Australian Muscle Car 2020-02

Issue 114
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Contents
8 Muscle News
Ford can’t make enough new R-Spec Mustangs but Holden can’t sell enough Commodores...
Chrysler’s Australian importer has second thoughts on bringing in the Charger and Challenger
12 Muscle Maniac
Ralph Radburn’s ‘Craven Mild’ A9X, Cobra capers at Lakeside, and Horst Kwech
26 Bolwell is back
Bolwell is back with a new-age Nagari, half a century after the original Ford 302-powered
Melbourne-built Aussie muscle coupe stunned punters at the ‘69 Melbourne Motor Show
44 Commodore
It’s official, the Holden Commodore is no more. AMC reflects on the unusual origins of this
Aussie icon and laments what turned out to be a sad and agonisingly slow death
50 Dick’s super ‘stang
Its a car with a wordy name, but then the Dick Johnson Limited Edition by Herrod
Performance is also probably the last word in Ford Mustang high performance
61 Muscle Man: David Seldon
He wasn’t a star name but David Seldon was a solid and respected Bathurst performer -
even if he probably wasn’t on Allan Moffat’s Christmas card list...
76 Fairly unique
This ‘59 model ‘tank’ Fairlane is one fairly unique Ford, and not just because it’s owned a
cherished by a self-confessed Holden man, retired Supercars racer Steve Reed
44
50
84 Holden V8
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Holden V8 engine - a locally developed engine that had
to prove itself against the small-block Chev before GM Detroit would let Holden build it
94 Brian Keegan
The life and times of drag racing pioneer and Humpy Holden exponent, Brian Keegan
006 Induction
022 Muscle Mail
072 Back in the Day
90 My Muscle Car
Regulars
104 Slot Addiction
106 Punter Pics
108 Mini Muscle
114 Whaddayaknow
4

61
72
26
76
94
5

6
The Holden Commodore is dead. Holden
announced its passing at the end of last year
(along with the Astra model), as it rebrands
itself as an importer of SUVs and utes. Into
the future, there will be no Holden sedans.
Events at Holden today are in rather stark
contrast to what was happening half a century ago.
Back then, 1969, Holden celebrated an enormous
achievement: the successful development and
production of a home-grown V8 engine.
The Holden 253 and 308 CID series V8 was
not just any engine. This was a V8 drawn from
a clean sheet of paper, designed specifically for
the cars Holden planned to build in the late 1960s
and beyond. But it also had to stack up favourably
against the V8 engine which parent company GM
was already producing. And that engine wasn’t just
any old engine, either. That engine was the nowlegendary
small block Chev.
Holden’s V8 had to deliver the goods, because
it was the chiefs at Detroit, not Fisherman’s Bend,
who would decide whether or not the engine went
into production.
It was no easy sell. Every other GM subsidiary
around the world (all of the various North American
GM brands, and Opel in Europe and in South
Africa) managed to get by using the small-block
283 Chev V8 – why should the Australians be any
different? The Holden V8, therefore, needed to be
good: not necessarily more powerful than the Chev,
but smaller, lighter, no less reliable and no more
expensive to produce.
The smaller 253 capacity was introduced with
the HT range later that year. The rest, as they
say, is history. The larger capacity 350 Chev was
retained till the mid-‘70s as a counter to Ford’s 351
Cleveland, but the majority of V8-powered Holdens
for the next 30 years were Holden V8-powered.
It didn’t take long for Holden’s V8 to hit the
racetrack. Not actually in a Holden, initially, but
rather in Formula 5000 open wheelers – where
Repco’s specially developed fuel injected Holden V8
was pitted against the category’s benchmark 307
Chevs – which had been modified for F5000 racing
by some of America’s best performance engine
tuners. Success was for the Holden instant, with
Frank Matich winning the 1970 Australian Grand
Prix in his Repco Holden V8-powered McLaren.
Touring car success would have to wait until
1974, with Peter Brock’s fi rst ATCC win in the
then-new LH Torana SL/R 5000 (check out our
Back in the Day section on page 72 for some
or’s Induction
eve
rmoyle
stunning images from that Surfers Paradise
race), but every Bathurst and championship win
from then until the early ‘90s was powered by the
5.0-litre Holden V8 engine.
Interestingly, even when Holden ditched
the Holden V8 in favour of the Chev when the
V8 Supercars category kicked off in 1993, the
Australian engine remained competitive on the
track. Victory at Bathurst that year for the Larry
Perkins team came using Holden power. Perkins
won again in 1995 with a Holden – pretty much the
only Holden engine still racing at Bathurst that year,
with almost the entire Commodore V8 Supercars
fleet having made the switch to the Chev.
It’s been 20 years now since the Holden V8 was
replaced as Holden’s road car V8 by the 5.7-litre
Chev LS1. Yet even years later many Commodore
buyers were still lamenting the death of the 308,
because while the high-revving LS1 was lighter
and more powerful, it couldn’t match the Aussie V8
for sheer grunt in the lower rev range (any early
distaste for the LS1 was also due to the chronic
oil consumption and related failures which dogged
the American engine here in its early years – and
which had been identified and rectified by Holden’s
engineers by the time the VY Commodore was
released in 2003).
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Holden
V8, this issue AMC delves into the remarkable
history of the engine’s development – stretching
right back to when the idea of an Aussie V8 was
first floated behind closed doors at Holden in 1962.
No doubt readers will have already noticed from
our cover image this issue that it also happens
to be the 50th anniversary of the classic Bolwell
Nagari. The folk at Bolwell have chosen to celebrate
this occasion themselves in the only way they know
how – by producing an all-new Nagari, powered by
a mid-mounted 6.2-litre LS3 Chev.
In 1969 the Nagari was an absolute sensation:
an Australian sports coupe with supercar looks –
and performance to go with it, thanks to lightweight
construction and Ford 302 Windsor V8 pow er. And
the Ford engine wasn’t even Bolwell’s preferred
choice of powerplant – the original intention was to
use the newly-released Holden V8.
While AMC would never wish to denigrate
the classic 302 Windsor V8, just imagine what
might have been: an iconic Aussie muscle coupe,
designed and built in Melbourne, powered
by a 5.0-litre V8 engine also developed and
manufactured right here in Australia.
Greg Taylor
Issue 114 – 2020
EDITOR
Steve Normoyle
Email: amceditorial@chevron.com.au
GRAPHIC DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
Art Director - Chris Currie
CONTRIBUTORS
Dave Cook, Paul Gover, Brett Jurmann, Bruce Moxon,
Paul Newby, Bruce Newton, Wally Weissel
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www.musclecarmag.com.au

HOLDEN A9X TORANA
1978 BATHURST
LIMITED EDITION OF 750 PIECES WORLDWIDE
Photograph of actual model
Item No.18698
Available Now!
1/18 Scale Model
Diecast Replica
For the second time in two years, Bob
Morris headed to Bathurst with real
expectations of a win, teaming up with
John Fitzpatrick in a Holden LX Torana
SS A9X Hatchback.
Morris was the fastest qualifier going
into Hardies Heroes with a time of 2:21.7,
and although he equalled this time in the
shootout, he fell back to 4th on the grid.
On race day, starting from 4th position,
Bob Morris raced into the lead within
one lap and both he and Fitzpatrick
continued to run strongly for 73 laps
of the required 163, until the Torana
dropped a fan belt and overheated.
This unfortunately ended the Morris/
Fitzpatrick race prematurely, leaving
them with thoughts of what might
have been had a little luck been on
their side for the Great Race.
The detailed interior of the A9X has
been modified for racing featuring a
full roll cage.
At the heart of the engine bay is a 308
V8, fed by twin webers along with
finely moulded hoses.
For more details contact Classic
Carlectables on Freecall 1800 088 564
or visit classiccarlectables.com.au
A1471 Australian Muscle Car

N ws
Bruce Newton
Commodore no more
Holden, the brand that was integral to the
creation of the uniquely Aussie muscle
cars we all love, no longer sells traditional
passenger vehicles.
Instead, with the axing of the ZB
Commodore and the BK Astra along with it,
Holden offers only SUVs and a ute (for more on
the death of the Commodore name and model,
see our Commodore feature piece on page 44).
The only place where you’ll still see new
Commodores is on racetracks, where the
Supercars version of the ZB will continue until the
end of the 2021 season.
There’s something very appropriate about the
fact that the only ZB to survive the executioner’s
axe is the racing version… the rear-wheel drive
V8.
Appropriate because it at least captures the
drivetrain essence of the locally-built cars which
built the Commodore name – something the fullyimported
ZB abandoned.
Sure, there have been plenty of forgettable
Holden-badged vehicles through the years. But
for all the Barinas, Apollos, Epicas and fourcylinder
Commodores, for that matter, the locallybuilt
performance models gave the brand a lustre
it wore proudly.
But no longer. If you want a road-going Holden
V8 you’re out of luck, and have been since the
VF II died in October 2017.
The closest you can get these days is the
Chevrolet Camaro. Holden’s parent General
Motors rejected the business case for an exfactory
right-hand drive version of the iconic
coupe, leaving it to Walkinshaw Group to do the
job locally and market it under the HSV brand.
You’ll pay $85,990 (plus on-roads) to get into
a Camaro, tens of thousands more than the late
lamented VF II Commodore SS-V Redline.
Wait till next year and Holden will inject
some mojo with the new C8 Corvette ex-factory
right-hand drive. But the exciting mid-engined
coupe will be an even more exclusive $150,000
proposition and it won’t be a Holden.
All that makes Ford look like utter geniuses
for introducing the Mustang to Australia before
the death of Falcon and doing it a relatively
affordable price. There are now thousands of
them rumbling along Aussie roads.
So if you’re a car fan, let alone a muscle car
fan, Holden showrooms are bare.
Instead, what’s left is a selection of vehicles
sourced from various corners of the GM world.
The Trax is a Chevrolet from Korea, the Equinox
a Chev built in Mexico, the Acadia is a GMC from
the USA and the Trailblazer and Colorado are
Chevs built in Thailand.
That line-up in a SUV and ute dominated
market is understandable. But none of them are
class-leaders and only the Colorado can really
hold its head up in sales terms.
Holden desperately needs an influx of
impressive and affordable new vehicles but it’s
unclear where they are coming from.
A huge issue is Holden sells in a right-hand
drive market, while GM has its primary focus on
the biggest left-hand drive profit centres North
America and China.
GM even pulled out of Europe, selling off Opel
to PSA (Peugeot-Citroen). The German company
sold its cars as Vauxhalls in the UK and that
substantial right-hand drive market provided a
decent supply of new metal for Holden.
Ford look like utter geniuses for introducing the
Mustang to Australia before the death of Falcon
and doing it a relatively affordable price
8

R-Spec sell-out
The Commodore and the Astra were the
last vestiges of that deal. Of course, GM still
has substantial manufacturing global bases
for Holden to tap into, but coming up with a
business case for a few thousand right-hand
drive vehicles is not easy.
Along with Camaro, Holden has for years
lusted after big SUVs and pick-ups built by GM
brands like Chevrolet and GMC in the USA
only to be foiled by the hundreds of millions
of dollars it would cost to switch the steering
wheel to the other side.
Instead, independent importers such as the
Walkinshaw Group have jumped into the gap.
The new Chevrolet Silverado 1500 pick-up and
Suburban SUV will soon be rolling out of its
Clayton plant.
It all leaves Holden and its new interim
managing director Kristian Aquilina – an
enthusiast, a Holden believer and motorsport
fan – in a deeply challenging position. A
brand with a rich heritage has slumped into
a traumatic present and a deeply uncertain
future.
Considering all that, you can understand
why debate and discussion over the end of
Commodore has pretty quickly turned in the
media to the future of Holden. There have been
plenty of doomsayers.
“I think at best Holden will end up a
Chevrolet brand,” said respected Australia
auto industry veteran Michael Bartsch in an
interview with carsales.com.au. “I just can’t see
that they’ll sustain what they’re doing.”
Former Holden design chief Leo Pruneau
(above) told the Daily Mail: “I would say in 10
years we won’t see a Holden badge. It’s a really
sad thing to say. There’s a good chance the
Holden name could disappear altogether.”
That’s not only sad. Just a few years ago it
was unthinkable.
If you’d been contemplating buying a
Ford Mustang R-Spec then time to look
elsewhere because all 500 have been sold
even before the keys drop into the hand of
the first eager owner.
Pent up demand for a $99,980 520kW
supercharged Mustang? You think!
The R-Spec is a local co-development of
Ford Australia, the blue oval’s tuning division
Ford Performance and tuning guru Rob Herrod.
It’s even being built by Herrod
Performance on part of the production line at
Broadmeadows formerly home to the Falcon
and Territory.
According to caradvice.com.au some Ford
dealers sold out within 24 hours of informing
their customers.
One of Australia’s biggest Mustang dealers,
speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “I
sent the email out to my customer list when
the car was unveiled, went to bed, and when I
woke up I’d sold all my cars!”
The R-Spec has been introduced because
the factory supercharged Mustang sold in the
USA is not in Australia.
Meanwhile, Chrysler Australia is also
reporting a good response to its limited edition
50 SRT Pacer limited edition.
Introduced to mark the 50th anniversary of
the Australian-built Valiant Pacer, the 6.4-litre
V8 rear-wheel drive sedan is mechanically
identical to the donor vehicle.
Lexus V8
Well, here’s a piece of good news for us confirmed its new twin-turbo design will debut
V8 engine fans and it comes from an in the 2020 Nurburgring 24-hour race before
unlikely source.
making its way into the road car line-up.
Lexus, the Toyota luxury spin-off that mostly Details are scarce, but a 4.0-litre 400kW
specialises in selling conservative cars to a starting point has been suggested. The
conservative audience is developing an all-new engine, which will replace the current antiatom
V8 engine.
5.0-litre V8, should flow into models such as
In an era where most brands are bailing out the LS limo, the LC and RC F coupes and our
of bent eights, Lexus – via the Toyota Gazoo favourite, the GS F sports sedan. V8, rearwheel
drive, four doors. What’s not to Racing factory motorsport operation – has
like?
9

Bullitt auction
The January auctions of the most famous and its legendary car chase. It’s the one
Ford Mustang in history and the first C8 McQueen himself tried to buy in 1977.
Corvette off the production line have netted The car had been in the same family for 46
more than US$6 million.
years and undriven most of that time. It popped
A 1968 Mustang GT fastback that featured in back into the public spotlight when it was rolled
the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt, sold in Florida out alongside the reborn 2018 Mustang Bullitt at
for $US3.74 million to an anonymous bidder. its global launch in the USA.
Days later in Arizona, legendary NASCAR The result easily tops the previous Mustang
team owner and car dealer Rick Hendrick paid auction record of US$2.2 million for a 1967
US$3 million for a red Z51 Corvette. That’s Shelby GT500 Super Snake.
$2.9405 million over the US$59,995 dealer price Hendrick, meanwhile, was ecstatic about
for the first mid-engined ‘vette!
picking up VIN 001 Corvette, declaring: “I am the
The Mustang is one of two ‘Highland Green’ number one Corvette junkie in the world.”
GT fastbacks used during the filming of Bullitt His winning bid goes to charity.
Images: Mecum Auctions/ Barrett-Jackson Auctions
10

Dodge stalls
The on-again off-again plan to get the sales in 2019.
Dodge Charger and Challenger musclecars
on-sale in Australia has hit a road-block. Challenger/Charger to Australia over the years.
There have been several attempts to get the
The local branch of the Dodge brand’s global Just to confuse things, in North America the
parent, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, has parked Challenger is the two-door and the Charger the
investigations into the V8 rear-wheel drive duo four-door.
while it develops a revitalisation plan for the In Australia, whether the plan has been
business in Australia.
ex-factory production or local right-hand drive
FCA currently retails the Jeep, Chrysler, Alfa conversion by the Walkinshaw Group, it’s been
Romeo, Fiat and Fiat Professional brands in envisaged the Challenger would be rebadged
Australia. Only Chrysler – boosted by a NSW Charger in an attempt to capitalise on memories
Highway Patrol deal for the 300C – was up in of the classic Chrysler coupe built in Adelaide
between 1972 and 1978.
But neither scenario is actively under
consideration right now.
“I’m a petrol-head so I love the V8 and
everything that goes with it,” new FCA Australia
managing director and CEO Kevin Flynn
told carsales.com.au when asked about the
prospects for the Dodge duo Down Under.
“But in all fairness my appraisal is of the
business as I have inherited it to date. We can
always look at what other opportunities are
down the road.
“At the moment I think it’s absolutely
imperative to focus on the core and once we are
confident in our handling of the core, then we
can understand more.”
Back from the future for Supercars
For the fi rst time since in nearly a decade racing was the subject of several handicapping of seat changes. The big shock has been
the Australian Touring Car Championship measures.
Chaz Mostert shifting from Tickford Racing to
will be exclusively Ford versus Holden.
That’s because the Nissan Altima, the last
of the Car of the Future interlopers that also
included the Mercedes-AMG E 63 and Volvo
S60, has been retired.
Instead, 16 Holden Commodores should line
up against eight Ford Mustangs on the 2020
Supercars grid.
Leading the way on the Holden side in 2020
will be the unchanged line-up of Jamie Whincup
and Shane van Gisbergen in the Red Bull/Triple
Eight Holdens.
Over at the blue oval, Scott McLaughlin will
be looking for a championship three-peat in the
Shell V-Power DJR Team Penske – a feat only
achieved by Whincup (on his way to a 2011-14
four-peat), Mark Skaife and Ian Geoghegan
(also on his way to a 1966-69 four-peat).
Fabian Coulthard will continue in the other
DJRTP Ford, making for a very stable look at
the serious end of the entry list.
While DJRTP had a tremendously successful
2019, winning the driver’s and teams’ title as well
as the Bathurst 1000, it was twice fined heavily
for illegalities and the new Mustang it played
an intrinsic role in developing for Supercars
Over the summer that process continued
with aerodynamic testing designed to level the
playing field between the two cars and slow
them down.
The other big deal technically is the
introduction of a control Supashock shock
absorber. Van Gisbergen for one is more
conscious of the impact that will have.
“The biggest thing, I think, is the shock
change, having those Supashocks and the
limited adjustment that you get,” he told
Speedcafe.com.
“I think it’ll be a very interesting because I
think in street circuits that’s been an advantage
for us; our shocks. The Sachs stuff was very
good.”
The championship is set to run over 14
rounds in 2020, down one compared to 2019
with Phillip Island dropping off the calendar.
There will be some structural changes to
meetings, including Saturday 120km races
boosted from 120km to 200km races.
Sandown also loses its enduro status,
replaced by the new Tailem Bend circuit in
South Australia.
Behind the front-runners there’s been -plenty
Walkinshaw Andretti United and from Mustang
to Commodore.
The 2014 Bathurst 1000 and 2020 Daytona
24-hour GTLM winner has taken a big punt
exiting a top 10 drive to head a struggling former
powerhouse.
His place at Tickford has been taken by
a grateful Jack Le Brocq, who exits Tekno
Autosports after a traumatic two-year tenure.
That team is also due to move south from the
Gold Coast this year to become Team Sydney,
although details of the new structure beyond
the confirmation of James Courtney as one of
its drivers was lacking as Australian Muscle Car
went to press.
Meanwhile, Kelly Racing has replaced its four
Altimas with two Mustangs and retained Rick
Kelly and Andre Heimgartner as its drivers.
Its reduction in entries has been negated by
the expansion of Holden squads Matt Stone
Racing, Team 18 and Tekno from single to twocar
entries, while Brad Jones Racing has grown
from three to four cars.
New drivers joining the championship include
Super2 winner Bryce Fullwood, Zane Goddard,
Jake Kostecki and Jack Smith.
11

Muscle
Maniac
Radburn’s ‘Craven-Mild’ Torana
In AMC #111 we featured the just-restored
Ralph Radburn/John Smith Torana A9X that
finished third at Bathurst in 1979. It was a
remarkable result given Radburn at the time
was a little-known privateer making only his
third start in the race.
But as the story also revealed, there were
extenuating circumstances behind this surprise
performance. For one, the equipment wasn’t half
bad, the car being an ex-Allan Grice Craven-
Mild Racing four-door A9X (the chassis the team
took to Bathurst in ’77 as a spare). And crucially,
the purchase also included some valuable aftersales
service.
For the ’79 race, much of the preparation was
done by Les Small alongside Grice’s own car –
in a way it was almost the sister team car to the
Grice/Frank Gardner two-door A9X at Bathurst
that year.
After Radburn took delivery of the car in mid
‘78, he was given a few driving tips in an A9X
road car around Oran Park by both Gardner
and Gricey. So by the time the ’79 race came
around, Ralph was at the top of his game
behind the wheel (and his co-driver John Smith
was no slouch, at the time a 26 year-old rising
openwheeler star).
This pic (from the Better Brakes 10,000 event
at Amaroo Park in July ’78, which featured in
our Back in the Day section in the last issue of
AMC) shows what we suspect is Radburn’s first
race start in the car, which as can be seen is
still in its Craven-Mild livery. It makes us wonder:
was this the only time two ‘Craven-Mild’ Toranas
ever started in the same race?
Le Mans comp
Shannons are offering motoring
enthusiasts the chance to win a 15-day
trip for two to the 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours.
The prize package includes hospitality
tickets at the Ford chicane and pit lane
entrance, with access to the paddock, grid
and pit lane, and a private shuttle service
to other sections of the legendary 13km
circuit – and there’s a helicopter tour!
After the race, the competition winners will
visit France’s Champagne region and then
head to Germany to take in the Porsche and
Mercedes-Benz museums. The trip will be
capped off with a hot lap of the legendary
Nürburgring. Also to be won is a new Indian
FTRTM 1200 motorcycle.
To enter, get a quote from Shannons on
your car, bike or home insurance. New motor
policy holders get an additional five tickets
in the draw; new and existing home and
content policy holders receive 10 entries. It
closes on April 9, 2019; check the Shannons
website for more details.
Shelby memorabilia
David Harding (below), was the man who picked up the
phone and made the call to Carroll Shelby to send
Ken Miles and the Shelby Cobra 427 Competition ‘down
under’ in November 1965. As Secretary of the Queensland
Motor Sporting Club (QMSC), the promoter of Lakeside
International Raceway, it was Harding’s job to attract the big
names of international motorsport to the venue. He had the
likes of Jack Brabham and Bruce
cLaren on speed-dial for the
asman Series so he wasn’t fazed by putting in a long
stance call to the former Texan chicken farmer in Venice, California.
Unfortunately Harding has not retained the original correspondence
etween the QMSC and Shelby, which would have amounted to
elegrams or written letters (remember those?) However, he was given
couple of keepsakes by Miles after the race. These included a Cobra
loth patch, gold embossed lighter and the horn button that Miles
imself removed from the Cobra before it was secured in the container
or the return trip home to the States.
How cool is that!
Paul Newby
12

Reporting from
the passenger’s seat
In today’s era of Go-Pro cameras and Youtube
eos it’s easy for the specialist motoring
ia to convey the thrills and spills of driving
ormance cars quickly on the road and
k. But things were different in 1965. Still,
dn’t stop the popular Australian Motor
rts magazine sending their Queensland
respondent John Weinthal out for a few hairsing
laps with Ken Miles in his brutish 7.0-litre
elby 427 Cobra Competition.
Our man tucked his tie (!) into his shirt front
d donned a pair of goggles. But there was
helmet or, for that matter, a seat belt for our
repid passenger, who was happy to take the
k. Such was life back in the day before signed
sclaimers and ‘occupational health and safety’...
Miles didn’t spare the (500) horses and was
uickly sideways through BMC Corner (nee the
arussell) as he danced the deafening Cobra
round for five rapid laps. He even recorded his
uickest lap to date at 64 seconds (Miles would
mprove this to a sub 61-second qualifying time).
For his troubles Weinthal ended up with his
e ripped from round his neck and his shirt
ompletely undone. Oh, and a grin wider than a
Cheshire cat…
Paul Newby
Auction
SOLD
Who? Shannons Melbourne Summer Classic
What? 1969 Holden HT Monaro 253 V8
When: 9 December, 2019
How much? $57,000
SOLD
Who? Shannons Melbourne Summer Classic
What? 1984 Holden HDT VK SS Commodore
When: 9 December, 2019
How much? $35,000
SOLD
Who? Shannons Melbourne Summer Classic
What? 1973 Ford ZF Fairlane K-Code 351 V8
When: 9 December, 2019
How much? $21,000
1970
Oran Park
SOLD
Who? Shannons Melbourne Summer Classic
What? 1980 Chrysler CM Valiant Sedan
When: 9 December, 2019
How much? $7,500
13

