer to which it was allocated – along with the day the dealer sold it. The book also includes the factory records of some of the unusual build anomalies and one-offs – such as the GTHO which came with factory-fitted automatic transmission. This painstakingly researched book written by Ford GTHO historian Ross Vasse, THE…

They looked good. Actually, they looked sensational. They were low, wide, muscular, and pretty much exactly like the road cars they’d been shaped to resemble. Fifteen months after the debut of the Gen3 Camaro and Mustang prototypes at Bathurst in December 2021, finally watching the real Gen3 Supercars race for the first time in Newcastle was a relief. Despite their long and controversial gestation, the new Camaros and Mustangs were just as good to watch trackside as the Gen2 Commodore ZB and the Ford ‘Frankenstang’. Maybe better. It seemed the secret ingredient of Supercars’ long success might still be part of the recipe. There was no guarantee that it would be. Almost everything except the transaxle has been thrown out to create a new generation of cars that look more…

G THO Phase IV. Whisper those words to any Ford fan in this part of the world and they’ll instantly know exactly what you mean.For many Ford fans, just hearing those words is enough to stir some deep passions, and elicit a range of emotional responses. And yet most aficionados of the blue oval have never even seen a GTHO Phase IV, much less driven or owned one. Such is the mystique of the Falcon XA GTHO Phase IV. Arguably the greatest Australian Ford muscle car ever built, but at the same time the Ford that never was. In 1972 the four-door XA GTHO was the logical progression, the next ‘phase’ in the GTHO program, continuing the development and building on the success that had already been forged with the…

For any Ford fans who may have missed it, the driver in the overalls with the Holden badge standing next to John French (below centre) is a youthful looking Dick Johnson. Dick was partnering French in an Alfa GTV but they were only bit players that year in a race of high drama (French and Johnson had dramas of their own – the Alfa kept catching fire!). It was the wettest Bathurst 500/1000 yet held and arguably the most exciting as Kevin Bartlett fended off the late-race challenge from Bob Forbes’ Torana L34. KB still needed a walking stick (after the leg injuries he sustained in a Formula 5000 shunt earlier in the year) to get around but in the sodden conditions there could be no safer or more skilled…

A (slot) World United We tend to think of our hobby as a western phenomenon. After all, Scalextric, Carrera, Fly, Slot.it etc are all based in Europe. However, slot cars are raced in all parts of the globe. One man is making it his mission to ensure the rest of the world is aware of the slot racing scene in Japan. AMC spoke to Mamoru Teranishi about our shared hobby in his homeland. AMC: How popular is the slot car hobby in Japan? Mamoru Teranishi: Most Japanese who like slot cars are older men. There are a few young people, but very few women. Like in Australia, small children like them as novelties, but teenagers seem to be interested in something other than slot cars (laughs!). Australian muscle…

Holden FE Special – Black I always liked the styling of the FE and FC Holdens. Understated, maybe a bit plain, but handsome in a quiet sort of way. As I said once before, I had a mate with an FC. We thought it had a million horsepower because of all the wheelspin. Turned out it was just crap tyres. Once it had decent radials on it, all such anti-social behaviour dialled back a long way! Classic Carlectables’ 1:18 scale model of this car, in black, shows off the classic styling nicely. Take a look at the pic here: the chrome grille echoes the ‘50s era; look through the grille to see the radiator, horn and metal pressing. The door trims are accurate featuring details like two-tone vinyl accent, chrome…

In the previous issue of AMC we celebrated Holden’s glorious competition history. And why not: after all, Broc Feeney’s win at Adelaide last December in his Triple Eight Commodore ZB was the final-ever Holden race win in the Australian Touring Car Championship. Feeney’s unique place among the star drivers in Holden’s motorsport history is thus assured. However, of all the Holden star/car combos across the preceding 52 Australian Touring Car Championships, there’s none bigger (at least in our opinion) than the original, the very first Holden to win the ATCC: Norm Beechey’s HT Monaro GTS 350. It’s not just its pioneering Holden racing success that makes Beechey’s Monaro special. It’s a memorable machine for so many reasons. For one, this homegrown Holden racer was good enough to beat the American…