Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 144 i Australian Muscle Car

As publicity stunts go, this one is hard to top. How about living in a brand-new Holden Statesman for 10 days straight – while the car is suspended high in the sky (well, 20 metres off the ground), by a crane! It was the idea of Allan Mason, dealer principal at Allan Mason Holden in the southern Sydney suburb of Kirrawee. The aim of the exercise was to promote the Sutherland Motor Show as well as raising funds for the construction of a new wing of Sutherland Hospital. The stunt coincided with the 10-day motor show, held (in July 1971) on vacant land which Mason had just purchased near the dealership. Mason’s idea for the motor show was to create an opportunity for the string of car dealerships situated on…

The GTR is dead Having only just established the GTR XU-1 name as the very definition of excitement and high performance in its Torana range, Holden was suddenly killing it off. Instead, the General chose to rationalise the LH model designation, starting from the poverty pack S through the ‘Sports/Luxury’ SL and the SL/R, the GTR replacement. This wasn’t merely an exercise in tidying up the nomenclature, however. The less evocative SL/R nameplate was probably going to attract less scrutiny from insurance companies than anything with the letters GT in it, which meant potentially cheaper premiums; likewise the high-performance Bathurst version might evade unwanted scrutiny from opportunistic politicians if it didn’t go by the name GTR. Let’s remember that the disaster of the Supercar Scare that saw Holden forced to…

I van Smith is 93 years old. Back in the late ‘60s and early ’70s he worked as a roads foreman at the Victorian railways. His area of responsibility was the line between Ballarat and Mildura. One day he decided he’d get himself a new Falcon GTHO. So he went into the Ford dealership at Ballarat. ‘I’m here to buy one of these HOs’, he said to the salesman. To which the salesman replied: ‘are you sure you can afford it?’ With that, Ivan turned on his heels, walked out of the Ford dealership, and went across to Wyres Brothers, the local Ballart Holden dealer. He drove out of the Wyres Brothers showroom in a brand-new Monaro GTS 350, burnished bronze in colour, with parchment trim and parchment roof. Ivan’s…

David ‘Skippy’ Parsons is a driver who needs little introduction. Co-Bathurst winner with Peter Brock with the HDT in 1987; second with John Harvey in ’84 in that classic HDT VK Commodore ‘Last of the Big Bangers’ 1-2, and not forgetting some early explosive performances in the championship sprint rounds as a youngster in an unsponsored virgin-white Commodore. But he’s not the only touring car racing ace from the Parsons family, because when David Parsons was making a name for himself in the early ‘80s as driver of obvious talent, he was merely following the footsteps of his father, Graham. It certainly was a case of ‘like father, like son’, because while Graham Parsons (unlike his son) rarely raced on the mainland, back in the ‘70s whenever our top touring…

Carpark Muscle#CarparkMuscle Images from the Holden Heritage Car Show put on by Machines & Macchiatos at Gough Whitlam Park in Tempe in Sydney’s inner west on a warm and sunny late April Sunday morning. As can be seen in the pics, there was a feast of Holdens from all eras on display: everything from the big contingent of 1950s ‘early-girl’ Humpies, FE/FCs and FB/EKs to a Brock HDT Director and even the humble HB Torana. Something for all Holden fans. 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…

Muscle Maniac Sadly, Echuca’s National Holden Motor Museum closed its doors for good on April 14. The museum had been for sale for some time but when a buyer failed to eventuate, owners Tony and Mark Galea took the decision to shut the museum down. “Being a tourist town and open every day has taken its toll on our personal lives, and wanting to keep the museum in Echuca we decided to offer it for sale,” Tony and Mark Galea wrote on the museum’s Facebook page. “Unfortunately, no serious buyers came forward, so we will close on 14th April and auction the contents which belong to us on 18th May 2024. Most of the vehicles on display are loaned to us and will be leaving.” Burns & Co is handling…

It’s a big year for Torana fans as they celebrate the 50th birthday of the SL/R 5000 L34. A big part of the festivities this year will be the Torana Muscle on the Murray weekend at the Siesta resort at Albury (on the Murray River) on September 20-22. This social gathering of Toranas has been steadily building in recent times and organisers hope 2024 will be the biggest yet. To register your Torana, or simply to enquire about attending, check the event’s Facebook page or email toranamuscleonthemurray@gmail.com…

The 2024 L34 Nationals were always going to be a big deal. After all - and hard to believe, though it is - the first V8 Torana race homologation special this year is 50 years old. A mega roll up of more than 40 L34s fronted at Phillip Island of the Friday of the Phillip Island Historic race meeting, taking pride of place in a display adjacent to the main straight in front of the Expo centre. Entrants got to do parade laps on all three days, along with the Cowes main street car show on the Friday night. A series of speed events were planned for the Lang Lang trip but these were curtailed a little due to the near freak weather conditions that dogged south-east Victoria all weekend…

W ith no added sugar to weigh it down, it’s far too quick! It’s the only cereal in the history of motorsport to have beaten Johnson AND Brock! That was the breathless tongue-in-cheek ‘course-commentary’ voiceover in the 1984 Vita-Brits TV ad, as young ‘Vita-Brits kid’, driving a Vita Brits-on-wheels, wows the crowd as he takes the chequered flag to defeat both Dick Johnson’s Greens-Tuf Falcon XE and Peter Brock’s HDT Commodore. This memorable moment in Aussie television was brought to AMC’s attention some years ago when photos emerged of what appeared to be Brock’s HDT VH Commodore sans Marlboro logos and sporting an unusual white with orange/yellow striping livery. No Brock/HDT Commodore ever raced in this trim; further investigation confirmed that the distinctive paint job had been knocked up especially…