Auction
Born-again Eagle has landed
The best looking Formula 1 car from sale is in the US and I have been told that I will
the 1960s is back from the dead and be allowed to race in two separate race groups.”
could eventually be joined by a full grid of Just as he was inspired originally by a replica
retrospective racers that mimic Ferrari, Lotus, GT40, the new single-seater project came from
BRM, Honda and Brabham.
a chance encounter with a replica of a Honda
The born-again Gurney Eagle was unveiled F1 car in Britain.
at the Historic Sandown meeting in October “A bit like the GT40, when I saw a replica
and is expected to undergo testing with John which encouraged me to build one for myself
Bowe before the end of the year and on display because I realised we could do much better, the
at Maranello Motorsport in Melbourne.
F1 project has a similar genesis. I saw a car in
It has an old-school space-frame chassis the UK called an F1-67 … so decided to do it
but a thoroughly modern 5.0-litre Ford V8 ‘crate’ myself,” he says.
motor and is the personal project of Robert “The first car has taken me more than 4000
Logan, a retired engineer from the Royal Navy hours to date, and about $200,000, but this is
who once ran the Roaring Forties business that the prototype and costs much more.”
built some of the world’s best GT40 replicas. The parts’ list includes a 5-litre Ford
His new project is called Icarus Tribute Motorsport V8 engine, Audi six-speed
Racecars and he has formed a new company, gearbox, Alcon brake calipers, a Motec engine
Icarus Motorsport, with plans to establish a management system and custom-made 16-inch
factory in Melbourne in the first half of 2020. alloy wheels with knock-off nuts. One of the
Logan intends to sell the cars for US
most impressive parts is the custom-made ‘old
$99,000 (around $147,000) as a turn-key V8- school’ spaghetti exhaust system.
powered track car, with around 320kW (about Logan’s idea is that the basic space-frame
420bhp) in 650kg, and US $69,000 ($102,000) chassis can be fitted with a range of bodies,
as a rolling chassis.
allowing a spec-formula package where owners
It has taken more than a year to construct choose what they want to drive. Or they can
the car, which has been fully CAD designed have multiple bodies.
with input from a group of Australia’s best
“The next body will be a 312 Ferrari, a 1967
motorsport engineers. Logan says he is fired up model. The main bodywork will stay the same,
for the next step.
so it’s mostly the nose. It’s not going to be
“We’ve already had a lot of interest from a copy, but something trending towards the
the USA,” he says. “I have had great interest in original,” Logan says.
racing them here in Australia and New Zealand, “Then the one after that will more than likely
and this I will pursue. But the main point of be the Lotus Type 49. I want to do it with the
d Leaf Team Lotus livery. The only shots of
t car being driven by Jim Clark, who was
hero, were taken in Australia.”
Bowe has already given his support to the
oject and Kevin Bartlett jumped into the car
Sandown.
“It’s Robert’s passion and you cannot help
t be caught up in his enthusiasm,” Bowe
ays.
“It’s really well built and I’m looking forward
driving it. I’m keen to see it working
roperly and to be nice and user friendly.”
Bowe is committed to test driving duties,
ut Logan is not getting over-ambitious with
is production plan.
“I’m not going to build the second chassis
until I get the car into American. I will not
be opening a factory until I have a genuine
sale. But I have everything ready to go once
hat happens.”
Paul Gover
SELLING
Who? Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic
What? 1978 Holden HZ Premier 308 V8
When: March 2, 2020
Guiding range: $30,000 - $38,000
SELLING
Who? Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic
What? 1972 Holden HQ Monaro 202
When: March 2, 2020
Guiding range: $40,000 - $48,000
SELLING
Who? Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic
What? 1976 Ford Falcon XB GT Coupe
When: March 2, 2020
Guiding range: $140,000 - $150,000
SELLING
Who? Shannons Melbourne Autumn Classic
What? 1969 Ford Falcon XT GT Sedan
When: March 2, 2020
Guiding range: $95,000 - $110,000

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Adventures with Brocky:
tales from Peter Brock’s PR chief
Cartoons by Stonie
As Peter Brock’s public relations manager during Brock’s spell with the Holden Racing Team
in the 1990s, Paul ‘Wally’ Weissel got to know the Great Man better than most. In this series,
Wally recalls some of the fun from his time living with and managing the legend – the
hilarious hijinks that were an inevitable part of life on the road with Brocky…
Wally’s
Words
Riding passenger with Brocky
As everyone knows, Peter Brock is a legend
in Australian motorsport. Many of his fans
would’ve paid heaps (or even given up various
appendages) to sit alongside him in a race car.
As Brocky’s PR minder, I was more fortunate
than most and got to ride in the passenger’s
seat with the Great Man on a number of
occasions.
But let me tell you, some of those rides in the
number two seat were anything but ‘ordinary’!
One that springs to mind – and one which
shows how times have changed – was in the
mid-1980s in the lead up to the Sandown 500.
Back then, there was a designated ‘Media Day’ –
usually on the Thursday before the race weekend
– where media types (TV and radio reporters
and the print journos) would get a lap or two in
the passenger’s seat of the race car and then
report on their experience. It was all about trying
to promote the event – and it must have worked
because some of the crowds back then were
huge!
At that stage, I was working as a sports
journalist for Melbourne’s FOX FM radio station,
so I was one of the reporters out there at
Sandown that day to do the hot lap with Brock.
As well as interviewing PB out of the HDT
Commodore, I also wanted to take a portable
tape recorder with me inside during my hot lap
to record the sounds of the car – which I thought
would work well on radio. I got the nod from
Graeme ‘Mort’ Brown that I was on the list and
waited… and waited… and waited. Something
to do with Brock being the ‘Man’ and everyone
wanted a lap with him. The way it worked with
these things was that TV came first, followed by
the newspaper guys, with us radio types bringing
up the rear.
Now if anyone has managed to be lucky
enough to win/beg/buy a ride in a Supercar
in recent years, you’ll know that before being
strapped in, you had to squeeze into a very hot
(and possibly very sweaty) triple-layer racing suit,
don a helmet and wear appropriate footwear. It
used to amaze me the number of women who
would turn up for a ride in my time at the Holden
Racing Team in a dress or skirt, with open toe
sandals or even high heels! Really?
On this day at Sandown in the mid-80s
however, it was jeans, polo shirt and runners –
no fireproof suits and I can’t even remember if we
had to wear a helmet!
The #05 HDT Commodore duly rumbled
down pit lane to a stop; one victim got out and
the next – me – got in. My seat was a standard
passenger’s seat out of a VK Commodore road
car! No doubt it had been rounded up from
a corner of the HDT workshop and loosely

bolted in for the day. The other thing was that
there was no seat belt! So here’s me sitting in/
on a Commodore road car seat, no seat belt,
no helmet, left hand trying to hold on to the roll
cage and the right hand trying to hold onto the
cassette recorder and microphone!
A quick “G’day Wal!” from Brock and the
VK’s loud pedal is pushed to the floor (60km/h
pit lane speed limits? I don’t think so!) and with
its arse wiggling and rear tyres lighting up, the
Commodore fires out onto the main straight.
Hard on the brakes at the first corner, the
recorder and microphone slide straight out of
my hands and into the foot well! Trying to hold
on to the roll cage with one hand while trying to
retrieve the recording gear with the other, I didn’t
see the turn 2-3-4 combo coming up because
my head is under the dashboard…
Somehow I manage to get it all together as
we head up the back straight. My feet are holding
the recorder up against the firewall, while the
microphone is now wedged under my bum (I’m
sure on playback later they were engine noises
I heard…) and I now have left AND right hands
holding onto the bar work as Brock aims the
car into the superfast esses before Dandenong
Road Corner.
All too soon the lap was over, but the interview
with PB worked well on air the next day –
complete with the growling roar of a thundering
V8 in the background!
The back streets
of Port Melbourne
In my (much) younger days I was able to
fi nally buy a ‘proper’ car: a VK SS Brock
Commodore. Lordy Lord, was that thing fun!
I was still working at Melbourne’s FOX FM
at the time, and I drove it to Bathurst for
that year’s 1000km race. I remember during
that trip, somewhere in the back-blocks of
NSW, a mere speck I could see in the rear
vision mirror behind me was growing very
large – very quickly! Turned out to be a
similarly equipped Brock/Holden fanatic from
Adelaide and those two HDT Commodores
really boogied in tandem on their way to
motorsport’s Holy Grail!
Anyway, I digress… Unfortunately somebody
decided that they needed my beautiful white
VK SS more than me and I woke up on the
Tuesday after returning from Bathurst, with my
wife asking where the Commodore was. Where it
was, wasn’t where I’d left it the night prior and the
one ‘proper’ car I thought I’d have in my life, was
forever gone!
Not being flush with cash, after the insurance
payout I still didn’t have enough to purchase
a replacement new Brock Commodore. A bit
of background here: about this time we had
– or were working towards – a World Touring
Car Championship and manufacturers had
to produce something like 5000 models of a
particular model, to enable them
to homologate a special run of
0 racing editions (the Ford
rra RS500 springs to mind).
Holden’s problem was the
0 aspect; how could you make
00 Commodores with HDTassaged
heads AND a manual
arbox! Simple: slot the engines
d gearboxes in any model
ommodore across the range.
Some diligent searching
owed me to find a second
nd Holden Calais along the
t Kilda Road Magic Mile of
otors. It was a Calais with
e HDT engine mods and a
manual gearbox and bugger-all
kilometres, if you don’t mind!
It was around 1986/87 and FOX FM had just
signed an agreement for its signage to be on
the HDT VK racing Commodores. Because of
that, my association with Brocky and John ‘Slug’
Harvey grew and the boys looked after me pricewise
on fully HDT-ising the Calais, into a Director.
Aero kit, HDT suspension, Momo colourcoded
wheels, exhaust, badging and carrying
the “Cedar” colour right through (instead of the
bottom half being a silver/aluminium colour),
made for a sensational and fairly unique Holden
Commodore (below left).
Coming up to Christmas in 1986, I got a call
from PB suggesting I head down to HDT’s Bertie
St, Port Melbourne, headquarters for a sausage
and a beer – and he wanted to fit a new invention
of his to my car.
Intrigued (as well as hungry/thirsty) I headed
off to a Holden rev-heads heaven where Brock
said grab a beer and something to eat, while
taking the keys and disappearing down the back
of the complex for an hour or so.
A couple of beers and a steak sanga later,
Brock pulls up and says ‘get in!’ As we pulled out
of the driveway, he explained that he’d fitted an
‘Energy Polarizer’ to my Calais Director (complete
with rear window sticker to align the energy in the
car) and….FLOORED IT!
I did not think it was possible to travel through
the back streets of Port Melbourne THAT fast! I
17

I did not think it was possible to travel through the back streets of Port
Melbourne THAT fast! I saw 160km/h on the speedo a couple of times; he
blew past cars at warp speed and power slid through corners.
saw 160km/h on the speedo a couple of times;
he blew past cars at warp speed (and I think a
fire engine at one stage) and power slid through
corners. At one stage we were going parallel
to the West Gate Freeway – and were going
FASTER than the cars on the freeway!
At no stage was I worried (apart from the
possibility of having my car impounded by the
law), but enjoyed watching The Master at work
with his black eyes unblinking.
After it was over, we pulled back in the
driveway of HDT and came to a stop.
“Well Wal,” said Brock, “how much better is
your car now?”
“Dunno Brock! I’ve never driven round the
back streets of Port Melbourne at 160 kay before
so I’ve nothing to compare it to! But, I’ll take your
word for it.”
It was time for another beer… and a good lie
down!
Mobil 1/Round Australia
Trial Commodore
It was 1995 and I’d only just started working
as a part time PR/Media contractor with the
Holden Racing Team. HRT’s primary sponsor
was Mobil, so when the multi-national oil
giant decided to sponsor the ’95 Round
Australia Trial, Mobil brought me on board to
help out with the liaison between the George
Shepheard-run trio of VR Commodores and
the media.
Once more in an effort to promote the event,
there was going to be another ‘let’s-put-themedia-types-in-the-racing-car’
day alongside
Peter Brock. However, instead of tootling around
either the Lakeside or Surfers Paradise tracks,
someone had a brilliant idea to stage it at the
Mt Coot-Tha Quarry. The quarry was only a few
kilometres from the Brisbane CBD, so it was
very close to the media.
Being now on the team side of things now
and not part of the media, it was my job to
work out just who went into the passenger
seat next to Brock in order of importance and
urgency. As mentioned earlier, the natural order
of priority with these things meant that the TV
gurus always went first, because the sponsors’
image would be splashed across the TV news
that night nationally (which in turn made for
a happy sponsor). Newspaper guys and their
photographers were next, due to their ability to
feature more happy snaps prominently in the
national dailies the next day.
These seemed to take forever because the
picture-takers would ask for ‘just one more shot’,
and ‘can I be in (or out) of the car?’, or ‘can I
hang from a tree/rock/upside down?’ and on
and on it went until finally there were no more
people waiting behind me for their turn and all
was quiet.
Brock and I waved farewell to the last of the
media and were sitting quietly relaxing until it
was pack up time. PB turned to me and asked if
I’d ever been in a rally car. With a distracted ‘no’,
I continued packing up my bits and pieces until it
was time to go.
Brock immediately pops up, those black eyes
of his quickly becoming pin-pricks of focus as he
says to me ‘get in!’. The Master had a new victim
to terrorise!
The circuit we had laid out at Mt Coot-Tha
began at the top of the quarry and headed down
a dirt track, then up and into the quarry proper
before following the lanes down to the bottom.
After strapping on a helmet and myself into the
VR’s passenger seat (thankfully a racing bucket,
not the road car variety one – times had changed
since the ‘80s!), Brock grinned and launched the
Commodore.
For a V6, this Holden had some mumbo and
we took off down the track, spitting dust and
gravel behind us. A dip in the track – a small
creek actually – was rapidly approaching and
I was waiting for Brock to ease up, brake and
down-change. Nope! Full noise at the creek
crossing and I’m waiting for the top of the shocks
to spear through bonnet.
The Commodore sailed across with not even
a thump from the front end, so good was the rally
suspension put in by George Shepheard’s team.
From there it was back up to the quarry’s rim
and it was quite disconcerting to look out the
front windscreen and see sky, then to look across
to see PB looking past me out the passenger
window to see where he was going. On the rare
occasions we were straight, all I could see were
what appeared to be toy-sized gravel trucks a
long way below us.
So different was this experience from the
circuit laps that I was familiar with, that I was
actually convinced I was going to die... However,
by time we got to the bottom (realising then
that they weren’t Matchbox trucks at all) I was
starting to enjoy the experience. After a bit of
circle work, PB floored it out of the quarry and
back to the top.
Quite remarkable! How rally drivers do that for
a living, I’ll never know.
18

www.autosportsltd.com
Paul
Newby
In this caper interviewing retired racing
drivers is all in a day’s work. Nine times
out of 10 the driver is easy to deal with but
there is always someone who is, let us say,
challenging... Expatriate Australian Trans Am
racer Horst Kwech, who sadly died in December
at the age of 82, was one of those drivers. Not
that Kwech was difficult to deal with. On the
contrary, I can’t think of a more engaging guy
over a long distant call. It was just hard to pin
him down for an interview. Let me explain.
As a lifelong Alfisti I became aware of Horst
Kwech when he wrote the forward for the
definitive tome on the Alfa Romeo GTA racers,
Alleggerita. His exploits in the giant killing
GTAs really helped establish Alfa Romeo as
the enthusiast’s marque in the States. Not long
after I read John Medley’s authoritative Bathurst,
Cradle of Australian Motor Racing and Kwech’s
name was mentioned again. Was it the same
guy? Did that American GTA racer really drive
at Bathurst in the late 1950s? In those preinternet
days it wasn’t always easy to decipher
such information.
Then I read Allan Moffat’s Scrapbook that
mentions his dices in his Lotus Cortina against
Kweck’s (sic) Alfa GTA. I wasn’t even aware
of the connection with the DeKon Chevrolet
Monza that Kwech and Lee Dykstra developed
and Moffat raced. At an Alfa Club meeting
where Moffat was a guest speaker I peppered
him with questions about Kwech to his chagrin,
though he took it in good humour and still
signed my book.
It wasn’t until I discovered The Nostalgia
Forum in 2003 that I began to understand
Kwech’s career stateside. Apart from the
Alfas, there were Trans-Am Mustangs, a
F5000 Lola, Ford Capris, the aforementioned
Monzas and even single seater Can Am
racers. AMC’s very own Brett Jurmann had
some knowledge but veteran journalists like
Ray Bell and the late Barry Lake knew very
little. One thing was certain, none of them had
ever interviewed Kwech.
Things went quiet for a number of years
until ‘CanAmBob’ on the AlfaBB Forum
decided to create a Wikipedia page for Kwech
in late 2009. CanAmBob, otherwise known as
Bob Lee was a collector who owned the GTA
that Kwech had raced in the 1966 Trans-Am.
Finally here was someone who knew Kwech!
So began a two year process of emailing Bob
and trying to email Horst. My first response
from Kwech came in September 2010 whereby
he fobbed me off saying there was plenty of
information about him on the net. Tellingly most
of it was contradictory.
Another year went by and by this time
I was writing for AMC with an outstanding
commission for an article on Kwech. Bob Lee
was ever helpful trying to make things happen –
I developed an interview plan and sent him a list
of questions, trying to convince Kwech to speak
to me. But nothing. Then editor Luke West hit
upon the idea to do a feature on Aussies in
Trans-Am and the need to interview Kwech
became imperative. Lee suggested that he ask
Kwech my questions, transcribe the answers
and email me the results. But that was never
going to work.
It really looked like the AMC feature would
proceed without
any first person
quotes from Kwech.
Then finally in late
February 2012,
only weeks from
deadline, Kwech
agreed for me
to call him at
his Lake Forest
(Chicago) home.
So early on
Sunday 27th February 2012, I spent
100 minutes interviewing Kwech about pretty
much everything. I was circumspect not to
mention the Mustang wreck at Michigan in
1969 (Kwech’s Mustang slid off the track into
a parked car in the spectator area, killing its
occupant) but everything else was on the
record. Including his uneasy rivalry with
Allan Moffat.
The original brief was to cover Kwech’s
muscle car Tran-Am period, which amounted to
only two seasons in 1968-69, but there was so
much more to his career that it became a mini
muscle man feature for AMC #61. The material
was later used for Aussies in US F5000 (#98)
and Aussies in single seater Can-Am (#96)
feature articles.
It was a major coup for me to speak to Horst
Kwech and a real highlight personally. Through
dogged perseverance and sheer determination
I had interviewed one of my heroes, the only
Australian journalist to do so, resulting in
you the reader learning about an unknown
Australian motor racing legend.
Bob Lee
Alfa Romeo tragic Paul Newby is a lifelong motor racing enthusiast, and a long time contributor to Australian MUSCLE CAR magazine.
20

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Mail
amce NSW 1590
Harold Paynting Collection, State Library of Victoria
AMC BEST LETTER
Servo assist
While reading Luke West’s editorial
regarding the disappearing service
stations in AMC issue #111, I was reminded of
two articles I came across while undertaking
research.
In Wheels September 1959, a feature
appeared titled: Special Report: Service
Stations:Temples of Monetary Plenty? Don’t
be misled by stories of woe. Service stations
are doing well. In fact, everyone in the petrol
industry is doing well.
The story revolved around the petrol
companies buying up prime residential sites
(preferably on a corner) and building those
new, flat -roofed, fibro affairs with a small
service bay, a few bowsers selling premium and
standard grade fuels, wire racks of oil bottles
and the service station attendant dressed in
a fine uniform. However, the article said the
problem was, there were too many and the oil
companies were competing against each other
for prime real estate. Then they put a franchisee
into the site and in many cases, they struggled
to survive.
The following edition contained a follow-up.
Service Stations: Riches or Ruins? When we
were digging through the facts for last month’s
story, we came across so much vital material
connected with petrol and its sale that we just
kept on digging.
There were stories of hardship and other
(anonymous) franchisees or owners who were
making a fortune. One bragged about how
much money he was making:
His staff consists of himself, a girl in the office
(the latest innovation), two mechanics and three
or four casual employees who help out on the
pumps at busy periods.
His rent is $65/week. In a couple of years,
for a man who started off with $800, he hasn’t
done too badly. His turnover for the financial
year (June 1959) was $119,958. He said
“I’m making more money than the Managing
Director of the oil company which owns this
place”.
It was argued that there were not too many
service stations. I wonder if the situation was
really that there were too many oil companies.
Where are AMPOL, Golden Fleece, Total,
ESSO/Atlantic, Fleetwing and AMOCO?
Modern cars require less frequent servicing,
enjoy better fuel economy and more car
owners have their extended warranty service
undertaken by the dealership which sold the
car. Ironically, the service stations have now
become the corner store that sells petrol.
Those service stations of today, while fewer
in number, killed off the corner store and
seriously impacted on the small take-away
food stores.
Ah for the return of the good old days…
Ken Marsh
email
pecial squad alcon
Firstly, since the fi rst issue one I have had
every issue of AMC. It’s always good
reading, and as a police car fan I especially
liked your comprehensive feature on police
cars in the Special Squad story back in issue
#49.
I read with interest a letter in the following
issue’s (AMC #51) Muscle Mail from Keith
Hammond talking about his Falcon XA 351 ex-
Victoria police Interceptor. This would have been
a sister car to the one I had purchased from BS
Stillwell in 1973.
My car unfortunately is no longer around, but I
found out that since the 1980s the engine is still
registered in a 1984 XE Ford in Victoria. If the
owner or anyone knows of the Ford XE fitted with
a 1972 JG23MD-prefixed engine number (this
ex-police car and or engine has an unusual Ford
number AG62MD***** connection), I would love
to be able to get in contact with them.
As mentioned, I’m interested in the police
Falcons from this period and I run a dedicated
Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/
groups/8XAcandycars – that has over 800
members.
We have located one of the ‘XA candycars’
used by the Victorian police force, a 1972
model XA 351 Police Pursuit. This car had a
downgraded engine change to K code 2v, with
a very strange engine number starting with the
prefix DK.
On re-reading Keith Hammond’s letter, I
noticed that his ex-police pursuit car had a new
351 engine-change (the new engine being
downgraded to K code 2v). It makes me think
that this car is the one Keith Hammond owned.
Tracing the history of this car through Vic
Roads, there is a gap of missing files of the
Keith Hammonds XA
22

Victoria Police. Ian Meates from the Victoria
Police Historical Society informed me through his
research, that the main driver of the pursuit car
mentioned parked the car with smoke bellowing
out of the near side of the dual exhaust –the
motor had had it.
So after that Police use it was
decommissioned, and through a tender process
BS Stillwell acquired the car in September, 1973.
There is missing information on its history from
1973 to around 1987.
The Vic Roads documents confirm an
engine change had taken place. Until I re-read
the article, I had been uncertain if the police
mechanics replaced the engine or it was done at
BS Stillwell’s.
Keith Hammond’s letter confirms it was the
car dealership who did the engine work. It also
mentions the cars in the BS Stillwell car lot were
similar to what I saw – four XA Falcon ex-police
302 V8 autos price around $3200 and three fourspeed,
floor-shift 351 imported 4V T-Code, priced
between $3800 to $4000.
I would like very much for Keith Hammond
or his family to contact me (through AMC)
to confirm the VIN or engine number of his
brother’s special highway patrol car as I reckon
it is the same car. The opportunity is possibly
available for him and his brother to be re united
with the car.
Chris Isgood
email
ck’s ’83
ootout
saga
When one
runs the
YouTube vision
of Dick Johnson
going for pole
in 1983, Mike
Raymond is
doing most of
the commentary,
but I think either
Mike or a cocommentator
questions that if
Johnson has got
Issue 113
AMC113_Cover_.indd 1
to Forrest’s Elbow in a specific time, what
would be his completed lap time. Of course,
once Dick goes off track the lap time is forgotten.
Do you know if the time recorded to that point
was the quickest in the shootout? If it was, then
the fact that ‘the Chase’ didn’t exist then would
hypothetically rule out any further obstacles to
producing a good result.
Eric Waples
email
ED: These days it’s all done electronically, with
timing ‘sectors’ (none of that back in the day!)
dividing up the track, so that we’ll have a pretty
good idea by the time the car heads into Murray’s
Corner whether or not the driver is on for pole.
Back in ’83 it would only have been a hand held
stop watch, presumably by the commentators.
Garry Wilkinson excitedly mentions
hat Dick had got to the top of the
Mountain in 1m15.8s (without saying
xactly where on the top of the
ountain), but frustratingly of all the
0 runners that was the only ‘split’ time
e commentators provided. So how it
mpared with any of the others, and
hether or not Dick might have been on
ole that year instead of in the Forrest’s
bow trees, we’ll never know.
he day the ground shook
This falls in the’ I was there category’.
On the Thursday before the Tourist
phy race in 1965 a mate came
nd and said ‘come with me – there is
something you need to see!’ So we went
in his Morris Cooper down to Coachcraft, one
of the two Ford dealers in Brisbane at the time,
and there on the turntable in the showroom was
this Guardsman Blue Cobra with 427 badges on
the side and the biggest set of side exhausts we
had seen! The rubber was fairly wide as well…
We were at Lakeside on the day, and it was
some race. In the story on that race in AMC #113
you were right – the ground shook as the 427
Cobra went past. Coming out of the Karrussel up
the rise to BP Bend on opposite lock trying vainly
to control the wheelspin, Miles had his hands full.
I can also remember the look on Frank
Gardner’s face when he opened the engine bay
of the Mildren Maserati. As we had seen pieces
of the crankshaft cartwheeling down the straight
after the car, it was a big blow up! There were
reports at the time which said that here was the
imprint of the head of a piston in the body work of
the Cobra. Gardner was beside the Cobra when
the Maserati let go.
Only now, more than 50 years later, do we
realise how lucky we were to see the only 427
Cobra to race outside the USA.
Re the Surfers 12 hour, my recollection is that
the Ford GT40 was driven by Peter Sutcliffe and
Frank Matich. As an admirer of Bruce McLaren,
I am sure I would have been aware of his
presence – and no, I am not a Kiwi, just a fan
who appreciated the way he went racing.
Keep up the good work. I have every issue
except numbers 2 and 4, must have slipped up
there somehow.
Ian Jefferyes
President Bundaberg Vintage Vehicle Club Inc
9 771446 564005
1 3
AU $10.99 NZ $11.99 (incl GST)
23

