Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 150 i Australian Muscle Car

The Corvette has long been perceived as America’s Ferrari. You can see it even in the lines of some of the Corvette generations: the original C1 bears a less-than-vague resemblance to the Ferrari 250 GT which preceded it by a few years; you could say the same about the early ‘80s C4 Vette and the Ferrari 308/328. The current C8 was quite obviously conceived with the Ferrari 488 in mind, right down to the ‘supercar’ mid-engined transaxle drivetrain layout – the first Corvette with no V8 ‘under the hood’ in the 70-year history of the nameplate. It might even be argued that GM has also gone after Ferrari with the Chevy V8 powerplant which, in the case of the Z06, does not feature the classic small-block Chevy pushrod two-valve configuration…

Joe Felice was not a racing driver, but he was the man who made racing happen for Holden through the 1970s – he was the GM-H connection between the Holden Dealer Team racing effort and Holden head office, and was the keeper of the General’s cheque book. Holden’s involvement in racing started with the mid-‘60s appointment of John Bagshaw as sales and marketing manager. Bagshaw saw racing as a way of shaking off Holden’s image as a solid, dependable (rather than exciting, as well as solid and dependable) brand, which he saw as the key to arresting the inroads into Holden’s (enormous) market share that were steadily being made by Ford and Chrysler. As Bagshaw’s right-hand man, Joe Felice was charged with the task of overseeing Bagshaw’s planned Holden racing…

amceditorial@chevron.com.au | Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards NSW 1590 Bryan Thomson This is a bit of a to-whom-it-may-concern thing. This morning I had a call from a Shepparton friend who told me of Bryan Thomson’s passing. I was mechanic with Bryan when he bought his Cooper S from Gavin Ballieu, which had been built by Harry Firth. I had a hot Mini at the time and was introduced to him on that basis. At the time Peter Fowler was working at the BMC dealer in Shepparton; I was there as a field service rep for International Harvester. When he bought the Mustang and painted it BP green, I worked on that until his trip to UK. Also helped prepare the E Type for the Surfers race, with Glynn Scott as…

Gary Henderson could count himself lucky. Travelling along what in 1971 was widely regarded as Australia’s most dangerous road, the then two-lane Pacific Highway that snaked its way along the NSW central and north coast, in torrential rain he lost grip and collided with a trailer. Luckily the incident was relatively minor; the Torana Gary was driving escaped with little more than a crushed front guard. Which was doubly fortunate, given that this Torana was scheduled to be on the starting grid in a month or so at Mount Panorama in the Hardie-Ferodo 500. Gary had been in the process of delivering the brand-new LC model GTR XU-1 from Brisbane Holden Dealer, Zupps Motors, to Ian Hindmarsh’s workshop in Artarmon, Sydney. There Hindmarsh would prepare it for the Bathurst race,…

I’ve been busy at the workbench. While my skills are modest, they’re mine and the process is great therapy for me – very mindful, they say. So the results are not always what I’d hope for, but they’re MINE! I got a couple of the DDA Torana A9X kits a while back. They’re 1:24 scale and these are the ‘racing’ version, with a roll cage, side-exit exhaust, drop tank and the race version of the 308 engine. I didn’t find these to go together quite as well as the XW Falcons – whether that’s a Bruce problem or the casting itself wasn’t quite as good, I don’t know. I do know the (small) issues were the same on both kits. Nothing huge, but a bit of an annoyance. First, the…

#CarparkMuscle 2025 Gnoo Blas Classic The city of Orange in central-west NSW annually hosts one of Australia’s most interesting car club events. It’s a celebration of the first running of the Australian Touring Car Championship, in 1960, on the Gnoo Blas road circuit just out of town. The 2025 Gnoo Blas Classic, on February 7-9, was the 27th running of the event. The huge car show held on Jack Brabham Oval on Saturday this year attracted over 850 vehicles – of all shapes and sizes, as the pics show. Guests at the sold-out Saturday night dinner were hosted by club secretary Bob Nash and club President Wayne Swadling. Will Hagon, who was at Gnoo Blas for that 1960 ATCC, was MC, and introduced Colin Bond and AMC’s Ray Berghouse. These…

John French is probably best known for exploits in Ford Falcons in touring car racing. He raced Falcon GTHOs in the early ‘70s both as a works team driver and as a privateer, and he partnered Dick Johnson to victory at Bathurst in 1980 in the Tru-Blu Falcon XD. That was the biggest win of French’s career, but it was far from the only highlight of his near 30 years in the sport. He was, in fact, one of the very first Holden star drivers, with his modified early model ‘Humpy’ in the late 1950s. The car served during the week as his sales rep transport; on weekends he’d swap the standard ‘Grey’ six for a hot Repco-headed engine and go racing. At a time before the Australian Touring Car…

The Touring Car Masters Series kicked off in fine style at SMSP’s Supercars round. Andrew Fisher took pole in his Jesus Racing Torana, but in the Trophy Race Jude Bargwanna took the win in his Duggan Family Hotels Commodore VB, in what was his very first TCM race start. Mechanical gremlins intervened later the weekend for Bargwanna, however, leaving Camaro driver Joel Heinrich to take the points lead with two wins on Sunday, along with a second place in race one behind Fisher.…