Eight years younger than Kent, Brett started off racing an LJ Torana sports sedan. He then teamed up with Kent and raced Commodores in production racing, before riding the wave that was HQ Holden racing, which had begun in Tasmania in 1989. “In 1990 the HQs came from Tasmania to the mainland,” recalls Brett. “All the Tassie heroes came. My wrecker friend Greg Stephenson said, ‘why don’t we build a car? Get Neill Burns to build engines for us? Looks like a bit of fun – Brett, do you want to drive?’ The first race is at Winton, pissing rain and I win by half a mudguard. They thought we were cheating. We didn’t do any development, but I had 13 straight wins in that car. Others came along and…

Muscle Maniac It’s on again this year, and so if you’re a Ford fancier in Sydney, all roads lead to Sydney Dragway on Sunday, July 28, for the All Ford Day. There were more than 1000 Fords featuring at last year’s event and we can expect a similar rollup in 2024. Presented by the Combined Ford Clubs of NSW, it’s just $20 to enter your Ford, and $10 admission for spectators. There’ll be a swap meet held on the Saturday – $5 admission for ‘lookers’ and $20 for ‘swappers’.…

In this game, with the type of research we undertake to give you, the reader, new perspectives on muscle car and motorsport history, it is easy to go down a few rabbit holes. One of my fascinations was the original Can-Am series between 1966-72. The premier road racing championship in North America with unique and unlimited bespoke sports-racing cars on the fastest road courses in America, with the best local and foreign drivers. Thes cars were cutting-edge when it came to innovation and were faster that the Formula 1 cars of the day. Incredible. The chance to deep dive into Graeme Lawrence’s 1970 Can-Am campaign was enhanced by access to period Canadian press coverage as outlined in my column in AMC #140. Remarkably, we received a letter from a member…

During the preparation of the Kent Youlden Muscle Man feature in the last issue of AMC, I was sent a fantastic photo by his son, Bathurst 1000 winner Luke. The photo is of Luke’s childhood bedroom with posters of his dad’s racing Falcons plastered all over the wood veneer wall. I thought it was really cool, having posters of your favourite racing cars on the wall, that just happen to be of your own dad! Unfortunately, the photo didn’t make the cut for last issue’s feature, so you are seeing it here for the first time. That photo got me thinking about posters that I had on my wall when I was a pimply teenager. No, they weren’t posters of Lamborghini Countachs adorned with scantily dressed babes. I was a…

Ford announced its exit from racing around the time Holden was finalising the L34. In essence, then, it was a homologation special built with no opposition to beat. Which might in part explain why the car was underdone in key areas of the drivetrain. After disastrous outings at the Adelaide and Sandown enduros, the chiefs at Holden must have been looking towards the October Bathurst race with some trepidation. What should have been something of a fait accompli all of a sudden was looking like very difficult proposition. Still, with 13 L34s, six XU-1s and the lone Ron Dickson HQ Monaro GTS 350 against just three Falcons, how could Holden not win? It certainly looked like the unlosable Bathurst after qualifying, because the new L34s had pace at Mount Panorama…

Muscle Man Country roads Bryan Thomson was born in 1935 and raised at Rochester in central Victoria, before the family moved 65km to Shepparton after the war. Although cashed up from the sale of their farm, the family – Mum, Dad (now a builder) and six children – had to live in a tent for six months until a house finally became available. After that, another three children came along... Bryan was shipped off to board at Scotch College in Melbourne – “Why? Because (Prime Minister) Bob Menzies went to Scotch!” – and had dreams of becoming an aircraft engineer. “I was always enthralled by engineering, but the vocation people told my parents I wasn’t strong enough in mathematics,” he recalls. “They said I had the right attitude and skills…

Zen and the Art of Tyre Maintenance A few issues back I went through tuning of a Fly Porsche 911 that included truing of the tyres. With apologies to Robert Pirsig and his philosophical motorcycle book from the Seventies, I thought now might be a good opportunity to go through the value of a good tyre truer, and the options available. Looking at why tyre truing made a difference to the speed of the Porsche, and it is all about optimizing tyre contact with the grainy surface of the track. Most slot cars are a compromise between cost and quality, so the moving parts and their actual shape may be not quite as the maker intended. Axles can be bowed, tyres can be convex or concave, and wheels can be…

HOLDEN HK MONARO GTS 327 Classic Carlectables is being a bit mean this issue, with just one new model to share. But, it’s a pretty nice model. Last issue I said the HT Monaro was a bit like Editor Normoyle’s first car, but he pointed out his was a HK. So, here’s a HK. The Warwick Yellow is a nice, soft hue, isn’t it? I prefer a more subtle yellow, rather than the screaming ones you see sometimes. This 1:18 model features metallic badges, to match the finish of the real badges, and the GTS ‘sports wheel disc’ hub caps which sit on top of steel wheel rims. The front brake discs are replicated in etched metal. The interior includes the sports steering wheel and console with the four-speed shifter…