Not a Hardtop
have a couple of issues regarding
I the ‘Hardtop HO’ story in AMC
#113. Firstly, under the headline on
page 51, the blurb says, ‘It took Ford unt
release of the XA model in 1972 to produce
the fi rst two-door Falcon.’ As long as you
ignore the XM & XP Hardtops produced from
1964 to 1966...
Secondly, the ‘Hardtop HO’ is NOT a hardtop!
A hardtop doesn’t have B pillars, which the 1966
- 1969 Falcon Sports Coupe clearly does!
Aside from these gripes, it’s another excellent
issue of AMC.
Phil Minns
email
Top Marks
enjoyed the piece on my two Shelbys in AMC
I #113. I have been privileged to have been the
custodian of many Shelby vehicles over the
past 40-plus years and even more privileged to
have met the man himself, Carroll Shelby. This
was at SAAC-1 in Oakland, California – the
very fi rst Shelby American Automobile Club
convention in 1976 as mentioned in the article.
As I recall, Carroll was most affable if not a little
taken aback at all the fuss being made over
himself and his creations. Bear in mind, this
was 1976 and despite all the racing successes
in the 1960s the Shelby legacy had not really hit
any great heights by that time. I recall looking at
an early Cobra 289 that a guy had just bought
for around USD 40,000 and everyone was
stunned at how much he had paid for it!
Since the release of AMC Issue 113, I have
located my original Name Tag and Registration
from SAAC-1 which has been
signed by both Carroll Shelby and Ian Garrad,
who was known as the “Father of the Sunbeam
Tiger”. Garrad was the US West Coast head of
the Rootes Group and, in 1963, got his mate
Ken Miles to shove a V8 and auto box into a
Sunbeam Alpine to create a fairly crude, rough
and ready prototype Tiger. Later that year,
Carroll Shelby was engaged by Garrad and the
Rootes Group to build the official pre-production
prototype Tiger that was ultimately approved
for production by Lord Rootes himself. Another
Shelby success story and the rest is history!
Rick Marks
Sydney
Gotcha!
On page 63 of AMC #112, where you’re
talking about Graham Ryan making his
Bathurst debut with Bruce McPhee Bathurst
debut, how is that a GT 500? They never made
the GT 500 as a four-door, Cortina GT maybe -
as they say in The Castle, tell him he’s dreaming!
Ian Skinner
Email
ED: Ian, you got us! A slip of the editorial
keyboard there – because of course, as
you correctly point out, Harry Firth’s GT 500
homologation special was only available as a
two-door. It also wasn’t available at all when
Ryan and McPhee finished third in 1963 – the
model was still a couple of years away.
hrysler crying shame
couple of musings. Firstly, have you tried
A to get a 360 VJ 770 Charger to feature
77 made)? I’ve never seen one for sale, a
reck, or a feature car in any mag. Back in
ugust, 1974, a Sunfi re Yellow-coloured 360
J (SA rego SUD-295) was tested in Motor
anual. It was priced at $6027 – it’s defi nitely
unique and rare Aussie muscle car!
Musing two: the time for Chrysler Australia to
ave introduced the 340 RT racer was 1969/70
the VF/G hardtop (Dodge Dart) body, as the
40 was introduced in 1968 and was a match for
351 Ford and 350 Chev motors. Chrysler could
have got all the drivetrain goodies for the US
and run them as 340 RTs then either changing
to the 6 pack 265s or continuing the 340/360 in
Chargers. Don’t forget, 4bbl 360s were creaming
Corvettes, Camaros and Mustangs in the late
‘70s in Aspen R/Ts and the infamous ‘little red
truck’ D500 pickup. Duster 360s were a popular,
affordable small block MOPAR to tackle GM and
FORD products, and went almost as hard as a
440, 396, 390, 428 big blocks, while being better
handlers and easier on fuel.
Dave Rasmussen.
email
We’ve not touched on the E57 360 VJ –
perhaps it’s one for the future. As for the 340 V8,
we covered that in AMC #23 and elsewhere.
There was certainly a plan to develop a
340-engined VG Valiant for Improved Production
in around 1969, but various complications led
Chrysler Australia to drop the idea. It is a shame
– a factory-backed Australian-developed 340 V8
VG Valiant taking on the likes of Allan Moffat’s
Mustang and Norm Beechey’s Monaro GTS 350
would have been something to see!
Top cop
Having read your article The day they
cleaned up the mountain in AMC #112, I
just wanted to let you know that the Wednesday
night before this year’s Bathurst we happened
to be at the Perthville Pub for a meal, and while
we were there about 100-plus off-duty police
24

were there to have the beer garden dedicated
to a police officer Dick Martin. At the time Martin
was very sick and I believe he passed away in
hospital the next day.
The people who spoke about Dick and his
time as being in charge of the police at Bathurst
were the assistant commissioner of police, and
other colleagues who said he brought law and
order to top of the mountain. We were told they
haven’t had a car burnt out in the past 14 years.
The dedicated sign was donated by Council, the
publican said he called the pub his second home
when in Bathurst. I believe there might be a story
for your magazine with a bit of research.
John Murray
email
Herb’s Oldhen Holden
remember well Herb and his EH Holden.
I Along with the Milano GTs of Moss
Angliss and Bruce Leer, my favourite
cars as a young fella at Oran and Amaroo
Parks. I even got to sit in one of the
Milanos once!
Herb’s EH had the Holden badging
rearranged to read ‘OLDHEN’ – not sure
how many people picked up on that.
And later, it was sold to a young Mark
Gibbs, who made his own racing debut in it.
Thanks for bring us his story.
Bruce Moxon
Brock Directors
wired for sound
Your latest AMC mag
on the Brock Directors
is great reading. Either I
missed it or it didn’t get
mentioned that some of
the Directors were installed with Yamaha
Car Stereos, radio cassette, with single CD
player mounted in the lower pocket (front
of console), Yamaha power amp mounted
under the back shelf, on a piece of what’s
now known as MDF (painted matte black). The
speakers where all Yamaha 6-inch 2-ways in
the front doors mounted half way in pockets.
On the rear shelf they had 6x9 3-ways. The
speaker grilles were painted same colour
as the interior trim (painted by HDT); the
grommets in the front doors for the speaker
wires were a white push in and expand type. I
actually still have few of them.
At the time where I worked at Wilson & Hall
Car Sound, in Claredon St South
( )
only two of us and we did all the stereo work on
the new Directors. I also was repairing car radios
for HDT as well.
The other option of stereos in a very few
Directors (as shown in the Red HDT VL Aero)
was a Pioneer pull-out car stereo retaining the
original speakers. We either cut out the driver’s
side of the triangle, or filed a taper on the sides
of radio panel to get it to fit (I can’t remember
which).
Other directors retained the factory Eurovox
radio cassette
The Telecom Car Phone System
he old 007 number) would’ve been
nstalled by South Melbourne Car
Radio in City Rd. They had the
ontract for installing Telecom Car
Phones at the time.
I’m still involved in car radios,
ore so repairing radios from early
valve to almost current day, in
Melbourne.
Mark Sully
Old Car Radios Fixed
Dirk Klynsmith
Autopics.com.au
This issue’s Muscle Mail best letter winner receives a copy of the DVD
box set Ford in Racing: The Glory Years. For this and many more
great motorsport DVDs, visit www.cmsmotorsport.com.au
25

26fl o
Go
Story: Bruce Newton & Steve Normoyle
Photoshoot: Grahame Neander

In 1969 Bolwell stunned the Australian
motoring scene when it unveiled its sensational
new Ford V8-powered muscle coupe, the
Nagari. Half a century later, the Melbournebased
company has returned to its roots
with a new-age Nagari. Just like the original,
it boasts some innovative Bolwell-developed
technology. Also like the original, it packs
a performance punch heavy enough to
knock even some of the world’s most exotic
supercars out of the park. Bruce Newton
sat down with Campbell Bolwell for this sneak
preview of the new Bolwell, the Nagari 500.
27

Nagari 300
said to me one day I think we
can fit a V8 in this thing’.”
Campbell Bolwell is sitting in an
upstairs office of his eponymous
“Toby
sportscar company recalling the
genesis of his latest two-door coupe, the
Nagari 500.
Toby is Toby Hunt, the chief engineer
and sole full-time employee of the auto and
research and development business, Bolwell
Technologies. ‘Thing’ is the Nagari 300, or Mk
10, a mid-engined sportscar that was revealed
to the world in 2008.
Powered by a 3.5-litre Toyota V6 petrol engine
(yes Camry, Avalon et al) mated to a six-speed
auto, the 300 never made it on-sale primarily
because it took years to wind its way through the
Australian Design Rules process.
But a 300 sat downstairs in the Bolwell
Technologies skunkworks in the Melbourne
suburb of Seaford all the while. And Hunt’s everactive
mind pondered it, even as he beavered
away on other projects.
“Toby is a bit of a gem. He knows every
bloody thing,” Campbell says. “He is very much
the boffin and essential in this sort of
work.”
And some years ago Toby just
happened to mention to Campbell the
fact a V8 could fit into the engine bay.
“I said ‘yeah?’ and we had a look at
it and decided with a bit of modification
we could. So I said ‘OK, let’s build the
next model’.”
That’s the shorthand version anyway.
But it illuminates Campbell Bolwell’s
love of a good idea and sportscars.
He’s a man who – with family and
friends – has left a unique imprint on
the Australian car industry.
Now in his late 70s, Campbell’s
automotive story is well known to
enthusiasts.
He built the original Mk 1 Bolwell
– a roadster based on a 1937 Ford
flathead V8 sedan – in his family’s
Frankston garage at the age 16 in 1958. W
little brother Graeme bent and buckled the panels
so badly in an off-road excursion, a life-long
investigation of fibre-glass and composites began.
At 20, Campbell turned his passion into a
business with the launch of Bolwell Cars and the
Mk 4 sports racer.
The Mk 5 and stylish Mk 7 followed; both kits
cars, both Holden-powered. In between came
Mk 6 or SR6 racer, its
mid-engined design
hinting of things to come
far further down the track.
The original Nagari – or flow, in an Aboriginal
language – was the company’s gamechanger. It
rocked the Australian automotive scene when it
was revealed at the 1969 Melbourne motor show.
That feline oneiece
fibreglass
ody, that
hunderous Windsor
302 V8. More than
100 examples were
built before those
dratted ADRs
forced Bolwell
to stop building
n late 1974, but
the Nagari remains Australia’s most famous
domestically developed and built sportscar.
Almost exactly 50 years later in October 2019
at Motorclassica, the Nagari 500, or Bolwell Mk
11, made its public debut under the domed roof
28

of the historic Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton
Gardens. Yep, the same venue where the original
Nagari first appeared.
“The reception was absolutely fantastic,”
Campbell tells Australian MUSCLE CAR. “It was
important to be at Motorclassica, we really had to
be there
“We got so much kudos. We were talking to
the true believers.”
Perhaps even more incredibly, along with
Campbell, the key people standing behind the
new Nagari are much the same as the original;
his brother Graeme and Ross McConnell, the
next door neighbour who joined the company as
a 16-year old and in semi-retirement returned
to Seaford to help finish off the 300 and then
Campbell Bolwell shows off the new Nagari 500.
develop the 500.
“A whole lot of innovation that went into the
(original) Nagari and Graeme and Ross were
the two principals that worked on it,” explained
Campbell. “And here’s Graeme and Ross still
working on the latest one.
“It’s amazing when you think about it.”
So what are the key elements of the Nagari
500? Well, the first essential is that it follows
the same high-power, low-weight philosophy as
the original. It does that by combining a 372kW
(or roughly 500hp, hence the name) 6.2-litre
Chevrolet LS3 V8 with a claimed kerb weight of
just 982kg.
That’s only 62kg more than the original

It combines a 372kW (or roughly 500hp,
hence the name) 6.2-litre Chevrolet LS3 V8
with a claimed kerb weight of just 982kg.
That’s only 62kg more than the original
Nagari… mixed with an extra 192kW.
Nagari… mixed with an extra 192kW.
The engine is mid-mounted as per the Mk
10 and feeds the rear wheels via an Audi sixspeed
manual gearbox. That makes for ballistic
acceleration. Campbell is predicting under 3.0
sec to 100km/h – less than half the time it took
the original Nagari. He admits his own test drives
of the car have been… eye-opening.
“I wouldn’t give it to anyone at the moment
to drive,” he admits. “I think they would kill
themselves it’s so vicious.
“It’s just got so much power, you’ve got no
idea. Even though it’s got 60 percent of the
weight on the back wheels, you can spin the
wheels in higher gears pretty easily.
“So you get a kick in a back that’s pretty
vicious.
“We are currently working on more
development of the car, which is the traction
control and the ABS, which we have to have
for ADRs. I think the traction control is pretty
necessary.”
The use of a GM engine completes a circle
back to the early days of Bolwell Cars. Of course,
there would have been something romantic
about the new Nagari also using a Ford V8, and
Campbell says the Coyote quad-cam V8 could
fit. But opting for the GM unit made sense for
logistical reasons.
“It was easier for us to go with the GM stuff
because we are using a lot of GM parts,” he
reveals. “We are using Corvette (C6 and C7)
wishbones and hubs and vertical links and things
like that, a lot of that is GM and we can ship it all
in one crate.
“Also, the GM engine was already through the
ADRs.”
While using many off-the-shelf parts, the
500’s double wishbone suspension is tuned
specifically. The chassis system also comprises
an unassisted steering rack sourced from Europe
based on a Ford Escort design, pneumatically
adaptive dampers, a choice of cast iron or
carbon-ceramic discs (355mm vented and
cross-drilled up-front), PBR or Brembo callipers
and Bolwell’s own 19-inch three-piece composite
wheel design).
Discussion of wishbones and suspensions
prompts Campbell to break into a smile and
relate a story – such an occasion is far from rare
for this cheerful and chatty bloke.
“I had a young fellow employed through a
contactor to us – he was 24-26 years old – and
what he didn’t know about suspension… he
could have written a book.
“He said ‘I want anti-dive on this, I want 1.5
degrees on the front and 0.5 degree on the back’
and I thought ‘fair enough, what would I know?’
“He had all this knowledge – Ackerman and
turning circles and all this stuff. He developed

the whole suspension on the 500, beautiful job,
absolutely beautiful job. He designed all the jigs
for the subframes and everything as well.
“The boys from Germany – Audi – came over,
grabbed him and took him back to Germany. He’s
over there now being paid a fortune.”
Inside, the 500 will be a far cry from its original
namesake. Where the Nagari was spartan, this
car will be luxurious and – to some extent –
usable.
“It’s a functional thing,” Campbell insists.
“Yes, it’s still got a boot, you can put your golf
clubs in there, it’s still got push button start and
electric windows and all this sort of stuff. It’s
got the main screen in the middle and instead
of a dash it’s got a small racing style LED on
the steering wheel. There’s a lot of innovation in
there.”
Campbell freely admits the technology of the
current automotive world has surpassed him
in some ways: “The wiring loom on the original
Nagari was just bugger all and now you look at
the 500, it’s spaghetti. I don’t understand it.”
But the car’s core is all about Bolwell’s globally
competitive knowledge of composites. After it
stopped building cars in 1974, the business took
its knowledge of fibreglass and kept evolving and
building, learning and expanding.
Truck bodies, kids playgrounds, wind turbine
propeller, boats; Bolwell Corporation has done it
all. These days it has bases in both Australia and
Thailand and is a multi-million dollar business
run by Campbell’s son, Vaughan.
The Nagari 500 is built around a composite
kevlar and carbon-fibre tub, to which the engine
and subframe-mounted suspension are attached.
It’s a bit like the Monocell technology employed
by McLaren for its sports cars.
Made using Bolwell’s closed-moulding
vacuum-infusion technology, the tub is weight
about 40kg. Cloak it in body panels and the
weight rises to still stunningly light – around
100kg. That’s a key to the sub 1.0-tonne kerb
weight of the Nagari 500, but crucially Campbell
insists it’s also incredibly strong.
“Basically, we have an occupant capsule,” he
explains.
“Super-strong, super-light… the rest of it is
cosmetic. Doesn’t matter if the engine falls off or
Two Nagaris, half a century apart. The new 500 is
quite a departure from the original Mk8 Bolwell, but it
retains the essential Nagari qualities: a stylish, light
weight sports coupe, with plenty of V8 grunt.
the wheels fall off, you are just worried about the
occupant capsule and retaining the integrity of
that capsule. That’s what it is about.
“Without the subframes, that whole apparatus
including the body – missing a couple of panels
– is 105 kilos. Two men can walk around with it.
Which is pretty miraculous.
“You are using aircraft and aerospace type
glues and things. The glues we use here you’d
destroy the part before you could pull it apart.
“All these latest technologies are incorporated
into it and some of the moulding systems using
vacuum which we have developed. I am not
saying other people don’t use something similar,
but we have a system that works for us that we
have been developing.
“We use it here, we use it in Thailand at
our factory there. That means we can get a

Campbell is predicting
under 3.0 sec to
100km/h – less than
half the time it took
the original Nagari
panel with the same strength for basically half
the weight.
“So all this technology has gone into this car
as a showcase for what we can do. That’s really
where it’s come from.”
And this brings us to an important juncture.
The reasons for the 500’s existence. Sure, it
was a spur of the moment, sure it was emotiondriven
by a bunch of blokes who just love cars.
But it also acts as a vibrant billboard for the
company’s composite abilities.
The original Nagari did just that in 1969. The
Ikara kit car of 1979 was a rolling promotion of
Bolwell’s light resin transfer moulding system.
Just 12 were sold, but it also helped clinch a
deal with truck maker Kenworth that continues
to this day.
And as we’ve already noted, not one Nagari
300 has ever been sold, but it did help secure
a big contract with a multinational in Thailand.
The CEO was an Aussie petrol-head who loved
Bolwell and enquired about the car. One thing
led to another…
“Most of the contracts we get are because of
the cars,” Campbell confirms.
The 300 is also important because it forms
the basis for the 500. The mid-engine layout
and composite body started here. And even that
grinding four-year process to get it ADRed has
benefits for the 500.
“We are creating the Mark 11 based on the
Mark 10 so all we are doing is getting variations
of the ADRs for the 500,” explains Campbell.
“In other words we are using different rear
vision mirrors but they comply. So a lot of it is
paperwork, just got to go through the mill.”
It’s also obvious the 500 is a styling
development of the 300. Campbell’s original 300
design began on a napkin in a restaurant and
it’s clear there’s been an attempt to lighten the
car’s rear-end with more glass area and smaller
flying buttress pillars that still pay homage to the
original Nagari.
And the 300 and 500 potentially share one
more important link – one we hope does not

Breaking the mould... Bolwell-developed composite
technology has helped keep the new Nagari down to
sensationally light 980kg.
transpire. No sales.
Yep, at this point Campbell simply does not
know if any production examples will be built.
Nor, as an obvious adjunct, does he know
what they will cost. He puts the pricing range
anywhere from $300,000 to $700,000.
“I really need a partner with deep pockets,”
he admits. “With the 500 I can go and build
half-a-dozen per year or something like that. I’ve
got all the tooling for it and I can do it with subcontracting
to some of our other companies.
“But then, we’ve had some sniffs from people
in China with contacts in China and Saudi Arabia.
With China, I don’t think it would be too difficult to
get orders for 50 a year for the next two years.
“I can’t build them. I reckon I would need $20
or $30 million to set it up. Even if I got it I wouldn’t
want to spend it on it because that’s very risky.
But there are people out there for whom $20-30
million is not a lot of money.”
Campbell will be 80 in 2022, so even he
accepts the challenge of getting the new Nagari
into production is not something he wants to
attempt alone.
“This is the ultimate Nagari,” he says. The
implication is, it’s also his last.
So how sweet would it be to have 500s being
built by the time this unique Aussie automotive
figure does reach 80 and his business 60?
So calling for someone with deep pockets and
a deep love of sportscars. There’s an investment
with your name on it at Bolwell.
Hopping the fence
You could argue Ross McConnell’s
path in life was defi ned when as a
10-year old he moved in next door to the
Bolwells in Frankston.
He was forever hopping the fence to ogle
the sportscars in various stages of undress.
Soon, he was sweeping the floors and when
he left school at 16 he became an employee
of Bolwell Cars at its first ‘tin shed’ factory.
Ross was intrinsic to the development
of the first Nagari along with Campbell’s
brother Graeme, and the two men also
worked on the 300 and then the most
recent 500.
“I really enjoy working with Graeme,”
Ross told AMC. “He’s a very talented man.
“After 50 years here we are doing the next
Nagari. It’s been very enjoyable.”
Ross says there are two reasons why the
Nagari stands out so much in the Australian
automotive psyche.
“One is its styling and the other is it’s a
V8. It’s the Australia Corvette.”
Ross is not only a Nagari fan, he’s an
owner of two now and has owned a couple
more over the years.
He actually built his first Nagari when
he was employed by Bolwell. Coded B8-24
(Bolwell Mark 8 number 24), it was painted
in a silver-grey metallic and was used as a
display and promotional vehicle. In 1996 he
bought the Cleveland 351-engined B8-95,
but didn’t hang on to it for that long.
Then came B8-92, which was a low
mileage well-maintained example of the
breed. That’s the car featured in Graeme
Neander’s shots for this feature.
Then Ross tracked down the original
prototype, B8-1, which had been off the
road for 30 years. He’s still restoring it.
“I want it to be when I finish it exactly like
the day it was released to the public,” Ross
says. “I know exactly how it should be!
“My ideal with number one would be for
it to be in Campbell’s collection at the car
company.”
Ross’ most recent Bolwell acquisition
has been a Mk 4A, the slinky open-top
two-seater that was the first model sold by
Bolwell Cars.
“It’s come to me at the perfect time
because it’s beautifully done mechanically
and the body is new. I just have to finish
the body and make a perspex screen and
it’s ready.
“I’ll put it on club reg and do some track
work with it. It’s a great little car.”
Bruce Newton