Tony Hyde, Holden legend, engineering mastermind and Corvette lover strokes his chin and ponders his choice. In front of him, parked in the shade on this sweltering summer’s day, sit not one but two mid-engined C8 Chevrolet Corvettes. The one in Silver Flare is the Z06, the most powerful naturally-aspirated Corvette ever made. Basically, it is a GT3 race car registerable for the road. The one in Arctic White looks similar but in fact is rather different. It is the E-Ray, the first ever electrified all-wheel-drive Corvette in the 72-year history of America’s iconic sports car brand. It’s been our pleasurable duty to spend the day meandering the back roads of Victoria’s western Gippsland in the hills behind the famed Holden Lang Lang R&D. It was within the confines of…

Garry Waldon has always enjoyed a reputation for being one of the nicest, most gentlemanly people you could ever hope to meet in motorsport. AMC, after interviewing the New South Welshman, can confirm he is undoubtedly that. It’s also correct to say he was no shrinking violet on the racetrack. Let’s get the puns out of the way early, shall we? Waldon came up smelling of roses in production car competition more often than not. And there was never any chance of tall poppy syndrome. There’s no need to gild the lily, nor engage in any flowery prose in telling G Waldon’s story over the coming pages – just the hard facts. It’s a tale unlike any other in Australian motorsport. The narrative goes like this… a member of the…

Good Ol’ Boys build For this issue, I’m going to go back to my dabble into club racing. One of the club’s original classes is based on NASCAR bodies, and I needed to build a suitable car. Hopefully you will see the class, and the assistance I had in getting the car together, reflects on their helpful approach to slot racing. After all, if newcomers like me are getting their butt kicked every week and not making any progress, that’s not fun. We all have better ways to spend our time than being easy prey for veterans with unbeatable cars to get race victories. To help noobs like me get up to speed quicker, the club came up with this class with some key elements in mind: a ready-made simple…

The build Having already built both of DDA’s previous releases, I was expecting a similar experience with the XW Falcon. While the methods and techniques for assembly are similar, there have been a number of changes to the way the kits go together in comparison to the Holden kits. I began by removing all the parts from the sprues and did a test fit to see how everything went together so I could get a feel for how best to tackle the painting. As with their first releases, the internal parts and chassis are screwed rather than glued together. I personally prefer this way to assemble as it reduces the risk of any issues occurring from glueing the final parts in place and it also holds everything together firmly, with…

They’re still out there… Donington Auctions is offering for sale this remarkable ‘barn find’ HQ Monaro – a 1974 HQ GTS coupe (in Barbados Green with black vinyl upholstery) that’s said to have been shedded since around 2006. As can be seen, it appears to be in very tidy order inside and out and remains largely unmolested (apart from those black Ford XA/B/C side mirrors!). The car had a front subframe change in the 1980s, and it can’t be confirmed whether or not the engine is the original 5.0-litre V8 as factory fitted – although there’s a good chance it is as the QT-prefixed engine block is date coded April 1974 (the car left the factory in May 1974). It was last registered in 2006 and shows 78,067km on the…

Scenes from this year’s Repco Adelaide Motorsport Festival at the Adelaide Parklands circuit. The 2025 Repco AMF featured the usual smorgasbord of some of our – and indeed the world’s – best racing, sports and touring cars, and even some very notable road cars. The latter included the Holden Coupe 60 concept car (below), the coupe that would have been the VE/VF series Monaro had Holden continued with the 2000s Monaro reboot.…

Ford Performance Vehicles added a unique chapter to Australian muscle car history when it launched the F6 range in 2004. For here was a new breed of high-performance car that optimised the iconic Aussie inline six through turbocharging, resulting in a proudly Australian-made car with unprecedented levels of technology and scintillating performance. The F6 range, based on Ford’s Falcon XR6 Turbo in both sedan and ute configurations and briefly the Territory SUV-based F6X (see breakout), offered a unique forced-induction drivetrain which FPV’s nemesis Holden Special Vehicles could not counter, following the lukewarm reaction to its short-lived VX Commodore-based XU6 (with supercharged V6) released in 2000. The addition of the F6 to FPV’s existing GT range also created two streams of business, clearly defined by not only their turbo six and…

The winter sun was slowly setting behind the nearby skyline of NSW’s Blue Mountains, as two cars eased themselves into the start line stage beams for the final of the Pro Stock bracket at Sydney International Dragway. The crackle of their unmuffled exhausts barked menacingly in the dense, moisture-laden late-afternoon air of the mid-winter race meeting. Five amber lights, and then the green to send them on their way. Moments later, the brown Falcon GT in the right lane erupted in a volcanic-like explosion that almost wrote off the vehicle. The smoking wreckage speared straight to the left, off the track and onto the narrow gap of gravel in front of the Armco barrier. It was the moment, on July 18, 1971, that would come to define the volatile and…

Official History of the Falcon GT – Collector’s Edition Painstakingly researched by Ford historian Ross Vasse and his expert team, this book is the definitive Falcon GT bible and the ultimate tribute to Ford’s Falcon GT motoring history. Officially endorsed and licensed by Ford, this definitive book chronicles every detail of every Falcon GT model – from the groundbreaking 1967 XR GT to the final masterpiece, the 2014 FPV FG GT-F. Inside this landmark edition you will see: Rare, never-before-seen photographs and untold stories; Bathurst-winning XW and XY GTHO dominance; Evolution of the XA and XB GT sedans and hardtops; The GT legacy reborn: EB, EL, BA, BF, and FG models; plus detailed specifications and performance milestones – commemorating Ford’s 100th Anniversary in Australia (1925–2025) Strictly limited to 1000 copies…