Bolwell Corporation
Bolwell Cars was established in 1960 in
the garage of the Bolwell family suburban
home in the Melbourne seaside suburb of
Frankston.
Since then, it has grown and evolved into
something almost unrecognisable from what it
once was.
The car business, now known as Bolwell
Technologies, is Campbell Bolwell’s personal
fiefdom.
The main priority nowadays is Bolwell
Corporation, which focusses on the design and
manufacture of composite plastic products. It
began really developing after the production of
the Nagari ended in 1974.
While Campbell is chairman of the board, it
is managed by his son Vaughan and it supplies
items to a variety of blue-ribbon clients including
truck maker Kenworth.
Of course, Bolwell’s current composite skills
grew out of experiments with fibreglass body
panels by Campbell and brothers Graeme and
Winston in Frankston.
Winston was tragically killed in a car accident
in the 1960s, but Graeme was a key part of the
development of the original Nagari and the 300
and 500 that followed.
In fact, family and friends are a constant part
of the Bolwell story. Ross McConnell was a
neighbour of the Bolwells in Frankston and was
one of its first employees when he left school.
Like Graeme, he worked on all three Nagari
generations.
Then there’s Linnley Hughes, another
childhood friend of the Bolwells, who joined the
car company in 1970 and remains a director of
Bolwell Corporation.
The family member Campbell makes clear
played a pivotal role in the business surviving its
tough early years is his father Jim.
A school headmaster, he supported his son’s
bold decision to become a car maker at just
20 years-old, and then tipped in money as the
business struggled to survive in its early years.
“My father, who raised
Early days... By the time the Bolwell brothers, Graeme
and Campbell, had developed the original Nagari they’d
amassed considerable experience manufacturing low
volume sports cars for road and race.
his eyebrows when I said I was going to build
sportscar, actually had more faith in me than I
had in myself,” Campbell recalls.
“Two or three years after I started I was
struggling and struggling and struggling and he
said ‘I will get you some money’. He mortgaged
his house – the only asset he had – for 6000
pounds. A lot of money.
“I thought I could put it all in the business, but
then I thought ‘no I’ll put 2000 into the business,
the rest I’ll buy some industrial land and put up a
little factory’ – that was our first tin shed.
“I sold that tin shed for 20,000 pounds. I made
more money out of real estate than I ever made
out of cars.
“The thing is the real estate set us up. We now
have 10 sites in Mordialloc and the factory in
Thailand and we own all that.”
Bruce Newton

Australia’s Corvette
It was variously described as Australia’s
Corvette, Australia’s E-Type Jaguar, and (in
roadster form) Australia’s AC Cobra. When
it comes to appearances it might also be
Australia’s Lamborghini Miura, to which the
Bolwell Mk 8, better known as Nagari, bears
a striking resemblance – right down to the
unusual Miura-style wheel design.
The Nagari is certainly the closest thing this
country has ever had to a genuine home-grown
supercar – a claim which Holden might have
been able to make had it not pulled the pin on
the Torana GTR-X, coincidentally at around the
same time as the Nagari went on sale.
While the stillborn GTR-X today assumes
a kind of forlorn, mythical status, the Nagari
was the real deal – a living, fire-breathing tyresmoking
beast of a thing.
It’s not hard to see why the Nagari was such
a sensation in the early ‘70s. Apart from its
immediate predecessor at Bolwell, the Holden
six-powered Mk 7 coupe, there really hadn’t
been anything remotely like it on the Australian
automotive landscape. Here in the Nagari was
Australia’s first proper high-performance V8-
powered production sports car. It looked stunning
(surely an understatement!), was well put
together and beautifully finished. And with a kerb
weight of only 930kg to get in the way of the Ford
Windsor 302’s 180kW, it was fast. Even better,
it wasn’t even all that expensive: some $6000 in
1970 for such a car was a monumental bargain
36

when an XW Falcon GT cost around $4500.
And the more resourceful could get
themselves into a Nagari for even less, because
initially Bolwell was also selling it in kit form
for $2795. Before long the kit option was
dropped, however; rather than risk the Nagari’s
reputation being soiled by dodgy backyard builds,
assembling the cars in house gave Bolwell
complete control over build quality and finish.
The Nagari was a quality, turn-key sportscar
just like a Porsche or a Jaguar – and in the case
of the Porsche 911T and the Jaguar E-Type, the
Aussie coupe was both significantly cheaper
and faster.
What made it comparatively inexpensive
was the simplicity of the design. Not unlike the
Mk 7, the Nagari was based on a simple Lotus
Elan-style pressed steel backbone chassis. The
steel was folded by outside contractors but was
welded together on a jig at the Bolwell factory.
In 1970 nothing came close to matching the Nagari for
style, price and performance. Before the Nagari came
the Holden six-powered Mk 7 (right). Bolwell continued
to offer the Mk 7 after the Nagari went on sale.
At the front, the chassis split into a Y-shape
to accommodate the engine, transmission
and front suspension; at the rear it formed
into a T-shape to house the live rear axle. The
fibreglass (one-piece) body bolted simply onto
the chassis.
This Lotus Elan style construction was
perhaps the car’s weak point, literally
and figuratively. With the fibreglass body
representing the entire cabin shell, cars
like the Nagari and Elan were potentially
vulnerable in side impacts. Bolwell made
sure the Nagari structure was as sturdy as
possible – it was, according to Campbell
Bolwell, stronger than the Mk 7 (and with the
extra grunt of the 302, it probably needed to
37

be). Indeed, tests revealed the Nagari shell had
exceptional torsional rigidity: around 500ft/lb per
degree of twist.
In typical low-volume sports car manufacturing
fashion, the Nagari’s mechanicals came from
a variety of donor cars – although the most of
the parts were Ford derived. The 302 V8 drove
through a Top Loader gearbox; front suspension
used XW Falcon uprights with Bolwell’s own
double wishbones; the rear axle assembly
was straight from the Falcon. The Nagari used
the Falcon wagon’s 73-litre fuel tank. Bolwell
designed its own unique fibreglass shell bucket
seats, which moved on XW Falcon runners. The
rack-and-pinion steering was from the humble
Austin Kimberley/Tasman; taillights were from the
Hillman Hunter – which the Nagari also shared
with Aston Martin’s DBS!
The original plan called for the Nagari to be
Holden V8 powered. Bolwell only approached
Ford after a failing to agree to terms with GM-H.
Given the discussions took place in 1969 in the
leadup to the (supposed) launch of the Torana
GTR-X, it may have been that an involvement in
an additional, external sportscar program was
putting more on the plate than Holden’s
appetite for exotic sportscars could
sustain.
On the flip side, Ford, which was
more than happy to supply Bolwell with
new 302 engines and gearboxes, might
have seen a tie-up with Bolwell as a way
of stealing Holden’s GTR-X thunder.
Of course, no matter which V8
was providing the mumbo, the laws of
physics meant that Nagari was going
to be a quick machine. Even with the
stock 302 Windsor’s modest 180kW, the
Bolwell ran the standing quarter mile in
under 15 seconds.
Inevitably, some couldn’t resist the urge to go
the whole hog and fit the 351 Cleveland V8. In
this form the Nagari probably wasn’t as nicely
balanced as the 302 version, but it certainly got
things done in a straight line. Garry Sheldrick
dropped an ex-police GT-HO Phase II engine into
his Nagari in 1972 – and promptly sent it down
the Castlereagh dragstrip quarter mile in 13.8
seconds. The Phase II engine had more power
than the Nagari’s 205-wide tyres could handle –
it was still wheelspinning as Sheldrick shifted to
third gear! He reckoned that with proper, wider
drag racing rear tyres the 351 Nagari would be in
the high 12s.
The Nagari model life ran almost to five
years, from early 1970 until the end of ’74.
During that time, a total of 140 were made,
including 13 roadsters (introduced in 1972).
For whil durin th
38

Nagari era, Bolwell continued to market the Mk
7. In terms of sales, the Mk 7 was actually more
successful than the Nagari, with a total of 400
of the six-cylinder Holden powered coupes sold
between 1967 and ’72.
Those numbers show that as a small
manufacturer of low-volume, quality sports
cars, Bolwell was a successful, going concern
in the early ‘70s. It was only the dead hand
of government regulation, the sweeping new
suite of draconian ‘Australian Design Rules’ that
were imposed on the car industry, that killed
the Nagari. In the end what saved the Bolwell
company was the foresight of the Bolwell
brothers. They were smart enough to see the
signs: that the authorities either had no interest
in accommodating small specialist car makers,
or they simply did want them to exist.
Steve Normoyle
At the front, the chassis split into a Y-shape
to accommodate the engine, transmission
and front suspension; at the rear it formed
into a T-shape to house the live rear axle.
The fibreglass (one-piece) body bolted simply
onto the chassis.

On the track
A
relatively cheap, lightweight sportscar with
Ford 302 V8 power – it was only a matter
of time before the Nagari found its way onto the
race track.
The first racing Nagaris appeared in
December of 1973 for drivers John Latham and
Ranald McLurkin – Latham was an old school
friend of the Bolwells. His Canon-sponsored
machine (below and inset) was specially
prepared by Bolwell and so it was more or less
the factory race car.
The Nagari fitted nicely into the production
sports car category (Group D), where it faced
American muscle in the form of the Corvette
Stingray (and later the similarly Ford V8-powered
de Tomaso Pantera), Japan’s answer to the
E-Type, the 240Z coupe, and the mainstay of the
class, the myriad of British roadsters and twoseater
coupes: marques such as Triumph, MG,
Lotus, Austin Healey and TVR.
Racing success for Bolwell was immediate.
McLurkin won in the wet on Boxing Day at Hume
Weir; at Calder’s night meeting Latham claimed
victory in one race and was runner up to a
Corvette in the other.
Soon enough Nagaris were racing in other
states: they were particularly strong in NSW,
with cars for Steve Webb (father of Supercars
driver/team owner Jonathon Webb), Peter
Warren and Ross Bond.
While the Nagaris generally enjoyed an
engine capacity and power advantage over
their opposition (Corvettes aside), getting
on top of the existing front runners was no
easy task. Group D rules allowed generous
freedoms, which meant smaller-engined
machines like the Lotus Elan and Triumph
GT6 could be developed to a high level.
Controversially, a race homologation version of
the Lotus Europa, the Lotus 47, was also allowed
to run. With its mid-mounted twin-cam Ford
engine and openwheeler-style Hewland FT200
transaxle, it was a formidable contender. For
a while in Victorian racing the Lotus 47s were
unbeatable.
While the Nagaris generally enjoyed an engine
capacity and power advantage over their
opposition (Corvettes aside), getting on top
of the existing front runners was no easy task
But there was still plenty of development work
that could be done on the newcomer Bolwells, as
was the case with Ross Bond’s car.
Bond had previously raced an Austin Healey
3000 before switching to a Nagari (he is also
famous as the man who bought a Holdenpowered
Austin A30 Sports Sedan from a
young Victorian driver, only to find that was it
too much of a beast for him to handle – thus
alerting the world to what Harry Firth had
already figured, that young Peter Brock was
some kind of driver…).
Bond’s mechanic, Ken Webb, did a deal with
Bolwell on a new but disassembled Nagari:
chassis, body, seats and dash. They built the
car up in Sydney, fitting it with the 302 V8 from
Pete Geoghegan’s old Mustang GTA touring
car. Master race component fabricator Dave
Mawer built a Watts link rear end, provided his
own-design 10-inch wheels for the car and did
the suspension.
Nagari production might have ended in 1974
but the new year would be a watershed season
in racing for the Aussie V8 coupe.
Jim Davidson’s high developed Elan took
the win at the Oran Park April meeting, but the
preliminary race featured Bolwell’s first 1-2-3,
with Warren heading home Webb and Chris
Clearihan.
But the important event for 1975 was the
Australian Tourist Trophy at Calder. For that year
CAMS had reinstated this award as a singlerace
championship for production sports cars,
the ATT having been dropped six years earlier
(it was once a very prestigious title, dating
back to 1956). In 2017 it was decided that the
magnificent ATT perpetual trophy would be
awarded to the winning crew of the Bathurst 12
Hour – and it has been ever since.
Warren beat Rex Colliver’s Lotus 47 to win the
first heat of the ATT, while Webb, a non starter in
the first race, won the second. Different Bolwell
rivers had won both races, but in the end
Warren was tied on points with Paul Trevethan’s
MGB V8.
A farce ensued when Trevethan was declared
inner, using the normal CAMS system of the
ar that’s ahead in the second heat taking the
40

trophy. But the race regulations stated that ties
would be resolved by adding the two race times.
Warren lodged a protest and was later declared
winner of the Australian Tourist Trophy.
Running the ATT in ’75 for production sports
cars was a prelude to giving that category
the Australian Sports Car Championship the
following year. Here then was a chance for
Bolwell to snare a national series title.
But new opposition appeared in the form of
Porsche. Previously, Porsches had raced as
touring cars in Sports Sedan races, but now the
German coupe had been reclassified as a sports
car – thus making it eligible for the Australian
Sports Car Championship. Not only that, but
there was also a de Tomaso Pantera for Rusty
French (these days the co-owner of Tickford
Racing Mustang Supercars team).
Bond won the opening race of the
championship, at Oran Park, but that was
about as good as it got for the Bolwells. Beating
French’s Pantera was hard enough, but
as the series wore on the Porsches of Ian
Geoghegan, Alan Hamilton and former
Bolwell driver Latham assumed control.
The ASCC would be won by Porsche
drivers (including Allan Moffat in 1980) for
each of the next five years. But the Bolwells
weren’t done just yet.
In fact, Ross Bond was unlucky not to
Autopics.com.au
A high performance, low cost sports car like the Nagari
was always going to make its way onto the race track.
41

win the championship in 1977. Having won two
of the four rounds, the Bolwell driver led the
championship as they headed into the finale at
Winton. He really only a decent points finish at
Winton, but an oil pump failure put paid to that as
Porsche won again .
The championship opener at Baskerville in
’79 was notable for the fact that it boasted no
less than six Nagaris – the most ever seen in
one race. But it was another Porsche 1-2, and
with Ross Bond retiring from racing halfway
through the season, the Nagaris never really
fi gured again.
Sill for a low-volume Melbourne-built sports
car to compete with and sometimes beat the
best Porsche had to offer – and the Hamilton 911
Turbo and 934 were effectively factory cars, as
Hamilton was the Australian Porsche distributor –
was a pretty decent effort.
And when this year’s Bathurst 12 Hour victors
hold aloft that magnificent Australian Tourist
Trophy, they’ll see the inscriptions of all the ATT
winners that came before them, along with their
cars – from some of the biggest and most
prestigious automotive houses in the world:
the likes of Ferrari, Porsche, Maserati, Audi,
Mercedes-Benz, Lotus and Aston Martin.
And Bolwell.
Steve Normoyle
In production sports car racing the Nagaris were
competitive, and might even have won the Australian
Sports Car Championship had CAMS not decided to
reclassify the Porsche 911 as a sports car (it had
previously raced as a touring car).
Below: Bernie van Elsen’s highly modified Nagari was
a solid contender in open sports car racing in the ‘80s.
Autopics.com.au
42

44
The end came for Commodore in December of last year – although
for many Holden fans it was over when the last VFII SS-V Redline
rolled off the production line in 2017. AMC reflects on the
beginnings and the unfortunate end of an Aussie icon.

Holden
Commodore
1978-2019
45

It wasn’t as though the news came as a shock.
For many months, the signs have been
pointing towards Holden making the decision
to kill off the Commodore brand name. That it
was simply a matter of when, not if.
And yet… it did come as a shock. After all,
the Holden Commodore has been a familiar
presence on Australian roads for more than 40
years. Even for those without the slightest interest
in cars, the ubiquitous Commodore is at the very
least ours. It’s an Aussie icon, maybe not quite as
cherished as Vegemite, but the humble Holden
Commodore is quintessentially Australian.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but Holden
really should have parked the Commodore name
when the final VFII sedan rolled off the line in
October, 2017. The company could have turned
it into a respectful burial for a model name
that actually means a lot to a lot of people.
That would have been preferable to the
unedifying (and probably inevitable) end
that saw the Commodore name stagger
on, attached to a new and very different range of
mid-sized imported sedans and wagons.
Any Holden fan will tell you that that final red,
six-speed manual SS-V Redline was the last real
Commodore. The ZB might have been a pretty
decent car, but it was not rear-wheel drive, was
not available as a V8, and it was not made here.
On the other hand, you can’t really blame
the decision makers at Holden. They were in a
kind of no-win situation. Had they opted for a
fresh nameplate for ZB, and then sales tanked,
they’d have been savaged for not having the
urage to call it a
mmodore.
Whether it was
ommodore or
Insignia, the ZB
as always going
be up against
The badge
ead Commodore
ut the car did
ot meet the
equirements
and expectations
of traditional
Commodore
buyers, while in the mid sized marketplace
it was an unknown quantity facing proven
performers like Toyota Camry and Mazda6.
The Commodore name wasn’t the only
thing Holden killed off at the end of last year.
Almost unnoticed, the BK Astra model was also
discontinued. While few tears will have been
shed over that, the Astra’s axing was important
because it means that from now on Holden’s
model range, to quote Holden’s press release,
will be ‘dedicated exclusively to SUVs and light
commercial vehicles’.
With the end of the Holden Commodore,

then, has also come the end of the conventional
Holden sedan.
It’s a reminder of how much and how
quickly the Australian automotive market has
changed. And how difficult it is these days for
any manufacturer to offer any kind of range of
conventional sedans, when the majority of cars
sold today aren’t actually cars – they’re SUVs
and dual-cab utes.
Of the top 20 sellers in 2019, only six were
cars in the conventional sense of the word. And
the Commodore wasn’t one of them. In a year in
which Holden’s market share plunged almost 30
percent, market leader Toyota sold more Hi-Lux
utes than Holden’s total vehicles sales tally!
Today’s domestic car market is almost
unrecognisable from that of even just 10 years
ago. In 2009 the top selling model was the
Commodore VE (and like the Hi-Lux last year, in
’09 Holden sold more Commodores than it did in
total in 2019).
In 2009 Holden was the second biggest
seller, albeit a fair way behind Toyota. Today it’s a
distant 10th. To put that in historical perspective,
from the time the first 48-215 model went on sale
until 2014 – a total of 66 years – Holden was
either the second highest or the top seller. Last
year’s sales total of 43,176 represented Holden’s
lowest annual sales tally since 1954!
Those are astounding figures. If Holden’s
current sales trajectory continues, it may well
be that Commodore will soon be followed into
oblivion by another iconic Australian name.

Not the Kingswood!
How the Commodore name came to be
chosen for Holden’s new ‘V-car’ in 1978
was a kind of accident of history. It was also
a long time coming: as late as early 1977
Holden still had no idea what it was going to
call the new model. In March that year Holden
commissioned behavioural researcher Hugh
McKay to test a series of potential names with
a sample group from the public. Those names
included Kingswood II, Commodore, Torana,
Cutlass, Senator and Delta, and others.
Commodore didn’t top the list but it was among
the more favoured.
Logically the VB should have been a
Kingswood (or Kingswood II). After all, it was
the existing Kingswood that the V-car was
meant to be replacing. And Kingswood was a
nameplate with real cache: even though it was
barely 10 years old, the Kingswood name had
become synonymous with reliable, inexpensive
Aussie-made family transportation. It was already
so firmly entrenched in the Australian cultural
landscape that it was the subject of a Channel
Seven TV comedy series, ‘Kingswood Country’.
But during the development of the V-car
Holden began having second thoughts about
dropping the Kingswood. By late 1975 the VB
Commodore had been clay modelled in was
more or less its final form. The model was shown
off at a market research clinic as an unbadged
prototype. Invited members of the public
were asked to appraise the car and compare
with it existing models also on display. The
overwhelming message was that the prototype
looked great, but was too small.
Subsequent clinics produced the same results
– the public preferred a larger, Kingswood or
Falcon-sized car. This was unwelcome news for
Holden, because it was too late to change tack;
they were locked into the V-car. The only way
out was to hedge their bets. When the new car
went on sale, Holden would continue to
ffer the Kingswood, so long as there
as demand for it. So the V-car couldn’t
e a Kingswood (and nor could it have
aken the Torana name, because Holden
pted to continue the existing Torana by
eleasing the UC model only about six
months out from the VB’s release).
It may well be that the Commodore
ame was chosen simply for want
f anything better. In any case,
Commodore was how Holden’s
development engineers were already
eferring to it – which was logical, given
Opel’s own version of the car was set
o be released as the German marque’s
ew model Commodore ‘C’, replacing
he previous Commodore B.
Off the Rekord
In the Holden Commodore’s 41 years, only
once has the next new model generation not
been larger than its replacement (the exception
being the ZB).
Size, or lack of it, was probably biggest
drawback of the original VB series shape.
And yet had the original plan been put into
action, the fi rst Holden Commodore might have
been smaller still. When the project began,
the initial plan was for a Holden based on the
new Opel Rekord model. But the Rekord was
primarily a four-cylinder car. When Holden
48

engineers had a close look at what Opel was
proposing with the new model Rekord they
quickly realised it wasn’t going to fit the bill, as
it were – the engine bay wasn’t long enough to
accommodate the Holden in-line six.
It was during this evaluation trip to Germany
that the Holden men learned of a second
Opel new model under development, the
Senator. The Senator was a bigger car with
a longer front section. It was large enough to
take the Holden six, and, if they ditched the
recirculating-ball steering system and fitted a
rack-and-pinion unit instead, there was enough
room for the Holden V8 (which is why the VB
Commodore was the fi rst full-sized Holden
model to feature rack-and-pinion steering).
So while Opel continued development on
its four-cylinder Rekord and larger, six-cylinder
Senator, Holden opted for a combination
of both models: a car based on the Rekord
chassis but with the larger Senator front end
grafted on.
In the end Opel opted to adopt Holden’s
‘hybrid’ design for its own Commodore model
replacement (Opel fi rst used the Commodore
name in 1967 for the premium version of the
Rekord) – which was ultimately why the new
Holden came to be known as Commodore.
Saving the best till last
In the last issue of last issue of AMC we
looked back on the development of the
VE/VF Commodore model. The VE was
released in 2006 but the development
programme began in 1999 – 20 years ago.
Holden might have come to be known
as ‘Australia’s Own’ (which was always
a spurious claim, given that it had been
wholly owned by General Motors since the
early 1930s – in reality ‘Australia’s Own’
was no more Australian than Ford Australia:
both were American-owned auto makers who designed and
made cars in Australia), but the fact is that the VE/VF series was
the only truly Australian-developed Commodore. All previous
Commodore models, starting with the VB in 1978, were either
adaptations of existing Opel designs or were jointly developed
by the various GM subsidiaries.
That’s not to denigrate Holden’s design and engineering
efforts and achievements over the years. But as the
Commodore nameplate is consigned to history, it is worth
reflecting that the final locally-made Commodore was not only
a truly Australian car, but it was the best of the breed. More
than that, it was, as the design team always strived to make it,
a world class car.
If we can metaphorically park the ZB for a moment, the
VFII was a fitting way for Commodore and for the local
industry to bow out. The last Australian Commodore was also
the best.
49

Ki
Story: Paul Gover
of
hill
th
Dick Johnson believes he has just
created the best Ford Mustang
anywhere in the world.
And he is not alone.
Thirty eager owners turned his super
‘Stang into a sell-out success in less than a
fortnight, despite a six-figure price tag.
Nothing was left on the shelf as Johnson
and his skunkworks crew, led by DJR Team
Penske team principal Ryan Story, with Rob
and Chris Herrod on the mechanical side, went
all-out – and even created a full suite of very
special bespoke pieces – to ensure this car,
the Dick Johnson Limited Edition by Herrod
Performance, to give it its full title, was the very
best of the best.
The key to the car’s creation is a supercharged
V8 engine that unleashes a whacking 635kW,
more than 850 old-school horsepower, in a fullcustom
package that changes everything for the
classic American pony car. Even the puddle lights,
which project a picture on the ground when the
doors are opened, are unique to the car.
“It would have been easy to do a body kit
and some stickers, maybe bigger brakes and
50

Just when you thought Ford had delivered the last word on
high performance Mustangs with the recent release of the
supercharged R-Spec, up pops Dick Johnson with his own limited
edition supercharged ‘stang. The Ford race ace’s aim was to
produce the ‘king of the hill’ of Mustangs – and with the engine
package tuned to deliver more than 600kW, this Mustang will see
off pretty much any car up any hill. But that’s only part of what
makes the new Dick Johnson Mustang so special.
more power, but that’s not me,” Johnson tells
AMC. “This program was always about hitting
the summit.
“I can promise that there is no other Mustang
on the road quite like this one.”
The key character in the creation of the
Dick Johnson Mustang is Ryan Story, who
pulled the project together and ensured the
Mustangs went to the right homes despite
his heavy workload running the show at DJR
Team Penske.
“We only got one shot at this thing,” says Story.
“We’d been talking about it for a long time and
finally the time was right.
“The biggest bonus is that Ford gave us
the green light for the project. That meant a
lot because Kay Hart, the president of Ford
Australia, really understands what we wanted
to do. She could see the benefit of having a
Mustang with Dick’s name on, especially after all
the success in Supercars through 2019.”
For people who think the DJ ‘stang could
be just a re-work and re-badge of
something already existing in the US,
or a mild tickle on the 500-run R-Spec
Mustang that Herrod is doing in 2020
as a special project for Ford Australia,
Johnson has the answer.
“This is a one-off project,” he says.
“The first and the last. We believe it’s
the king of the hill for Mustang and
we’re happy to leave it that way.”
How it happened
As Scott McLaughlin tore through the
Supercars series in 2019 with a record
series of race wins and pole positions, and
DJR Team Penske dominated Bathurst as
well as the drivers and teams championships,
51

“It would have been easy to do a body kit and
some stickers, maybe bigger brakes and more
power, but that’s not me” - Dick Johnson
a couple of key people knew they had a unique
opportunity.
With Dick Johnson Racing also set for its 40 th
anniversary in 2020, it was an easy decision to
push the button on a limited-edition Mustang
road car wearing a DJ badge. It was, according
to Dick, a no brainer:
“The Mustang was doing the job on the track
and I wanted something that would do the job on
the road.”
But it took some doing, as project boss Ryan
Story recalls.
“It all started coming together with the
Mustang’s model refresh in 2017. It brought the
10-speed auto and refined the original right-hand
drive package. And it made sense to use that as
the base for something new and special with DJ.
“But we knew we had to do something very
special, above and beyond.”
The mechanical key to the project was Rob
Herrod, who is more than just a long-term friend
and collaborator with Dick Johnson. He is also
the biggest Ford Performance dealer outside the
USA, rating top-10 world-wide with multi-milliondollar
sales, and also has the right connections
at every level in the muscle car family at Ford in
the USA.
“Rob is the best Mustang tuner outside the
USA,” Johnson says simply.
With Ford Australia also on board, and
plenty of interest from potential buyers, Story
got to work.
“Dick was hell-bent on the car being
supercharged,” Story says. “That was his
initial direction. Then Rob and I started
nutting things out.”

That meant finding and sourcing the right
parts, many of them coming from the USA, to
ensure a balanced package that would work on
the road but also have enough spice for owners
who want to hit the track.
Even the tiniest details were considered, but
there were also the big-ticket items including
signature forged alloy wheels, subtle side stripes
that were designed for the car, and the unique
carbon fibre rear wing.
All 30 cars begin their life as a right-hand-drive
Mustang GT with Magnaride suspension. There
are only two colours, black or white, with a mix of
manuals and autos.
One of the few options in the program is a rollcage,
although its installation means removing
the rear seats.
“The cars have been sourced through dealers
that we work with regularly and who are great
friends, specifically Tony Blake at Metro Ford and
Stuart Lanham from Lanham Ford, who has also
been a great supporter,” Johnson says.
“The cars are then modified by Herrod
separately once the donor car has been
registered and pre-delivered. Each car has
specific engineering sign-off for its state of
registration.”
The cars are fully warranted, with regular
Ford coverage supplemented by Herrod on the
bespoke parts.
The build for each car takes a minimum
of two weeks, with a dedicated crew of
six Mustang specialists working at Herrod
Performance in Thomastown, about 15
minutes from Ford Australia’s headquarters
at Broadmeadows.
53

The mechanical key to the project was Rob Herrod, who is more than
just a long-term friend and collaborator with Dick Johnson. He is
also the biggest Ford Performance dealer outside the USA

Under the skin
There are so many bespoke parts in the
Dick Johnson Mustang that Rob Herrod,
who pulled the package together with his son
Chris working alongside him, hardly knows
where to start.
But he had a clear mantra for all his work,
as well as experience in collaboration with
Johnson thanks to their previous DJR 320 Falcon
project and his many weekends in the DJR pit at
Supercars events.
“What I really didn’t want to do was build an
e-Bay car. Or a sticker car,” Herrod reports.
“There is nothing on this car that you can buy.
Everything is bespoke.
“Even the supercharger, which comes from
Whipple in the ‘states, is built special for us
with some custom tweaks. The radiator is
manufactured by PWR in Queensland, but it’s a
Herrod part done specifically for us.”
Herrod, soon to turn 60, is highly regarded in
the Blue Oval world and is one of the very rare
Tier One parts suppliers to Ford Australia.
“I knew what was needed to make the car
really, really good. I knew all the right parts to put
the car together, and with the last two or three
years working with the Mustang and Ford, I knew
all the right people to source the right parts.”
His approach is obvious from the car’s
signature item in the engine room.
“Yes, we use a 3-litre Whipple supercharger,
but I got Dustin Whipple on the phone to talk to
him about it and what we wanted. We wanted
some special race-style fittings
and a unique lid for it made from
billet aluminium.”
The fi nished item also
incorporates the unique DJ #17
logo developed for the car, as well
as the car’s individual VIN and
build numbers.
“Everything with this car is VIN
numbered and build numbered. It
is all machined into the parts,”
Herrod adds.
“Even if you could get some
of the parts, which you can’t, you
couldn’t clone one of the cars
because you wouldn’t have the number
“It’s on each conrod, and on the crown of the
JE pistons. These are true matching-numbers
cars, because the numbers are on every part for
each car.”
Herrod says his in-house testing in Melbourne
with a rear-wheel dyno backs the performance
claims for the car.
“It will make 850 horsepower, all day long. In
the USA, with a similar configuration, there are
people claiming over 1000 horsepower. Running
on Shell V-Power fuel, we know we are making
over 850 at the flywheel, with over 700 at the
rear axle.”
The attention to detail on the project is
obvious from the $10,000 bill for the tooling for
badges, and Herrod smiles as he runs through
the specification sheet.
“The suspension is a development with Ford
Performance, it’s the Magnaride system with
a unique spring and sway bay, with a unique
calibration. It’s not an off-the-shelf calibration,
and Ford Performance beefs different areas up
for the track work.
“The brakes are from the Mustang GT350R,
with Brembo 6-piston calipers on the front and
four-pots on the rear, with directional 15.5-inch
cross-drilled front rotors and 14.9-inch crossdrilled
rear rotors.
“The wheels are Forgestar from the USA,
20x10 on the front and 20x11 on the rear, with
275x35 front and 305x30 rear Michelin Pilot
Sport 4S tyres.”
There is a plumbed-in differential cooler,
engine and transmission coolers, and a Borla
three-inch stainless exhaust system.
On the visual side, there are new upper and
55

lower front grilles, flicks on the front corners and
the very special carbon fibre rear wing.
The seats are re-trimmed in Italian leather,
which a Vee shape to the pleating that mirrors
the design on top of the supercharger.
Herrod likes talking about the unique puddle
lamps on the car, but even the service stickers in
the engine bay, including a special one for the oil
cap, are bespoke items.
“It’s a horn car. And the sound of the thing,
with the supercharger and the exhaust.”
But the project is not just about the
performance, or the individual pieces.
“What I’ve learned from doing the R-Spec
Mustang from Ford is that we’ve put the
manufacturing process into the car. It’s stuff that
ther people can’t do.
“To me, this is ultimate road
ar. You turn the key each day,
nd it starts and runs like a
ormal everyday road car.
ut when you push the pedal
harder it makes you go – well,
ust WOW.”
But why do the car at all,
when his plate is over-full with
R-Spec, and the order bank at
Herrod Performance stretches
well into 2020, and there are
some other top-secret projects
in the works?
“Dick has been very good to
me for a long time,” Herrod says.
He cared about me when times were tough.
“He is loving it. And that gives me pleasure.”
Formula Johnson
Dick Johnson is not done yet.
Even as his signature Mustangs hit the
road he is deeply into a new set of challenges for
his DJR anniversary year in 2020 and beyond.
They are wrapped up in Formula Johnson, a
joint project with Ryan Story that is seeing the
resurrection and re-birth of some of the most
iconic cars in the history of Dick Johnson Racing.
“Formula Johnson is effectively a
motorsport, automotive and investment
company,” Story reports.
“Dick still has an enormous following and it’s
something he never takes for granted. To see the
happiness and joy this project has brought him is
the most satisfying thing of our friendship.”
First up is the XD, which tracks back to
the True Blu days, to be followed by a Shell
Sierra. Just like the Mustang road cars,
excellence is expected.
“The first project we’ve tackled is the building
of the TCM Ford Falcon that Steve Johnson will
race in 2020.
“The car has taken a lot of time, more than we
expected, because it was engineered by Paul
Ceprnich at Pace Innovations. That thing is a
piece of beauty. It’s all Dick’s memories of the
halcyon days of the 1980s, and that’s why it was
a no-brainer.
“The XD is built to TCM specifications but pays
homage to the 1980 to 1982 Falcons. It will be
ready for Steve for this year’s series.”
Ceprnich is a motorsport veteran and his
two most-recent projects, the Brabham BT62
supercar and the MARC Mustang racers, have
both achieved widespread acclaim.
“That’s now led to Project Sierra. We’re
building two Sierra RS500 and they should be
finished by the middle of 2020.
“They will be very special, they will be
modern-day monsters.
“One is a former DJR show car and has history
from 1987. The other is a brand-new shell.”
But that’s just the start.
“We have a number of other motoring projects
56

on the go to build that business. There are
number of on and off-road projects,” says Story.
“The XD and Sierra are just the public-facing
things we have. At the end of the day, you want
to do things you enjoy.
“It’s an investment business that focusses
on automotive and motorsport projects, and it’s
something that Dick and I enjoy.
“It’s also the 20th anniversary of Dick
Johnson Racing in 2020, which is a very big
deal, so we’ll have a number of events. It’s still
considered to be the people’s team, which is
pretty unique, so we’ll make sure we have a
very special celebration.”
Below: Steven Johnson’s ‘Tru-Blu’ XD Falcon TCM
racer is almost ready to go. It will be followed by a
reborn Shell Sierra in a new venture - Formula Johnson
- that celebrates the Ford legend’s career.
The sell-out success of the Johnson Mustang has had a surprising twist. A single car is now
set for auction. It is build number #001, with white paintwork, auto transmission and roll cage.
Formula Johnson has teamed up with Graysonline for the auction, which opens on February 21
and ends on Feb 26. For all Auction enquiries phone 1300 CLASSIC.
Team Johnson Facebook
57

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Man
Story: Paul Newby
Images: Chevron Image Library,
Project Pictorials, Autopics.com.au
Seldo on
Sunday
vid Seldon was never a big name
t he enjoyed some pretty good
ives and made 12 Great Race
arts - without ever having to field
own vehicle. Clearly ‘Seldo’ knew
hing or two about driving - even
llan Moffat didnt think so...
61

Sometimes it can be hard to evaluate
how good a driver was in his/her career.
Did the quality of their machinery flatter
their ability? Or was the competition
below par? In the days where there
were few fulltime
fessionals and
nty of aspiring
ateurs or
ekend warriors
s even harder.
ne indicator is
ow you are rated
y your peers,
eing asked back
o drive – without
aving to bring
money – is one
way of gauging a driver’s ability.
David Seldon certainly fits into that category.
In a career that spanned twenty years he raced
at Bathurst twelve times in someone else’s car,
albeit some were entered by dealerships that he
had a financial interest in. He was always quick
and often unlucky. He never shied away from a
stoush and sometimes came off second best,
with the scars to prove it!
Seldon sold cars for a living and saw value in
the ‘win on Sunday, sell on Monday’ mantra. It
certainly was the guiding light when racing Volvos
in Improved Production in the 1960s and was still
relevant through the Group C era with various
European marques and then Group E Series
Production in the 1980s. There were diversions,
such as two successful seasons racing in the
clubman series and even a sports sedan.
He was always
there, or there
abouts, punching
above his weight
in class cars,
but there was
one ‘wouldacoulda-shoulda’
moment, where
he felt he was
on the cusp of moving
to the next level. That was Bathurst 1972,
where he believed that he had the fastest
Torana GTR XU-1 on the day only to crash
out late in the race. The jury may be out on
Seldon’s racing skill, but that is not the case
with his ability to tell a great story. Read on to
learn more about ‘Seldo.’
Paul Newby
Early days
David Seldon was born in Sydney, the son
of a keen motorcyclist who had done a
bit of racing before the War. His family moved
to Tamworth when he was six. A mate built a
dirt race track on his parent’s property and
he and Seldon raced his father’s FB Holden
and mother’s Fiat 500 around. Educated at
Huntingtower School in Melbourne, Seldon
returned home to Sydney and at the age of
17 got a job at British and Continental Cars,
the NSW Volvo agent on William Street in
the City, as an office boy. He also joined the
North Shore Sporting Car Club (NSSCC), as a
stepping stone to obtaining his racing licence,
but faced parental objection, as he explains.
“My old man said there was no way he would
allow me to get a licence until I was 21. One
night having dinner at home I was running late
to get to a NSSCC meeting. My old man said if
you leave without washing the dishes then don’t
come home. So I didn’t! I left home aged 17.
“The competition licence form required my old
man’s signature and he refused to sign it. I said
if you don’t sign it then I will sign it myself, which
I did and sent it in. My old man, being stubborn,
contacted CAMS and told them his signature
was a forgery. I got summoned before a CAMS
State Council Meeting. NSSCC President John
McKittrick met my old man on the steps and
warned if you go through with this your son will
be banned for life. So he recanted on the steps
of the court, as it were,
and I got my licence.”
At British and
Continental Cars, Seldon was soon selling
Volvos, so it made sense to race them. A 1963
122S was modified for his first race at Towac
(Orange) in 1965 and this car and similar models
were raced up until the late ‘60’s at the Sydney
circuits, Easter Bathurst (in 1967) and at Surfers
Paradise in the 12 Hour with fellow British and
Continental manager Gerry Lister. In the 1967
race the duo finished a respectable seventh
outright but the next year things went pear
shaped, as Seldon explains.
“I had damaged my own car at Amaroo when
it broke an axle and lost a wheel. We took off
the cylinder head (with Weber carbs) and
wheels and put them on another 122S for
he 6 Hour. That car broke an axle and lost
a wheel at full bore under the Dunlop Bridge
and did three barrel rolls and five end for
nds with me in it. There was no roll cage,
nly a genuine Volvo rally seat and a three
oint seat belt. I was uninjured. In any other
ar, well…”
Seldon sold his own 122S in 1968,
ansferring all the good bits to a new 142S
odel, that raced around Sydney, at (Easter)
athurst and then the Surfers Paradise 6
ur with Digby Cooke, who blew a tyre
ring the race and rolled the Volvo into a
le ball. Unfortunately the 142S was on hire
purchase with three years’ worth of payments still
owing! As a result, Seldon’s racing career came
to a full stop (though there were Bathurst 500
appearances – see breakout.)
Above left: Seldon’s Volvo 122S at Warwick Farm,
before it met its maker at Surfers Paradise (inset).
Below: The replacement 142S (which would also be
written off), seen here at the ‘69 Easter Bathurst meet.
62

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Works driver
n 1972 Seldon was approached by Colin
Wear, I guy he didn’t know from a bar of soap,
o drive one of his Welsor Clubmans. Wear, a
AFE teacher who taught boiler making, had
uilt a number of clubmans called Welsors
ut of his home garage in Sefton. Whilst
he deal wasn’t exactly arrive and drive –
Seldon helped to build ‘his’ car – the drive
put his career back on track. The Welsor,
affectionately known as the ‘black car’ had a
clever beam axle at the front, a 1293cc BMC
A Series engine, Midget gearbox and Austin
A30 rear axle. The seemingly antiquated beam
axle eliminated camber change under braking
allowing Seldon to be the last of the late
brakers and pass faster cars.
In Sel on’s h nds the black Welsor was
nvincible, breaking lap records
t all the Sydney circuits and
winning the 1972 championship.
At the end of the year Wear, sold
he black car and built a new
range car with a Datsun 1300
ngine. This car was later sold,
ith Wear changing tack and
uilding a Datsun 1000 sports
dan, with a 240hp 1860cc
aggott FVA, a 240Z five-speed
earbox, live rear axle and, in
elsor tradition, a beam front axle.
Seldon raced the Datsun
orts sedan in 1974. The car was
64

Above: Welsor creator Colin Wear makes some adjustments
on Seldon’s ‘works’ Welsor Clubman sports car.
Right: The Welsor marque was hardly a household name
but it did have its followers...
Left, below: Seldon enjoyed plenty of success in Colin
Wear’s Welsor Clubmans.
Bottom: Wear also built a Datsun 1000 Sports Sedan
which Seldon drove, culminating in the infamous clash
at Oran Park with Allan Moffat’s Mustang. Afterwards the
Ford star angrily called Seldon a ‘peanut’ - although this
pic seems to support Seldon’s recollection of the crash...
Autopics.com.au
Autopics.com.au
remembered for an accident then any results as
he relates today.
“We were racing the Datsun in a sports sedan
race at Oran Park. Allan Moffat was racing his
Brut 33 Ford Mustang. Anyway, I had an oil
pressure problem and was slowing down to
enter the pits with my hand out the window.
Moffat’s Mustang came around out of control,
looking battle-weary with a cracked windscreen.
He didn’t make provision for me. He clipped
me, which spun him the other way into the wall.
Afterwards they interviewed him. He was cranky
and gave me a spray on the PA. He said if it
wasn’t for some peanut who wouldn’t know the
brake pedal from the steering wheel…”
65

Way out west
Gerry Lister and David Seldon both left
British and Continental Cars in 1974
and headed west over the divide to start
Orange City Motors in the central west city
of Orange. They introduced dealerships for
Volvo, Renault and Peugeot and acquired the
franchise for Volkswagen, with Leyland soon
to follow. This potpourri of European marques
provided racing fodder for Seldon for several
years (see Bathurst by the Year breakout)
leading to his fi rst (and only) time as a paid
professional driver.
“For 1977 Ron Hodgson approached me
and asked whether I wanted to join his Triumph
Dolomite Sprint team and race in the (Sun
7–Rothmans) 3-litre series. It was better than
arrive and drive – I actually got paid to race!”
There were two Dolomite Sprints; an ex-Andy
Rouse Broadspeed-built car imported from the
UK for Bob Morris and a locally sourced car
built up by Ron Missen for Seldon. Both drivers
would compete at the Amaroo Park-based
under 3-litre series, whilst Seldon would also do
limited ATCC rounds and the endurance races.
The year was a bit of a mixed bag. The best
result was a class win and seventh outright with
(Graeme Lawrence/Phil Ward) in the Rothmans
500 at Oran Park.
After the Bathurst debacle (see breakout)
the team was closed down and Seldon was
back on the racing driver’s scrapheap without a
drive. In 1978, the year that he moved back to
Sydney, the phone didn’t ring and it looked like
his racing days were over.
Back to the Future –
Series Production
Seldon had kept his hand in by racing tiddler
Holden Geminis at Bathurst (see breakout)
but it wasn’t until 1981 that he secured a
regular drive in the burgeoning Group E Series
Production category. Group E had started back
in 1979/80 as a CAMS series for standard
production cars with very limited modifications –
rollcage, safety equipment and not much else.
“I started driving for Paul Bray of Brayson
Motors in a Volvo 242GT in 1981 and 82.
They prepared the car and it was surprisingly
66

successful. It went well and was an easy fun car
to drive. We took it everywhere around Australia.
Its only issue was that it needed a slippery
diff. It just couldn’t get the power to the ground
effectively.”
In 1983 he was approached by leading Nissan
dealer and racer John Giddings to run a third
Datsun/Nissan 280ZX. Leo Geoghegan was
the team manager and Seldon took over the
car that had been prepared by Fred Gibson and
occasionally raced by journalist Peter McKay.
During this time (1982) Seldon opened his
own business, Brookvale Prestige Cars on
Sydney’s northern beaches, and sponsored an
Alfasud in the Alfasud Trophy Series.
“It was good fun,” remembers Seldon. “We
ran both years (1983 and 84) and did well. I
sold the first Alfasud to Craig Denyer (father of
Grant) on the Central Coast who rolled it, and
that was that.”
Seldon was offered a drive in the new
Nissan 300ZX for 1984 but old friend Paul Bray
countered with a better offer, as he explains.
“Paul Bray took on an Alfa Romeo franchise
(in Rockdale) and asked if I wanted to race a
GTV6 in 84. I was frustrated with it. Colin Bond
and Gerard Murphy were running them and
they had factory inside knowledge and we didn’t.
We were not competitive. They were quicker
in places where they shouldn’t have been.
Seldon returned to his roots in more ways than one
when Series Production was reborn in 1979/80, which
saw him back the wheel of a Volvo, in this case a
242GT. A Nissan gig with John Giddings followed, and
then a stint in the Alfasud series. Seldon eventually
called time on his career after a frustrating ‘84 season
in an Alfetta GTV6.
Eventually we got the optional front torsion bars.
‘Didn’t you know about that?’ But we didn’t have
an LSD or their exhaust tweaks.”
It was at Amaroo that old boss John Giddings
ran up the back of Seldon’s GTV6 at the Stop-Go
corner, spinning it backwards into the wall and
writing off the car. By then it was all starting to
get too expensive and Seldon called time on all
motor racing.
67

Bathurst by the years
It’s a mark of David Seldon’s ability that
he never raced his own car in any of the
12 Bathurst enduros that he competed in.
Sure, the occasional car may have come
off the forecourt of the dealership he had
a fi nancial interest in, but more often than
not he was asked to drive. When the phone
stopped ringing, Seldo stopped going to the
Mountain.
1967
68
1967
It wasn’t a big stretch from racing an improved
production Volvo 122S at all the Sydney
circuits to racing a standard 122S in that year’s
Gallaher 500 but it certainly required a different
approach as Seldon was to discover to his
detriment.
“It ran the engine bearings from oil surge
through left handers. The oil light was coming
on but I was told to ignore it! (Team manager)
Tony Lister said we would park it until the
last lap and take it round for one more to be
classified. Gerry Lister and I fi nished 11th in
class completing 86 laps.”
1968
Seldon teamed up with good mate, Sydney
Mini exponent Rick Radford for 1968.
The pair had a good showing at the Surfers
Paradise 4 Hour, fi nishing second in Class B
in Radford’s Mini Cooper 998 but then being
disqualified due to non-original valves.
For Bathurst, Radford had entered his own
1275 Cooper S with Seldon, in what would
1970
be his third and last Bathurst start. The pair
had problems with loose wheels in practice –
remedied by taking the paint off from behind the
wheel nuts. But there were no wheel issues when
after 102 laps Radford hit the fence at Murray’s
Corner and rolled – the same place where he
went in during the ‘66 race in his Cooper S. (In
1967 Radford’s Cooper S hit the bank at Forrest’s
Elbow.)
1970
After skipping 1969, Seldon got the call from
Digby Cooke for a drive at the 1970 Great
Race. Essentially it was payback for Cooke
having destroyed Seldon’s Volvo at Surfers
Paradise the year before. Their LC Torana GTR
XU-1 was quick but succumbed to the valve
train issue that afflicted most of the privateer
Toranas that year. The head was replaced but
over an hour was lost and they were classified
12th in class completing 108 laps.
1968
1971
Gerry Lister and Seldon raced a Falcon XY
Falcon GS 351 entered by John McNicol
Ford of Cooma. The exploits of this car were
told in AMC #109, but suffice to say that it didn’t
trouble the leading class contenders in their
Torana GTR XU-1s or Valiant E38 Chargers –
serious brake issues and a small fuel tank saw
to that. They competed 122 laps to fi nished
13th in class and 21st overall.
1972
For 1972 Seldon teamed up again with Gerry
Lister in a new LJ Torana GTR XU-1. Tony
Lister had sold British and Continental Cars to
a public company who had purchased McLeod,
Kelso and Lee a Newcastle Holden dealer who
sponsored the Torana. Seldon believes that
this was the one that got away, as he explains.
“Gerry started in the rain even though I liked
the rain and was quick in the rain. He started
17th and when I took over we were 22nd. I had
the flu that weekend but they asked me to do
a double stint and I was rooted. We were lying
third or fourth and the pit signals were saying
to go faster as we were catching Don Holland. I
went up Mountain Straight and outbraked myself
and rattled it along the fence at XL Bend. I lost
concentration; it was totally my own fault. We
completed 103 laps and I was supposed to run to
the flag – another hour to go.”
1974
Seldon skipped another year and came back
in 1974 with a class car, in the unlikely
form of a Volkswagen Passat TS. By this time
Seldon and Gerry Lister had set up Orange
City Motors and were looking at an appropriate
contender off the dealer forecourt that could
take on Mount Panorama.
“The ‘sporty’ Passat TS coupe looked half a
chance with its twin throat carb (and 63kW),”

1972
Autopics.com.au
1974 1975
recalled Seldon. We had Peter Webster, who
worked in the marketing department at Channel
8 Orange doing a lot of advertising for us. We got
some offset from Peter, who had Formula Vee
experience and he got the drive as a contra deal.
The Passat was prepared at our workshop.
“I have to say that it was probably the worst
race car I’ve ever driven. It wasn’t nice. Dunlop
didn’t have any tyres for it. We had different
zes front to rear and different compounds
nd tread patterns. It rained and the wipers
opped working. It was a blessing when the
rburettor butterfly throttle spindle broke and it
opped. I was happy to see it parked.”
1975
Colin Wear was given the task of preparing
three Morris Cooper Ss for the 1975
Hardie Ferodo 1000 and suggested Seldon
should be one of the drivers. Seldon was
paired with Gary Leggatt in the fastest of the
three cars, all entered by Orange City Motors.
Unfortunately it was not a happy day, as
Seldon remembers:
“Gary tangled with the DeBortloli Ford Escort
RS2000 of Bruce Hodgson and hit the fence at
Murray’s, breaking the steering rack. Gary took
the rack out of Phil McDonnell’s Mini (that hadn’t
qualified) and lost three hours. I’d never driven
the car before practice, Gary was annoyed with
himself so he said, ‘you drive it’. I did a lot of
laps and hated every one of them. I was never
a front-wheel-drive person and just didn’t like
driving it. It was so twitchy and I spent the whole
race fighting it. We did 83 laps and were not
classified.”
1971
Bill Forsyth
69

1980
1976
For 1976 Seldon looked at his dealer
forecourt and came up with the Triumph
Dolomite Sprint. This pommy performer had
a potent 16 valve 2.0 litre engine but was not
without its issues, as he reflects.
“They didn’t call then ‘dynomites’ for nothing!
Col Wear prepared it with a Holley carburettor
instead of twin Webers, for fuel consumption
and cost reasons and we entered it. Bob
Martin, a very handy steerer who was easy
on the car, started the race but it did one
lap before breaking a camshaft just after the
Cutting.”
Seldon took the Dolomite to endurance
races at Adelaide and Surfers Paradise, but it
was a litany of gloom.
“At Adelaide we broke an engine in
practice. Then we took the Dolly to Surfers. In
the race Lyndon Arnel (Escort) tipped me off
round the back into a flaggies barrier, which was
a railway sleeper structure, backwards and wrote
it off. It broke the seat and I ended up in hospital.
I still have a bad back to this day.”
1977
With a full race season in the Ron
Hodgson Triumph Dolomite Sprint,
including a class win at Oran Park’s Rothmans
500, Seldon was match fit for Bathurst. But
storm clouds were gathering. First the second
Dolomite for international hotshots Andy
Rouse and Tim Schenken didn’t eventuate.
Kiwi single seater ace Graeme Lawrence was
there to partner Seldon and the pair qualified
but were withdrawn on the morning of the race
by an emotional Ron Hodgson.
“Hoddo was confident they would do well
with the Toranas (A9Xs entered for Bob Morris/
John Fitzpatrick and Johnny Rutherford/Janet
Guthrie) but because they were all entered by
Ron Hodgson Motors and there are some grey
areas with the Dolomite, if we got disqualified
post scrutineering then it affects the whole
team and all cars entered by the team would
be disqualified – which incidentally should
have applied to Shell V Power Racing Team (at
Bathurst 2019), but that is another story!”
1977
Autopics.com.au
The engine was the weak link with the
Dolomite. Pistons homologated in the UK hadn’t
been passed by CAMS. There was an impasse
and post Bathurst Hodgson and major sponsor
Leyland Australia closed down the race program,
leaving Seldon out of a job.
1979
Gary Leggatt rang me the day before
entries closed at Bathurst and asked me
what was I driving at Bathurst? I said nothing,
what about you? ‘Nothing. Why don’t we run a
car?’ What? ‘Maybe a Gemini, they’re cheap
and easy to run, it should win class A. I know
there is one in Melbourne.’ So we put an entry
in for an unknown car.”
Bob Williamson bought the car, an ex
Mollison Motors car driven by John Harvey in the
Victorian Gemini Series. The car was prepared
in Leggatt’s garage and after some teething
problems in testing at Oran Park and in practice
at Bathurst (see Whaddayaknow in #113 for
details) the duo did indeed win Class A after
the Gough Brothers’ Gemini was disqualified for
having an illegal engine.
1980
1976
Buoyed by their class success, Leggatt set
about building up a new Gemini for the
1980 Bathurst 1000. George Shepheard was
running the HDT Gemini rally team with a
workshop full of white Gemini bodies from the
factory. Leggatt acquired a TE four door shell
nd built it up.
“Gary was very canny and a great rulebook
ader. He said we can build a Gemini ZZ that
as an 1800 twin-cam. They changed class
om 1600 to 2000, so the 1600 had no show
nymore, but the twin-cam may have. So he
uilt one up and ordered some fuel injection
arts from Germany, but two weeks out it
hadn’t arrived. Gary got onto Hedley McGee
of speedway fame and he knocked up a basic
constant flow system setup for us that we
bolted on the Wednesday prior to Bathurst.
We did a couple of practice laps and it was
hopeless. We had all sorts of problems.
“I went to the ‘cop shop’ and spoke to the
sergeant. Is there somewhere where we can go,
decent bit of road where we won’t be disturbed
or kill someone? ‘I can’t give you permission to
break the law!’ he said. But then he said: ‘We’ll be
e Orange to Bathurst Road, but if you
go to Molong Rd about eight miles
out there is a long stretch of road.
As long as you are quick and behave
yourself you won’t be disturbed.’ So we
put it on the trailer and shot up there
n the dark and tuned the engine by
rilling holes in the injectors. A farmer
me up splitting chips. So we gave
m a carton of the sponsor’s product –
1979
1983

1981
Cinzano – to mollify him. He went away happy!”
Come race day things didn’t go well. The
Gemini broke its fuel injector pump after 18 laps
without Seldon doing a lap.
1981
With Leggatt moving to an Alfa Romeo
GTV, Seldon was picked up by George
Shepheard whose new Gemini ZZ (with proper
fuel injection), had been initially raced by Bob
Morris. The Gemini competed in the Better
Brakes 3.5 Litre Series and the Silastic 300 at
Amaroo Park.
“In my fi rst race I tangled with a Mazda RX3
and did the wall of death. The kickback from
the steering broke my wrist. With Phil Ward at
the Amaroo 300 we won the class and came
eight outright.
“The month before the race the Faneco
brothers (Country Dealer Team) came along
and made George an offer he couldn’t refuse.
George, to his credit, said; ‘I promised the drive
to David and I’ll sell it on the proviso that David
gets the drive.’ So I drove with Gary Rowe,
who was driving when it was involved in the
race-ending accident at McPhillamy Park. We
had issues with the torque tube and were not
classified.
1983
Seldon’s last Bathurst was with
Queenslander Alf Grant in the ex-Dick
Johnson XD Falcon.
“I got a phone call from Alf asking, do you
want a drive? The car was in Sydney for some
reason so I drove it at Oran Park for four or five
laps. I said to Alf that was I wasn’t sure I could
drive this as I’m not physically strong enough.
There was no power steering and he wouldn’t
change it, as it’s something else to go wrong.
Alf was a gym junkie. So I went to the gym
and pumped iron every day! It was a good car
because it was simple and quick.
“I was frightened of it as I knew I wasn’t
physically strong enough to hold onto the Falcon
if it got out of shape. So I was very tentative
but still substantially quicker than Alf. I had an
incident with Gricey in practice. I didn’t know he
was there and broke a wheel. We started 26th
and I got quicker as I became more comfortable.
I was doing 2m22s most of the day and got down
into the 18s at one stage and finished seventh.
There were no issues with the car at all. We were
credited with the fastest time down the straight –
275km/h, which stood for years before they put
the Chase in. I sweated out six kilograms and
drank a gallon and a half of Gatorade!”
The phone did ring in 1984. Rusty French was
on the other line offering a drive, but he wanted
$10,000, an amount Seldon didn’t have to tip into
motor racing.

k
Images: Chevron archive, Project Pictorials
1974 Surfers Paradise ATCC
A Champion crowned
Muscle Maniac in AMC #112 told
of the time Dick Johnson had
his one and only race start as a
Holden Dealer Team driver. Here’s
more from that ‘74 ATCC round at
Surfers Paradise – probably not a day Dick
will remember fondly but nonetheless a fairly
momentous one for ‘team-mate’ Peter Brock,
who clinched his first ATCC crown with that
Surfers win, which was also the first for the
new LH model Torana SL/R 5000 – and
the fi rst major touring car success for the
Holden V8 (you can read all about the birth
of the Aussie V8 on page 84). The grid shot
(opposite) shows the two HDT drivers Brock
and Johnson preparing for the start, with
Ian Tate looking after Brock and team boss
Harry Firth taking care of Johnson (in the
older XU-1) – and no doubt forming his own
opinions on the Queenslander and whether
or not Dick might be a driver they could use
at Bathurst come October… As can be seen
on the following pages, the formalities were a
little more relaxed in the ‘70s compared to the
razzmatazz that goes on today when a new
Supercar champ is crowned. Australia’s retired
triple world drivers’ champion Jack Brabham
was on hand to help the local Broadbeach
Hotel’s PR lady, Narelle, present Brocky with
the silverware.
72

73

74

75

76
Unique

Paul Cross
Steve Reed is a Holden man. Reed almost
always drove Holdens in a lengthy touring
car racing career that saw he and fellow
Lansvale Smash Repairs proprietor Trevor
Ashby make 16 starts in the Great Race.
Reed and Ashby (who featured in our Muscle
Men section in AMC issue #90) still hold the
record for the longest continuous driver pairing
in the history of the Bathurst classic. All of those
starts were in Holdens – and yet the panel
beating pair actually started racing together in
Fords, an Escort RS2000 and a Capri in the
early ‘80s.
Reed and Ashby retired from racing in the
early 2000s. These days Reed, apart from
tending to his own business interests (including
a chicken farm in South Australia!), can still be
seen at the occasional Supercars race meeting,
where he helps out his old mates at Brad Jones
Racing, looking after their corporate guests.
It was at one of those Supercars events with
BJR that Reed came across the 1959 model
Fairlane 500 you see here. At the time he had
been thinking about getting himself some kind
of weekend muscle cruiser, something a bit old
school and a little bit different –
although maybe not something
this different, and not something
with Ford badges attached.
“I heard about the Fairlane
one day when they were talking
about cars,” Reed explains.
“One of the Brad Jones Racing
mechanics told me I should
speak to Ebony, the PR lady for
the team, about her grandfather’s
Fairlane. But I’m not a Ford man,
so I didn’t take it any further.
Then when we were at Winton
Raceway, Ebony’s father, Cliff,
said to me, ‘you should come and
have a look at this thing because
we’ve got to sell it’.
“It was part of Cliff’s parents’
estate. I went and had a look and
the first time I wasn’t sold on it; it was a lovely old
thing but I wasn’t 100 precent sure. Later I went
back with a mate of mine, and he had a look at
the car and said to me: ‘if you don’t buy this, you
need to have a serious look at yourself. It’s an
original car and it’s got a unique history behind
it – you should buy it’. Then when I drove it, I just
thought, ‘this is nice, this is me, I like the car’.”
It is certainly a unique car, and not just
because it is a low-mileage, unrestored Fairlane
that has remained with the one family for almost
all of its 60 years.
This is
one of the
very first
Australian
Fairlanes made
it’s possible it might even be the first.
The first Fairlanes on Australian roads
were also the first Fords assembled at the
Broadmeadows plant when it opened in 1959
– before production of the first Falcon models
kicked into gear the following year. But this
particular Australian-made Fairlane never went
own the Broadmeadows line. This car was
and assembled at Ford, possibly as some
nd of Australian pre-production prototype for
e Canadian-sourced Fairlanes. Intriguingly,
was road registered before any of the actual
oduction Fairlanes were even built. The
ords show that the first production Fairlane
led off the line on August 21, 1959. But Steve
ed’s car was first registered on August 6, 15
ys earlier.
These are known facts. What’s not clear are
exact circumstances of the car’s build, and
whether or not it is the first Aussie Fairlane.
“I was told that Ford brought a few Fairlanes
out here in crates before they went into
production,” Reed says. “A guy that had found
out about the car rang me and told me there
was nine or 10 that came out here in crates. He
knew that because of the numbers on the rego
78

Former Holden Supercars driver Steve Reed these days
spends some of his weekends aboard a Ford. Reed’s
‘59 model Fairlane is a unique pre-production car which
was hand built at Ford’s then-new Broadmeadows plant.
plates – ‘you’ve got 501’, he said, ‘but I’ve seen
500 and 510’. But that’s 11 – it doesn’t add up.
Mine wasn’t one of them, but it also wasn’t one of
the production line cars. No one seems to know
where any of the other 10 are today.”
While the production line Fairlanes duly
made their way into Ford dealership new
car showrooms across the country, GZT-501
remained at Broadmeadows for the first two
years of its life, where it served as the personal
transport for one of Ford’s executives.
As the car would be used to ferry around
one of the Blue Oval’s chiefs, it ended up being
equipped with some rather special features. For
one, the engine is the 352 cubic-inch (5.8-litre)
79

As the car would be used to ferry around one of the Blue Oval’s
chiefs, it ended up being equipped with some rather special features.
For one, the engine is the 352 cubic-inch (5.8-litre) FE ‘Interceptor’
V8 straight from the Ford Thunderbird model, rather than the
smaller 332 (5.4-litre) version of the FE engine fitted to the
Australian production Fairlanes
FE ‘Interceptor’ V8 straight from the Ford
Thunderbird model, rather than the smaller 332
(5.4-litre) version of the FE engine fitted to the
Australian production Fairlanes (the FE V8 was
a new design in 1959 and was the replacement
for the old Y-Block Ford V8. It was more or less
the forerunner of the Ford 428 Big Block V8).
Like the production model Fairlanes, Reed’s car
drives through the ubiquitous Fordomatic twospeed
automatic transmission.
The original owner’s manual is still with the
car, and it includes a section explaining – in
specific detail – the procedure for driving a car
with an automatic transmission. Back in the late
1950s automatics were still something of a
rarity in Australia – it’s likely that for many new
Fairlane owners it was their first experience of
driving a car that didn’t have a manual gearbox!
“Because this was a Ford company director’s
car,” Reed says, “the story I’ve heard is that they
tried out a bunch of different stuff on it. It’s got an
electric fan rear window demister, for example –
that’s something you don’t see, on any cars.”
It’s also got an auxiliary 12-gallon fuel tank.
A big heavy car with (by standards of the day)
a huge V8 engine no doubt would have delivered
a striking fuel consumption figure. Presumably
the Fairlane’s thirst prompted the director to have
it fitted with an additional tank to prolong his time
at the wheel between visits to petrol stations.
Big was beautiful in the ‘50s, and they didn’t come
much bigger than the aptly named ‘tank’ Fairlane.
“It’s two totally separate fuel systems, with
an electric pump for the auxiliary tank, and the
manual one of the main tank.
In addition to feeding the 352 V8
Thunderbird engine, the main fuel tank also
powers… a car fridge!
Evidently the Ford chief wanted something
in which he could keep his drinks cold on those
extra-long trips made possible by the additional
fuel tank. Petrol powered fridges like the Stampco
unit mounted into the Fairlane’s boot weren’t all
that effective back in the day, and because 60
80

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years on no one is quite sure exactly how the
fridge’s electricals work, Reed has chosen not
to tempt fate and connect it up to the fuel tank…
The fridge remains in place, but for display
purposes only.
The Fairlane’s spell as a company director’s
car lasted less than two years. Even after the
Ford exec had moved onto something new (one
of the shiny new XK model Falcons which Ford
began manufacturing at the Broadmeadows
plant in 1960, we wonder?), GZT-501 remained
the property of Ford – and as a pre-production
prototype vehicle may well have been earmarked
for the crusher.
But Ford employee Alf Doherty knew about
the car and had his eye on it. After some
negotiation, Doherty was able to do a deal with
his employers to secure the car as part of his
remuneration package. Because of the company
protocol which required any Ford that left the
factory to first pass through the dealership
network the Fairlane was delivered to Ford
dealer Provincial Motors which then ‘on-sold’ it to
Doherty in November of 1961.
Alf used the car only sparingly – even 60
years on it has yet to clock up 60,000 miles
(100,000km) and for an extended period was
kept stored under cover in a garage.
Cliff, Alf’s son, remembers as children growing
up the blunt warning from their father about
the big Ford sitting in the garage and covered
by blankets: ‘touch the car and I’ll chop your
bloody fingers off!’ Alf died in 2007. The Fairlane
remained the property of his wife, Dorothy, until
she passed away in 2014. Steve Reed purchased
it from the Doherty family in 2017.
Today the car remains more or less as Alf had it.
“It’s got some non genuine gauges which I
think Alf put in the car,” Reed says. “Otherwise it’s
standard.
“I have done a couple of mechanical things
to it. The diff had a bit of a whine in it, so I fixed
that, and I’ve had both lower control arm ball
Above: Auxiliary under-dash gauges aren’t standard,
but otherwise the interior is as it left the Ford factory.
Right: As it was a Ford executive company car, the
Fairlane had a few added niceties, like additional fuel
tank and even a fridge - which ran on petrol!
joints replaced because there was a little bit of
movement there – and I want to drive the car.
I want it to be right, and there’s no way to fix a
control arm ball joint other than to replace it.”
Reed was surprised to note that the engine
was still running with its original fan belt! It has
since been changed, but the original belt remains
serviceable, and Reed has kept it as a souvenir.
Reed might be a panel beater by trade, but he
has resisted the temptation to undertake a full
or even part restoration of the Fairlane. It simply
isn’t needed.
“It’s just been buffing and polishing to get it
where it is now,” he says. “We did have trouble
getting the bootlid finish up because it was
parked under a skylight. Although the car
w s covered in blankets and tarps, it was
82

there so long that the paintwork on the bootlid
did get slightly sun affected. It’s taken a lot of
polish to bring it back.
“It’s hard to keep a car’s finish in good
condition over such a long period of time no
matter how well you store it
Dust particles get
into the chrome work,
even if you keep a
car garaged, and
without a cover the
dust collects and gets
into the paint and
starts to eat into it over
time. And the paint
technology back then
was pretty rudimentary.
“I can’t see anywhere
on the car where it’s
had an accident. I can
tell it’s had a little bit
of paint around the car
here and there – but that
could even have been
from when it was new,
because it is an acrylic
base, and it depends
where and how they painted it at the factory.”
From his years of experience in the panel
repair industry, Reed can easily spot the tell-tale
signs that show this car was not built on an
assembly line.
“When you look at some of the door seals
– see the glue? That’s all round the car. In a
normal production line process, that would be
laid by something and it would be very neat and
clean. To me, this shows how it was put together,
by hand, and not on an assembly line. When you
have a look around the car you can tell that it’s
been put together with spanners.”
So, how does the old girl drive?
“It’s really good. Really smooth. You can tell
just by driving it that it’s a very low mileage car
– it doesn’t rattle or shake. It’s nice and tight,
almost like a new car. It just cruises smoothly
down the road like a beautiful old thing.”
It was not the weekend cruiser Reed originally
had in mind but, now that he has the Fairlane, he
doesn’t think he’ll ever part with it.
“You don’t buy a car like this to sell. It’s a pretty
unique car, and I’d love to be able to verify the
story of how it was put together.
“There are a few around, some really good
ones, but they’re restored. This one is original.
I don’t think there’s another one anywhere like
this.”
83

84
ome grown
hero
Hal a century ago Holden unveiled a new 4.2-litre V8 engine.
The significance of what had been accomplished with this engine
was probably lost at a time when Holden’s hero engine was the
5.7-litre small block Chev in the Monaro GTS 350 Bathurst
challenger, and yet it ranks today among Holden’s finest
achievements: a home-grown Aussie V8 that lacked for nothing
alongside its small block Chev ‘cousin’ – which today is widely rated
as the greatest production V8 ever made. Story: Steve Normoyle

It wouldn’t happen today. Even if we were
still manufacturing cars in Australia... But
even thinking back to the simpler times of
the 1960s, it is hard to imagine exactly how
and why the powers-that-be in GM’s Detroit,
Michigan, headquarters could have green lighted
the plan of its far-flung Australian Holden brand
to develop and manufacture its own bespoke
V8 engine. Not when GM had already invented
that wheel a few years earlier with the first small
block Chev – a cast-iron V8 of around 4.6-litres
capacity, with a single camshaft and two valves
per cylinder, pushrod operated, just like Holden’s
V8 proposal.
And yet they did, after an exhaustive analysis
of the prototype Holden V8 – although in the
end it seems they only gave the project the
go-ahead after Holden’s engine design group
chief Fred James boldly informed his American
superiors that it was a fait accompli anyway: the
factory was already tooled up and ready to start
production!
The initial impetus for an Aussie V8 was
not driven by any perceived need for a V8 in
Holden’s engine armoury. Rather, it was simply
a larger capacity engine that was required. The
company’s forward planners in the early ‘60s
anticipated that to meet market trends an engine
of roughly 250 cubic-inch capacity (4.1-litre)
would be required by the end of the decade. The
newly introduced 179 ‘Red’ six was never going
to fit that bill. The only alternative was an all-new,
larger engine.
In 1964 Holden sent Fred James on a fact
finding tour of the GM family of companies in the
US and Europe. The
trip only confirmed James’ own theory that a V
configuration of more than six cylinders was the
best option for an engine of the desired size. By
comparison, big sixes tended to be unbalanced
and rough – the harshness of the existing 250
Chevy inline six was a ready example of that.
A V8 engine would be better balanced
and smoother running, shorter in height and
length and, because of the shorter crankshaft,
potentially lighter than an inline six. And the
height issue was important when it came to
styling: the inherent extra height of inline engines
limited the options for front-end design unless
they were slant mounted (as Chrysler had done
with its 3.9-litre six).
A Holden V8 engine had in fact been on the
agenda behind closed doors at least as early
as 1962. Possibly it was an idea first put by Ed
Silins, a draughtsman who had been a key figure
in the development of the 149/179 six cylinder
engine. Silins was keen on the idea of a home
grown V8; it would seem his enthusiasm rubbed
off on planning department head, American Greg
Krause, who formally proposed the concept
within the company some time in 1962.
Silins, a Latvian who had served in the
German Luftwaffe in the War before ending up in
Australia as a displaced person in 1949, would
be charged with the task of producing the initial
design discussion. Working as assistant to Fred
James, Silins would also design the prototype
Holden V8.
Silins’ proposal, submitted in early 1965,
called for an engine in capacity sizes of 237 and
263 cubic-inch, with the possibility of adding
a 289 version. He also raised the idea
aking the V8 adaptable to diesel
guration for use in trucks!
hile the diesel option fell by the
ide early on, more consideration
given to the possibility of the engine
ving in the future into overhead
configuration – for, as Silins’ report
s, ‘competition purposes’.
Of course, GM’s world ban on motor
ng was firmly in place at the time,
ch is perhaps why Silins used the
d ‘competition’ rather than ‘racing’.
lying was permitted: it was a
mpetition’, and not actual racing. In
report, Silins writes: ‘…the usage
of the engine for competition can
Brand new Holden V8 engine blocks roll down the
specially built Fishermans’ Bend plant. Fred James,
below left, led the Holden V8 programme and was the
one who had to sell the idea to GM head offi ce.
only be regarded as a prestige matter. Whether
this would help sell the standard lines is open to
contention, although Ford claims this to be the
case’.
One big factor in favour of a locally produced
engine was the Australian government’s tariff
regime which provided generous tax concessions
for locally manufactured components.
Theoretically, the economics stacked up. Even
so, that wasn’t an argument specifically in favour
of a local design: Holden presumably could have
tooled up to build the 283 Chev in Australia and
still enjoyed the government’s largess.
Any home grown V8 therefore would need to
compare more than favourably with the Chev V8
for Detroit to give it the go-ahead.
There were other considerations, though.
For one, the dimensions of the Chev made for
difficult installation in the Holden chassis from
underneath – which was Holden’s method
of assembly (known as ‘body drop’). In any
case, with the proposed HK-T-G model being
smaller than most of the equivalent V8-powered
American GM vehicles, engine bay room
in general was at a premium. The need to
accommodate ancillaries such as alternator,
starter motor, oil filter and (optional) power
steering pump and air conditioning compressor
(and ensure there was enough serviceable room
for these items) was a big consideration in the
design process. In short, the Holden engine had
to be in the same ballpark as the Chev for power,
torque and fuel economy, while also being lighter
and dimensionally smaller.
Meeting these objectives probably represented
85

500
The Holden engine had to be in the same ballpark as the Chev for power,
torque and fuel economy, while also being lighter and dimensionally smaller
the biggest challenge. To achieve the ‘body drop’
method of assembly, the engine could not be
more than 29-inches (72.5cm) wide (measured
from the exhaust manifolds). This was achieved,
the Holden ending up being 1.75cm narrower
than the 283. It was also 2cm shorter, and
significantly lighter.
The quest for weight reduction saw the Holden
design depart from normal Chev V8 practice
in several areas. The engine block itself used
new-technology thin wall casting to save weight
– this was quite an engineering achievement
at a time when GM-H (as an automotive
designer/manufacturer) had less than 20
years’ experience. The water-heated aluminium
intake manifold was quite unique; likewise the
aluminium water pump and front cover. The need
Output figures 253 v 186
to have separate oil pump and distributor drives
(so that the pump could be mounted externally)
was a particular hurdle: no less than 36 different
oil pump designs were tried before they arrived
at the final specification!
The first sketches of the proposed engine
were done in April of 1965. A little over 18 months
later the first Holden V8 prototype was fired up.
Ed Silins’ dairy notes show the valve gear was
noisy. It dynoed at 147 horsepower at 4200rpm –
around 30bhp short of the target figure.
By then, original 237 and 263 cubic-inch
engine capacity proposals had been dropped, in a
change driven by Holden’s marketing department.
Instead, the plan now called for three capacity
options: 253, 292 and 308 (the 292 option would
be shelved towards the end of 1967).
200
The 308 and 292 capacities were to be
achieved via larger cylinder bores (4.0 and
3.89-inch respectively, up from 3.6-inch for
the ‘standard’ 253), rather than by increasing
the stroke.
This was something which the Americans
picked up on in their analysis of the Holden
proposal. In Bill Steinhagen’s report from GM’s
engineering head office in Warren, Michigan,
in November of 1966, it was noted that the
Australians had made no provision to increase
engine capacity beyond 308. It was suggested
Holden consider a stroke increase from 3.06-inch
to 3.4-inch, which would allow a capacity of 342
cubic-inch. Steinhagen’s team was also critical of
the separate oil pump and distributor drives, were
of the view that the water pump design would be
B.H.P. (253)
400
160
TORQUE LB. - FT.
300
200
TORQUE (253)
120
80
BRAKE HORSE POWER
TORQUE (186)
100
40
B.H.P. (186)
0
0
0 10 20 30 40 50
86
R.P.M in HUNDREDS
ENGINE POWER - GROSS

The new Holden V8 made a spectacular public debut in
the Hurricane concept car. Graph (opposite) compares
the 253 V8 with the 186 Holden six. In the beginning
the 253 was seen as an eventual replacement for the
‘red’ six, but the early ‘70s oil crisis put paid to that.
prone to cavitation, and that the heated intake
manifold was complex and expensive to produce.
According to Fred James, there were some
270 items which came under scrutiny. “…and
I had to answer questions on each and every
one,” he was quoted by journalist (and former
Holden engineer) Graham Smith in an issue of
HSV’s Excelerate magazine.
“They wanted to know why we’d designed
them the way we had,” he told Smith, “and they
wanted to know why our way was better than the
way other divisions like Chevrolet or Oldsmobile
or Pontiac had approached the same problem.
But it was too late, we were tooled up and it
A V8 HR?
Holden’s V8 programme was a well-kept
secret. It wasn’t until the end of 1966 that
the motoring press began to have much of an
nkling that Holden had a V8 engine coming
– and even then the general assumption was
that it would be the 283 Chev.
The January 1967 issue of Australian Motor
Sports and Automobiles predicted that there
would definitely be a V8-powered Holden,
possibly even in the next few months.
The magazine noted that without a V8 to
match the offerings from Ford and Chrysler,
Holden’s (admittedly huge) market share was
n ‘dramatic decline’. And so as a stop-gap
measure before the new, larger HK model
shape came on stream, Holden’s engineers
had worked out a way to shoehorn the 283 into
the current HR model – and had successfully
tested it at the Lang Lang proving ground.
This was partly true. Holden’s engineers had
been preparing to test a 283 Chev-powered HR
Holden as long ago as late 1965 – before the
HR model had even been publicly released!
‘Shoehorn’ turned out to be an apt description
of the engine transplant, however: with the
Chev installed there wasn’t even room in the
HR’s engine bay for the battery!
A 283 Chev V8-
owered HR Holden
was a tantalising
prospect (especially,
as AMS excitedly
speculated, given
hat it might be a
xurious two-door’
oupe, created
sing imported
Opel panels grafted
nto the existing
Holden), but it was
ever seriously on
he cards. Nor was
a 253 Holden V8
ersion, for that
atter. The simple
act was that new
Holden engine was not going to be ready
during the HR’s model life. The timeline is
telling: at around the same time Holden was
experimenting with a 283 V8 HR, the decision
was taken to earmark the new Holden V8
engine for release in the upcoming HT model –
some three years away.
But as Ed Silins’ notes show, the prototype
Holden V8 was tried in a HR chassis (it was
also tried in a Falcon and Valiant chassis too
– presumably in the absence of a suitable HKsized
Holden!) Silins went for his first ride in a
253 V8-powered HR in June, ‘67, and wrote that
it ‘feels very solid’.
When the magazine sought clarification
from Holden on its future V8 plans, the official
response was that GM-H ‘will definitely NOT
be producing a V8-engined Holden in the next
12 months’ (this was true, if only just: the HK
model, which included the optional Chev 307
V8, would be released in 13 months…). The
spokesman went on to say that the company’s
policy was to include maximum Australian
content and would not consider a V8 until it
could produce one here. GM-Holden’s sixcylinder
manufacturing plant was not suitable
for V8 production, the spokesman added, and it
would cost millions to set up a plant.
Again, not false, but…

The new Holden V8 was
introduced in the HT range
alongside the existing Chev 307
and 350 options.
late in the program. In the end I had a standard
phrase I used when questioned: ‘What you
propose doesn’t perform any better, isn’t any
lighter and isn’t any cheaper than the way we’ve
done it. And what’s more, we’ve already tooled it’.
After a while they just shrugged their shoulders
and away we went.”
With the green light having been
given, production at the already tooled up
manufacturing plant in Melbourne duly swung
into action. Fittingly for such an audacious
project, the new 253 V8 made its public debut at
the 1969 Melbourne Motor Show in the stunning
Holden Hurricane concept car.
The rest, as they say, is history. The engine
went on to enjoy a 30-year lifespan, eventually
being stroked out to 344 cubic-inch (by HDT
Special Vehicles) in
the ‘80s and then to
350 by HSV in the
’90s – more or less as
Steinhagen suggested.
In competition, the
Holden V8 was hugely
successful in touring
car racing as well
as in Formula 5000,
where it was in direct
competition with the
small block Chev.
Fred James’
osing comments
his HT Holden
odel presentation
in 1 probably neatly sum up what was
achieved with the home-grown V8. He noted that
the success of the Holden V8 program showed
how it could be possible to achieve what at first
glance seems impossible:
‘It also demonstrates that the proverbial
‘blank sheet’ which might be given to design
and development engineers at the outset of a
p
opment program is very often
a straight jacket of realities.
‘It also underlines a fact that is often
overlooked or misstated, viz., that GMH
have built up a sophisticated Engineering
organization, not only capable, but also active
in creating and developing major designs,
thus making an appreciable contribution to the
technology in this country.’
Today, with Holden announcing that from now
on it will only sell imported SUVs and dual-cab
utes, it all seems just so long ago…
88

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MA/AMC 114

Muscle
My
Car
90

Jazz Desira
Car: Ford XY Fairmont
Hometown: Melbourne, VIC
91

What is it?
“It’s a November 1971 XY Fairmont, registered
in February 1972. It’s finished in Bronze Wine
duco with black trim. It originally fitted with a
6cyl engine and column-shift auto but now has
a 393 ci Cleveland.”
When did you buy it?
“I first bought the car in March 2006, I saw it for
sale on the front cover of the Auto Supermarket
magazine Issue 1000, wish I had a copy as I
have issue 1001.”
Why did you buy it?
“I had an XY Fairmont GS previously which
I sold back in 2003 once my daughter was
born. I sadly missed this car after three years,
and then I saw this Fairmont advertised which
caught my attention. I rang the owner, Jason,
and we chatted and he spoke very lightly of
the car. Back then he had many people say to
him that they were interested in coming and
they wouldn’t show up, so he thought I was one
of them. I turned up the next day as soon as I
could. When I arrived Jason took the cover off
and reversed it out of the shed – and my jaw
dropped. I couldn’t spot much rust at all, the
body was nice and straight and the paint work
was mostly original. The interior was all original
apart from the dash pad. The back seat was
like new! I drove the car and it was superb: no
vibrations, wind noise or rattles. I was in love
and bought it.”
What do you know about its history?
“It was sold new by B.S Stillwell Ford Cotham
Rd Victoria, to Mrs E.R Richardson. She owned
it for approximately 19 years and sold it to her
psychologist (Keith Adey) in September, 1991,
with approximately 79,000 miles. Keith had it
for a short time and put approximately 5,000
miles on it and sold it to his family friend Jason
Kuhnell in May 1992. In the 14 years Jason had
it, he had rebuilt the engine and transmission
(6cyl), touched up a couple of scratches, fitted
12 slotter wheels and a sports steering wheel.
He put about 80,000 miles on it, so in total I
bought it with 164,000 miles in March, 2006. I’m
the proud fourth owner and I need to beat the
record of ownership.”
How does it go?
“I built a 393 Cleveland that produces
approximately 560hp. It’s fitted to a C4 columnshift
auto transmission with a 3000rpm stall
converter, and nine-inch differential. With all the
added sound deadener it cruises nicely and has
plenty of punch when needed (Sleeper).”
Anything you’d like to add?
“In April 2013 I decided to do a full restoration.
I wanted to leave the car as it was optioned
apart from the drive train; the look I was aiming
for was a factory H code (GT-HO) Fairmont. I
spent a lot of time refurbishing everything, and
the restoration was definitely a challenge. It was
completed in September 2016.
Special thanks to Dean from Indy Kustoms
Body and Paint work, Danny Valencic helping
me install the engine and Allan Morley helping
me convert the wiring harness.”
92

Alan Bardsley
Car: Falcon FG GT
Hometown: Brisbane, QLD
What is it?
“It’s a February 2009 FG GT 5th Anniversary
edition. It’s got the 5th Anniversary logo
embossed in the headrests.”
When did you buy it?
“November 2011.”
Why did you buy it?
“I’ve been a Ford fan for a long, long time and I
was looking for a replacement FPV.”
What do you know about its history?
“It was owned by someone who did not look after
it too well in the previous two years before I saved
it. It was full of dust and the undercarriage and
exhaust was in a mess from mud and stones.
I found it in a two-bob caryard on Brisbane’s
Southside just sitting sad in the corner.”
How does it go?
“Not bad for a big barge of a car!”
Anything else you’d like to add?
“FPV chose to build the 5th Anniversary
edition in just two colours, ‘Lightning Strike’ or
‘Silhouette’. The car is identified by striping, an
exclusive decal and a special multi-spoke design
of alloy wheel in a 19-inch diameter and finished
in Alpine Silver. There were 80 ‘Lightning Strike’
examples built, 55 autos and 25 manuals, and
120 ‘Silhouette’ consisting of 76 Automatic and
44 Manual Transmission units.”
Own a roadie you’d like to see in AMC’s expanded My Muscle Car section? Send us answers to the standard
questions listed above, along with three or four good JPG images no less than 1mb each. Also include a shot
of yourself with your car. Preference given to Aussie-built cars (or imported cars with an Australian connection) in
factory spec and contributions provided using punctuation! Email to amceditorial@chevron.com.au

Brian
For pioneers of Australian drag racing in the late ‘50s such as Brian
Keegan, there was no how-to manual, and almost nothing in the
way of an aftermarket hot-up industry to turn to. Anyone looking
for serious performance improvements in those days usually had no
choice but to do it themselves. But that suited Keegan just fine – for
him, it was not so much about beating his opponent, but rather the
challenge of making or modifying something to make the car faster.
94

Before there was drag racing there were
hillclimbs, sprints, flying eighths, circuit
events and a whole range of activities
that were designed to satisfy every
young man’s desire to go fast and have
fun with cars. Except that at some level they
missed the bullseye for some young enthusiasts,
who wanted to experience the whole gamut of
automotive alternatives. In the late 1950s that
included a generation that was growing up
on movies from Hollywood, the first television
images, and magazines aimed at a youthful
passion for modifying cheap old cars of the
past. The rapidly growing traditions within
this generation were taking their cues from
America rather than Britain, and that meant hot
rods, leather jackets, V8 engines and the new
motorsport of drag racing.
In central western NSW a young car-crazy kid
by the name of Brian Keegan was just such a
candidate. He came from a motor related family,
with a father – Ted – a panel beater with an acute
ability to diagnose and fix a mechanical problem.
He’d bring cars home to the Keegan house and
say he knew this car could go faster and
overnight would manufacture something
like an intake manifold or some other
component. By the morning or the
end of a weekend it would be running
sweetly.
Brian, as the eldest son, would
watch and learn, taking on board the sort of
do attitude that would make a huge difference
to his own future – although in his later years he
would express regret that he didn’t listen enough
or show his father his due respect.
In a magazine interview shortly before his
death Brian would say, “I loved things that were
neat and tidy and went like all hell. That’s all I
can put it down to. I loved making things; that’s
why I was making all those parts for people:
manifolds, wheels, gearbox adaptors, gearshifts.”
That passion for going fast expressed itself in a
string of rebuilt gear, all designed to help himself
and others go fast. In a world where you couldn’t
buy much in the way of performance equipment,
he manufactured his own rack-and-pinion
steering, wheels, twin-plate clutches and even
Above: Ford V8 Special was just one of numerous wild
and wonderful machines drag racing pioneer Brian
Keegan put together.
carburettors. His reputation spread rapidly and he
began to attract a steady stream of customers.
The point was that this stuff all worked. The
clutches ‘rattled and banged’ but they did the
job when there was nothing else available. “The
wheels were a big attraction to many people,” he
commented. “I used to cut out my own centres,
cut the rims and put a spacer in them, balanced
them and had them checked for air leaks. I
made 150 to 200 sets of wheels over the years
and they’re still on a couple of cars running
at Bathurst today. They were all steel but they
looked like mag wheels.”
95

This was all in the days before rotary files.
Every single wheel was hand filed to finish.
Brian had begun flexing his racing abilities in
karts but recalled a major influence as being a
good friend of his father’s. George Reed was a
motor racer of long standing, having begun his
career in 1932. He was well known as the builder
of the much respected Skate Series of cars, one
of which won the 1951 Australian Grand Prix
with side-valve Ford V8 power. That car became
known as the SoCal Special and was a very
successful vehicle for drivers Warwick Pratley
and Frank Walters.
But Reed was different from many of his
peers, and he had a strong belief that there was
‘no substitute for ccs’. “There’s no easier way to
tune a car than by blower pressure,” he is quoted
as saying. This was a drag racer just waiting to
happen.
Brian continued to maintain
the contact with Reed after Ted Keegan passed
away, and absorbed many of his mentor’s ideas.
Soon they were dabbling in race cars together,
most notably with a ‘sports car’ in 1958 that
was initially just a chassis with a driveline and
suspension but was later improved with the
addition of steel bodywork. The car was locally
successful at hillclimb events and in sprints, and
at Parkes ran the quarter mile in 15.8 seconds.
Its engine was a Customline V8 which came
from a burnt out 1934 Ford which Brian found
in a paddock near Molong. He’d retrieved the
motor after a suggestion from Reed to look for
an engine that had been out in the weather
and/or been in a fire, as the block would have
hardened up. It was, however, in pretty bad
shape: the carburettor had melted, the crank
was discoloured from the heat, the rings and
bearings had melted. But with a bit of loving care
and a lot of time the pair got it going again and
er trials with a carburettor Reed imposed his
Like some kind of mad scientist, Keegan shows off
his home-built supercharged Ford V8 powered Gnoo-
Blas quarter mile sprint dragster in 1959.
theories with the application of a small Marshall
Nordic supercharger.
Then in 1959 the Orange Light Car Club
announced plans for a standing quarter mile
sprint at the Gnoo Blas circuit in August. In mid-
July the pair was perusing a copy of American
Hot Rod magazine when the decision was
reached to build a dragster and take on this
standing quarter mile activity seriously.
There was little available time, but by working
around the clock and lots of looking at pictures
in magazines they had their car finished at
5am on race morning. The chassis was formed
from two cut up Model A frames. The front end
was a lightweight affair with a beam axle and
transverse spring and Prefect wheels drilled out
for lightness. A Morris 8/40 steering box gave it
direction and with a front track of 56 inches and
rear track of 38 inches it looked pretty good.
The rear wheels were 16-inch Ford rims,
widened to six inches and fitted with Dunlop R5
racing tyres, which cost a hefty £48 each (the
equivalent of $750 each today) and which it was
found were good for ‘only’ 40 runs. Brakes were
off a 1939 Ford.
The engine was the Ford V8 from the sports
car, with its Nordic blower battling with twin
carburettors. Over the years it all varied greatly.
The twin carbs were replaced with four dualthroat
Strombergs and a 6-71 supercharger,
providing 22 pounds of boost, just like the
Americans used, and ultimately it ran with eight
carbs and a Vertex magneto. At times the blower
sat on top of the motor and was driven by dual
chains off a front mounted pair of cogs, and at
other times it was in front, driven directly off the
crankshaft.
All the manifolding was made by Brian.
They tried using the standard Ford fuel
ump but when it proved not up to the task
96

they fitted two Austin A90 fuel pumps blowing air
into the fuel tank to pressurise it and force fuel up
to the carburettors.
At its debut the car ran a full radiator but it
became obvious that this wasn’t needed and a
length of copper tube was substituted to join the
water jackets on the heads.
It was estimated that the engine initially made
250 horsepower, pushing along the ‘13cwt’
(655kg) vehicle.
In reality it was way more power than the car
could rightly use on the rough and unprepared
racing surfaces of the day.
Yet despite a power output that was well
short of what you might expect from even many
manufactured vehicles today, and the car’s
relatively light weight and the poor traction
available, the driveline remained the car’s weak
point. The clutch was cobbled together from an
International truck pressure plate and a Cadillac
clutch plate (gearbox was a 1939 Cadillac
three-speed) with imported linings. The clutch
struggled to last more than a meeting at any time
and cost £38 to rebuild each time.
And if the clutch lived that meant that the rear
axles probably didn’t. They found early on that a
broken axle usually meant the car shed a rear
wheel, so they converted it to fully floating hubs.
At one Orange sprint meet the car sheered one
axle about 40 metres off the start line, throwing
the drive to the other axle which then sheered.
Brian let it coast to the finish line and it still
scored quickest time of the day.
The whole car was an example of adaptation.
The car was notable for its use of large hubcaps
which covered the whole outer face of each
wheel. These were created from copper lids.
For those under the age of, oh, 70, it should
be explained that before 1960 a copper was a
large tub in which water was boiled for washing.
Brian was poking around
the scrap section behind the
local Email (not the digital
communications!) factory at
Orange when he found a lid.
He took it home as a water
bowl for the dog, but the pup
found it too big to use. It kicked
around the yard until one day
Brian decided it would make
a perfect hubcap, so he went
back and swiped three more.
At that first meeting at Gnoo Blas the dragster
– the third to be built in the nation and just a
couple of months behind the first two – made
quite a hit. A magazine report from the time said:
… the strange looking car aroused great
interest. The crowd fell silent as Keegan edged
it up to the starting line. He got the ‘course clear’
signal and, with the car in second gear, let in
the clutch. The monster took off with a scream of
tortured rubber, leaving behind a cloud of blue
smoke from the tyres.
Just 13.5 seconds later the car was crossing
the finishing line a quarter of a mile away at
more than 100mph. But as Keegan eased
his foot from the accelerator a steering arm
shook loose. The car veered across the track,
almost hit a police sergeant in charge of safety
arrangements, and skidded sideways before
Keegan could stop it.
Keegan got out shaking, as white as a sheet.
“It scared the heck out of me,” he said later. “I
was trembling for a week after. But we fixed the
steering arm and I was coaxed back into the
cockpit for another run. The car behaved better
the second time and I realised what enormous
potential it had.”
The dragster’s best at that maiden outing
was a 14.43, not too far short of the outright
Australian record of 13.56, held by Len Lukey
and matched at that same meeting by Jack
Myers in his WM Cooper Special. Myers
predicted after that meeting that soon the
Keegan and Reed car would ‘only be beaten by
a miracle’.
That adrenalin pumping moment at Gnoo Blas
was to set a pattern for this car over the next six
years, as its power and performance potential
continued to climb but the race venues remained
pretty rough around the edges. Brian and Reed
were pushing through boundaries that nobody
had even known existed a few years before.
Many of the venues were simply sections
of closed public road, that weren’t necessarily
well closed, at places like Wellington, Parkes,
Orange, Dubbo and Cowra. At a sprint event at
Parkes one weekend a spectator who left early
tootled out onto the shut-down end of the straight
just as Brian came barreling down. He had to
slam the brakes on so hard that it locked up the
clutch and damaged the blower; the unwitting fan
just drove off.
On another occasion an errant cow being
herded by a farmer along this same Parkes road
got Brian’s heart really pumping. The road was
narrow enough to just allow both front wheels
to remain on the asphalt, there were bushes

growing right up to the edges and there was
little room to maneuver. Somehow Brian
managed to get around them.
At Mount Panorama sprint events were
frequently held on Conrod Straight. Going over
the hump at 120mph was bad enough as the
prevailing winds tended to push the dragster
to the right (to assist here, previous runners
would park their cars along the left side of the
track to create a wind barrier). However, one
day things got much worse when an elderly gent
drove around the barriers and onto the circuit
just as Brian came over the top of the hump at
full throttle.
“He was parked half on and half off the
roadway,” Brian stated in a magazine article
soon after, “with just a narrow space between his
car and the competitors. As soon as I saw him
I braked but I didn’t stand a chance on Earth of
stopping in time. The car skidded but I managed
to get it back on an even keel. I pointed those
wide front wheels at the gap between the cars
and prayed they’d fit. They just did. I stopped
further down the track and came back to the old
gent, who was sitting in his car with his face as
white as a sheet. I wanted to really bawl him out,
but when I opened my mouth I was so angry the
words just wouldn’t come.
“I went back and sat on the front wheel of the
dragster for 10 minutes before I could move.”
Understandably, event organisers began
making special preparations whenever they
saw Brian’s and Reed’s names on the entry
list. At one NSW Sprint Championships held at
the Castlereagh track they
cleared a special path through the scrub at the
end of the track to provide extra stopping room
for the dragster. But on one run the car veered
off course and hit a drain, the blow from the roll
cage hitting Brian’s helmet knocked him out long
enough for the car to knock down two trees and
become wedged between two others.
Despite these obstacles the car’s elapsed
times soon started to come down. Three months
after its debut the dragster went to a 13.27
second time at Gnoo Blas for an unofficial
Australian quarter mile record, and in May
1960, at the second drag race staged at the
Castlereagh track by the ARDC it made it all
official with a knockout 12.56.
In the ‘60s Keegan started developing early Holdens.
With triple Webers and Waggott 12-port cylinder head
on a 179 Holden six bored out to 208, ‘Keegan’s Custom’
was one of Australia’s fastest ever Humpy Holdens.
At the 1960 Sprint Championships Brian and
Reed lost out on averages (times were averaged
over two runs in opposite directions) to Ray
Walmsley’s Corvette-engined dragster. Walmsley
had a best two-way average of 12.18 to Brian’s
12.20, but Walmsley’s one-way best was 11.86
and Brian’s was 11.81, giving him the drag racing
credentials.
In 1961 Brian ran times of 11.68 and 11.84 for
a two-way figure of 11.75, a new record and 1.75
seconds quicker than the nearest competitor.
The car continued to evolve. Brian went from
sitting on top of the diff to sitting behind it, and
then in 1962 to a brief version
with the engine behind him. Its
ppearance garnered it the label
f ‘The Monster’. In this guise

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it proved to be almost undriveable and after
four events they pulled the pin on the idea and
went back to a completely rebuilt front-engined
dragster with a full body. In this format it ran its
best ever at 11.48 seconds, not long before they
sold the car in mid-1965.
Brian had always been a keen hillclimb
participant, and decided to get back to that
activity to satisfy his taste for speed. He took to
it with his street-driven FJ Holden. It was lowered
two inches, had the standard custom features
such as moulded guards, lost its external
chrome trim, extended and lowered bonnet and
customised grille. But having dipped his toe in
quarter mile competition Brian was only away
from it for six months after deciding to give the
Humpy a shot at sprints and flying eighth-mile
events.
Initially the grunt came from a George Reedprepared
Grey Holden six, backed up by a Riley
four-speed gearbox. This had been enough to
push the car around quite satisfactorily on the
street and provided plenty of fun on the local
hillclimb venues but was a bit short on legs for
the quarter mile. Organised drag racing was
now well underway, with a permanent home at
Castlereagh, on Sydney’s far western fringe.
On the quarter mile success is not just
measured by the win light, but also by
elapsed times and speeds, measured down
to hundredths of a second and mile per hour.
Even when losing a race an improved ET can
be a personal win, and every gram of weight,
every fraction of a horsepower can be a step to
personal satisfaction.
The body was stripped of anything deemed
superfluous. The door skins and boot lid were
fashioned from aluminium, the bonnet and front
guards from fiberglass. The grille was a flimsy
alloy mesh and only one door – the driver’s –
retained a handle, and that was drilled out to
reduce weight. All windows and the windscreen
were replaced by Perspex. Inside the only
furniture was the lightweight driver’s seat, with a
simple aluminium dash holding just a tacho and
an oil pressure gauge.
The Grey six was swapped for a 179 Red
motor, set back in the chassis by eight inches
and lowered by two inches,
which necessitated cutting
the firewall. The block was
bored out and the crank had
a quarter-inch stroke, boosting
capacity to 208 cubic inches
(3.4-litres). The radical 12-port
cylinder head came from
Ken Waggott’s workshop, as
did the cam, and Brian built
the extractors and the intake
manifold for the triple 45mm
Webers. The cooling system
remained standard, though the
fan had every second blade
removed. The ignition was highly
modified Holden gear, with 28
degrees advance. It redlined at
8200rpm on methanol. The output
was estimated at 220hp, almost
as much as the blown V8 in
Brian’s dragster.
The flywheel was lightened for
more rapid throttle response and
the 179 three-speed gearbox use
in first (to 7000rpm and 85mph) and second
gears (8000rpm and 125mph) with the 3.36
Holden limited slip diff. Top gear was retained for
events such as flying eighths, where it was later
clocked at 128mph.
The rubber hit the road with a set of 13x10-
inch Keegan rims with Firestone, Avon or
Dunlop racing tyres, though Brian continued
to experiment with different compounds and
pressures. These were the days when track
preparation involved a sweep with a broom
before the meeting started – traction was never
in bulk supply. Without slicks Brian was often
giving away up to six car lengths off the start
but the power and lightweight soon proved their
worth.
As a race ready machine the car, tagged
‘Keegan’s Kustom’, weighed 790kg with a 60/40
percent front/rear distribution.
It didn’t take long before Brian was back on
top, and in July 1968 the FJ became the first
Holden in the nation to run a 13-second time

with a string of runs at 13.99, 13.97 and 13.90
seconds and a best speed of 104mph at that
year’s Mr Holden tournaments. Brian didn’t win
any trophies, but he still went home smiling,
driving the 254km in the same car he’d raced
with a $50 cheque in his pocket.
Brian also used to lay claim to the first 15- and
first 14-second Holden times, but nobody kept
those sorts of records in those days so we are
unable to verify it.
Then the FJ was sold – minus engine and
driveline – and replaced an even lighter 48-
215 shell. With the floor and firewall done in
aluminium, the new ‘Kustom’ Humpy weighed a
mere 650kg.
The new car, finished in a bright green
metalflake paint scheme, charged to a 12.91s
pass at its first outing in November, 1968, adding
the scalp of the first Holden into the 12-second
zone to Brian’s credentials, still on the road
racing rubber.
In 1969 it all seemed to come together for
Brian. The fruits of success dangled before him
and, in some ways, overwhelmed him.
Like all good race cars his Holdens never
remained static. Every race meeting was an
excuse to try a new idea. Every long drive from
Orange to Castlereagh or wherever he raced
was a time to mull over new ideas to squeeze an
extra jot of power, a mite of traction. Though the
car was still basically new, Brian removed the
hefty Holden front crossmember and replaced it
with a transverse leaf spring and the beam axle
from his hillclimber.
Then, out of the blue came on offer to
compete at the National Hot Rod Association’s
gigantic US Nationals at Indianapolis, in the USA.
The NHRA had contacted a local magazine,
which nominated Brian. The Americans offered
to pay a third of the costs and he had to come up
with the balance. He didn’t have access to
that sort if cash, but rounded up sponsors to
cover the gap. The dosh was handed over to
a local agent, who pocketed the money and
did a runner. When Brian got to the wharf
he found there was no booking for him and
no money to pay for it. The whole deal fell
through.
Track promoters, ever on the lookout
for headliners to draw in the spectators,
began to offer match race opportunities. In
March the opponent was Bert Needham
at the wheel of his 426 cubic Plymouth
Ramcharger, and Brian won two out of
three in the heads-up contest.
In October of that year, readers of Rodsports
magazine voted Brian as one half of the match
race they most wanted to see, asking to see him
pitted against young up and comer Ron Harrop
from Victoria.
The fans got what they asked for, but the
‘Kustom’s’ traction shortfall cost it plenty and
Brian went home from two race events with lots
of broken parts.
Through until mid-1970 Brian’s FX was a
feature runner, but after younger brother Peter
put it in the shade with his supercharged VW
(which Brian helped build), and with breakages
mounting, it became plain that the car was at its
limit.
Brian had taken his car to a Sydney dyno
shop which had promised him an extra 25hp,
but after picking it up he found the car would
barely get off the line. What had been a smoothly
running screamer was now banging and
coughing. Back in the pits a young guy began
talking to Brian, leaning on the front guards and
staring at his creation in frustration. Brian told
him, “If someone came along now with $500 I’d
sell it.” When the guy reappeared later with $500
cash Brian handed it over, minus engine and
gearbox, and walked away from drag racing.
Brian decided to go back to hillclimbs. He built
an open wheeler with a Holden six and gearbox
and Datsun 1600 rear end, known colloquially as
‘The Tractor’ because of its agricultural rollcage.
This was replaced with two more sophisticated
monocoque open wheelers, with blown Ford twolitre
and blown and unblown 302 V8 power.
These cars brought Brian state and national
hillclimb titles and lots of pleasure up until he
gave it away at age 78. He’d attended a handful
of nostalgia drag racing events but found they
just didn’t match with his memory of the ‘old
days’.
So what happened to those old cars that Brian
built and raced? The dragster was sold on to
racer Paul Graham who ran it with a Studebaker
engine for a while. It turned up a few years ago in
the hands of speedway collector Brian Linnigan.
From there it was purchased by a trio of old time
racers in Orange who are in the process of a full
restoration.
A Holden-powered dragster which Brian had
also flirted with for three months in 1969, using
the motor from his FX, was rediscovered by
101

Pushing Harrop
Drag racing in Australia grew up on
48-215 and FJ Holdens, as much as
American drag racing grew up on model
T Fords: they were both plentiful, cheap,
lighter than later model sedans and easily
modified. They provided a foundation for
those who would one day become giants in
their sport.
Brian Keegan chose an FJ for his step
back into racing in 1968 because of those
very qualities. His return to the quarter mile
came at a special time, when there was
plenty of scope to flex your muscles in the old
‘Humpies’ before there were too many V8s on
the Australian racing scene.
While drag racing was growing rapidly in
NSW at the time, after the establishment of
the Castlereagh track, it was doing even better
in Victoria, the main core of quarter mile sport
since the late ‘50s.
After the establishment of drag racing at
Calder and the closure of the old Riverside
track in inner
far from his home. It had been used for rounding
up sheep until a front wheel had been knocked
off and was hanging on the wall in a shed.
Plainly the owner didn’t want it, but when Brian
expressed an interest in buying it back, and the
owner discovered a new-found enthusiasm for
restoring it that could only be pacified by a very
large sum of money, Brian suggested where the
owner might like to put the car.
That famous FX eventually found its way to
two Sydney racers who slowly went through
a long and varied career, Keeghan was still
ilding cars for, and competing, in hillclimbs
to his late 70s.
he process of rebuilding it to make it
nto a more modern race car. But when
Castlereagh closed in 1984 (and with no
eplacement on the horizon), they sold
off what they could and took the rest to
the tip.
Brian was, over the years, involved in
some way with just about every form of
cing except rallying – which he disliked
because he saw it as just a way to beat up a car.
Hillclimbs and drag racing were his first loves
and in them he found his true love of making or
modifying something and seeing it go faster. For
him it wasn’t so much a game of competing with
another racer as it was competing with himself,
being handed an improved lap time, a faster
speed, a direct reflection of his ability to make a
car go faster.
Brian Keegan passed away in August 2015,
aged 82 years.
102

Melbourne, the sport began to attract a new
group of racers, amongst which was a young
Ron Harrop. This was a guy who had earned
his stripes, as had so many before him, in street
racing, and then took his skills and his tough EH
to the race track.
In March 1969 he ran up against the Moore
brothers’ Humpy at a Calder race and had to
watch them run six-tenths quicker. When he
enquired about their performance secrets they
advised Harrop to get an FJ and he too could
reap success. He bought a 1955 FJ Holden from
Norm Beechey for $29, spent $1300 on tricking it
up and in April ran a debut 13.42 second best, in
C/MP (C/Modified Production) class, an amazing
1.167 seconds under the then national record. In
quarter mile terms that’s a huge margin.
That still left him well behind Brian’s
best, albeit that he was running under Gas
classification, which allowed him extra engine
setback, lighter weight panels (aluminium and/or
fiberglass) and other performance advantages. In
November 1968 Keegan had run that sensational
12.91 at a time when Harrop wasn’t even on the
radar at 14.03 seconds in his EH.
When Harrop debuted his ‘Howler’ FJ with that
13.42 the next April Brian was down to 12.78
seconds. On July 6 Harrop improved to a 13.02
and his presence was certainly noted. Two weeks
later he wrapped up a Senior Division win at the
annual Mr Holden tournament in Sydney with a
12.88 and the gap to Brian had closed despite
the latter’s improvement to 12.75.
That was when Brian suddenly took a
tangential move in a totally different direction as
he mucked around with a small dragster fitted
with the engine from the FJ, running his own
game while Harrop retained his focus with his
Howler. Brian went back to the FJ for the 1969
Nationals and upped his game to a great 12.58
under C/Altered regs,
which gave him even more
leeway on modifications
than before. Harrop had
run a 12.72 at Calder on
October 5, and then for
the first time trumped
Brian’s best with a 12.49
in winning the Nationals’
Street Eliminator category.
That month the
magazine poll appeared
nominating the most
desired match race as
Brian versus Harrop, and
no promoter was going to
turn his nose up at that
prefabricated headline. The first of these was
organised for Castlereagh in December, but not
before Harrop tightened the screws a tad with a
12.32 at Calder.
Harrop had long worked out the advantage
of slicks and Brian was still trying to better the
game on road racing rubber. In that head-tohead
best of five contest it was traction that
played the biggest role, with Brian often giving
up a car length at the start on every pass and
despite side-by-side 12-second passes – when
not a single run at that level had been seen
anywhere in the nation only a year before – the
tournament went to Harrop four to zip.
The last pairing gave a hint that the limitations
of Brian’s set-up were to be a problem in pushing
the boundaries any further. Realising that
traction was an issue Brian borrowed a set of
slicks from a dragster racer but suddenly had so
much traction that both axles and the diff broke.
Two weeks later the pair were back at it at
Calder, but this time the whole process came to
an even more abrupt halt for Brian. He arrived
late at the track and was hustled to make the
first race, and missed even starting the car to
warm the engine. Half way down the track in the
second race Brian’s engine quit catastrophically.
Harrop cleaned up with a bunch of
12.4-second times.
Brian was at his limit, financially and in
terms of performance, and had to watch Harrop
continue to ease ahead to a 12.31, then a 12.05,
an 11.97, 11.89 and a best of 11.84 before Bob
Jane’s 1972 decision to put drag racing at Calder
and, in effect, in Victoria, on ice by refusing to
have truck with the sport’s sanctioning body for
another two years. That put an end to Harrop’s
quarter mile life.
By then Brian had been out of it for two
years, and the once great motivation to push
six-cylinder Holden sedan performance had
moved on. Brian had other fish to fry and had,
in essence, always been running his own race,
always happiest when he was setting himself
targets and beating them, with incidental
victories over others being mere collateral.

Slot car
addiction
with Brett Jurmann
Wild horses
It’s time to tackle another build project, and
lately I’ve been thinking about the first race
meeting I ever attended. As it happens, it
was a real classic: the 1970 Easter meeting
at Bathurst, where Norm Beechey’s Monaro
trounced the Mustangs of Bob Jane, Allan Moffat
and Pete Geoghegan. It is a tease of a memory,
because I now know it was a noteworthy
occasion, but at the time I was only eight years
old... I don’t recall much about it apart from shiny,
noisy, fast race cars. But building one from that
bunch is a no-brainer as far as this column goes.
The Monaro was not really an option unless
I went with a fragile resin body shell, and I’ve
already done the Moffat Mustang. So this time
around I thought I’d tackle Pete Geoghegan’s
’67 Mustang. It was a fairly straightforward
build, made easier by the Pioneer notchback
Mustangs, and the bounty of reference material
available way back in issue #28 of AMC.
Once again, half the fun of these builds for me
is the research, although the AMC article made
it fairly straightforward. The first thing I picked
up on is that the exterior of Big Pete’s Mustang
GTA went through various incarnations in its
long life. Unlike the Jane and Moffat Mustangs,
it started its life as a road going car, a 289 GT
with automatic, hence the GT fuel cap and ‘GTA’
moniker. As it got older, Pete’s mechanics tried to
get rid of unnecessary weight and removed the
bumper over-riders and front grille Pony emblem.
Much later when the rules were relaxed, the
guards were flared a little and then chopped fairly
radically. So there were multiple configurations
from which to select.
The second thing I quickly became aware of
was that of the multiple Mustang releases by
Pioneer, only two of them were ’67 notchbacks:
the Parnelli Jones Shelby car, and the Kode Key
racer of Bob Barker. This was good and bad
– good in that the Pioneer model included the
rear quarter panel bezels that indicate a ’67, but
bad in that these are old releases and no longer
on sale through retailers. Sharp readers might
remember though, I managed to pick one up for
a reasonable price at the Scalextric Club swap
meet last year.
I got hold of as many photos of the race
car as I could. The bezels were a big tick, and
five spoke wheels, the lack of a front grill and
flares were also a handy match. However the
Trans Am boot lid fuel filler would have to go,
and I would need to find a ‘GT’ fuel filler to
go between the tail lights, and some chrome
bumpers. More demanding would be the Allan
Standfield-made aluminium scoops for the front
brakes. Naturally the decals would come from
Patto’s, but I would have to put the ‘Big’ into
‘Pete’ for the driver figure.
Pioneer slot cars are great runners, so the
running gear was left mostly alone – just a quick
once-over to make sure it was as it should be. As
Pete was a noted Firestone user, the ‘Goodyear’
tyre branding had to be removed. They are only
branded on one side, so I simply turned them
104

around. Similarly, Pete ran with the exhaust
exiting on the passenger side, so I turned the
Pioneer one around and stuck it under the
passenger side.
Next came the body, which needed a respray
in white, so it was put in a bath of metho to
soften the paint and then scrubbed with a
toothbrush. When it was clean, I plugged up the
hole in the boot and used filler to smooth it flat.
Final preparation came with some wet sanding
to remove any remaining debris and give the
surface some bite for the first coat. Again when
clean and dry, I laid down some Tamiya primer
and then Humbrol enamel paint. I’ve heard so
many stories of good paint jobs turning bad, so I
always leave plenty of time between these paint
stages for the solvent to gas out.
Once the decals and clear coat were applied,
it was time to start the assembly. Luck was on
my side for some bits. In my collection of stuff,
I had some unused bumpers from a previous
Pioneer Mustang white kit and a GT fuel filler left
over from an old Carrera fastback Mustang.
Then I turned to the front brake ducts, that
I was considering making from brass hobby
sheet. This can be a bit fiddly, and I got hold of
a brass folder specially for the task. While I was
procrastinating about it, I noticed the Carrera
Mustang also had some side scoops that would
be just the ticket. The ducts added a nice touch,
something unique to Pete’s car.
To finish it off I needed a suitable driver
figure – in most photos the bulk of Pete really
shows. I decided to find an oversized figure
and added a head from Immense Miniatures, a
specialist slot modelling company from Texas.
The owners, Marc and Heidi Tyler started
off making animatronic animal puppets for
Hollywood movies such as Gremlins, but CGI
put an end to their business. With the advent of
3D scanning and printing, they put their skills to
work making these accurate scale miniatures of
famous racing figures.
I ordered a Jack Brabham driver helmet set
and the biggest figure I could find – F1 team
owner John Cooper. The quality of the pieces
that arrived from Immense Miniatures was
outstanding, however they still didn’t seem to
convey Pete’s bulk.
Then I remembered a spare driver figure
from an old Scalextric Ferrari P4. In the
hobby these were disparagingly known as ‘Mr
Blobby’, but as you can see in the photos, it
made a much better head for Pete. I used a
piece of cotton make-up pad and superglue
to make fireproof facemask and covered it in
acrylic paint. With a piece of plastic wedged
underneath to boost him higher in the seat,
Pete now looks suitably in command of his
wild steed. At least that’s how I saw him 50
years ago.
105

Punter
Pics
Mal Trull
With the 2019 Repco Round Oz Retrial having got
underway from the Melbourne Showgrounds, these
images taken by Mal before the original ’79 event at that
location caught our eye. He writes: “I was converting
some of my old slides to digital when I came across
some old pics. They may not be any good for the mag but
have a look anyway.” Mal, your shots of the more obscure
Round Oz vehicles are plenty good enough! Mal says he
was there helping out with the Ross Nielson HQ Holden.
If only Nielsen, Russel Tyrie and Jim Stewart knew what
lay ahead for themselves and their shiny green HQ.
First they succumbed to the boggy roads in the
opening days, taking shortcuts and skipping controls
into Adelaide to stay with the field. Then Tyrie
became ill and was admitted to Broken Hill hospital
with appendicitis. He insisted the other two soldier
on, which they did as best they could, but only
completing a fraction of the official stages on time as
they did a rough circumnavigation of the continent.
Yet they struggled onto the finish and were
106

Brian McIvor
When Brian got married back in 1975 he was
told by his new bride’s family that his in-laws
had once owned a Falcon that had starred in the
Homicide TV series. “Seeing that years had passed
since my mother- and father-in-law had sold it, I did
not give it another thought,” Brian explains. “Recently
when they both passed on we were going through
a box of old slides and photos and, lo-and-behold,
there were some pictures of the car. The fi rst shows
my future wife, aged about 10 on the left, with some
of her friends. The second picture is a cut-out from
the Mirboo North local paper of the day. The third is of
the car and van hooked up for holidays while the last
one is a picture of the car at some lookout interstate.
thought this may be of interest.”
Send us your own snaps for a chance to win
We are after readers’ own pre-1990 road and racing shots.
Please supply some details to go with your photo (who, where, when).
JPG image files should be no less than 1mb in size.
y email: amceditorial@chevron.com.au
Snail mail: Punters Pics, Chevron Publishing Group,
ocked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590

Mini
Muscle
with Bruce Moxon
Last issue I talked about Mustang models,
briefly. Okay, a lot. And here I go again.
But why not? There’s a lot going on with
Mustangs right now: there’s Ford Australia’s
exciting new supercharged R-Spec, and now
the also-supercharged (and even more exciting)
Dick Johnson Mustang. And just recently, too,
the Bullitt Mustang (the real one, used in the film
starring Steve McQueen) sold for an obscene
amount of money.
So if, like me, you were just a few million short
of having the winning bid for the McQueen movie
Mustang (nor could I afford a new Dicky J ‘Stang,
although that’s a moot point anyway as I believe
all 30 were sold pretty much straight away),
maybe you feel the need to console yourself with
a scale model?
The good news
s, there seem to be
ots of them around.
As you’d expect. This
car and as we saw
last time, ea ly everyone likes a Mustang, even
rusted-on Holden types. Looking at our favourite
on-line auction site, we found heaps. 1:18, 1:24
kits, 1:64, even a 1:18 kit. At least one even came
with a little McQueen model.
Over the page, in our new releases section,
is a bit of news about the 1983 VH Commodore
from the ATCC. Which got me thinking… I guess
a model we’re unlikely to ever see is the Nissan
Bluebird. Oh, don’t get me wrong; that same visit
to Ebay found me lots of Bluebirds. Mostly the
P510 model, sold here as the 1600. A fine car, but
not the later Bluebird. Aoshima, for one, make a
model of almost the right Bluebird, but it’s firstly a
two-door and secondly from the Japanese Super
Silhouette racing – got lots of big flared guards
and a massive wing. So no.
Maybe, just maybe, Trax will bring us a Bluebird
road car, which someone with mad skills can turn
into the Group C racer. Geoff Wood, I’m looking at
you… Speaking of Geoff – if you haven’t already,
check out some of his latest work in the breakout.
And Geoff getting in touch set off a train of
thought. The new S5000 cars are big and noisy
and exciting and I’m sure I’m not the only one
who’d enjoy a model or two of them. But that train
was quickly derailed by one model maker telling
that there would never, ever be models of S5000
cars. Hmmm.
I suspect it’s because our market is too small
to support the massive cost of tooling up for
them. Although, I’m sure a smaller scale would be
feasible, if you could get enough people to pre-pay.
Geoffrey’s at it again
AMC’s favourite model maker sent us
some pictures of a recent project. Classic
Carlectables made a few Formula 5000 models
a while back. They’re lovely models – I spent
some of my own money on one (which if you
108

Another Christmas has passed us by and again,
my family organised for Santa to bring me the
most recent Hallmark Keepsake classic American
Car. This time it’s the 1970 Ford Torino Cobra. As
in previous years, the model’s nicely fi nished,
with a wrapped present, this time on the front
passenger seat, and a bloody great hoop in the
roof for hanging it from a tree or a skyhook. I’ve
been collecting these for the last 20 years or so
– missed out on one or two and don’t have any of
the ones from before I started. I’m not obsessing
over them, but any I get I enjoy. At some point I
might drag them all out and decorate a Christmas
tree just with the Hallmark cars. Will be quite a
sight, I imagine!
know me, tells how impressed I was). These
models were released between 2012 and 2014
– there were three Lola T332s (two Warwick
Browns and one Alan Jones) and two Matiches
– a Frank Matich and a John Goss – both cars
being Australian Grand Prix winners.
Anyway, Geoff Wood sent us pictures of Bruce
Allison’s T332. Bruce was a great talent who, like
Warwick Brown, probably retired too soon. I’m
guessing this model was for Bruce himself but
Geoff’s very discrete and didn’t blab.
Geoff told us that it was a ‘bugger of a task’
getting the distinctive Hobby and Toyland livery
right on the Allison Lola:
“Initially l thought it was simply a jet black livery.
However, when researching in detail l discovered
it was actually draped in multiple red pin striping
complete with ‘truckie’ style artistic swirls! A
beautiful looking machine but geez... a nightmare
for this model maker!
“My only option was to hand-cut the striping
in vinyl & apply by hand, barely a quarter of a
millimetre in width! The swirls l created in art
studio and printed them as a decal.
“This tested my skills far more than they had
been for quite a number of years and I’m both
relieved (& lucky!) that my hands and eyes are still
up to the job.”
Take a look at these superb images and just
think about how difficult that must have been! I’m
sure you’ll agree his efforts were not wasted.
109

HOLDEN VH COMMODORE
1983 ATCC 3RD PLACE
From Classic Carlectables comes this 1983
Peter Brock VH Commodore, as driven
to third in that year’s Australian Touring Car
Championship. Incidentally, this is the car
that won Bathurst in 1982 and ‘83, although
by then the livery had changed to the Special
Mild brand, in the very capable hands of
John Harvey. This 1:18 scale model has
fully-opening parts, letting you see all the fi ne
details (and impress your friends with them,
too). There’s the detailed and accurate engine
bay, the race seat and harness with a soft
fabric feel and real buckles. There’s even the
HDT Momo steering wheel. With just 750 to b
made, get in quick at your favourite retailer, a
Classics don’t sell direct. Your retailer should
also be able to point you to a source of the
missing stickers, to get rid of the blank bits on
the car. For more details, click on over to
www.classiccarlectables.com.au
110

1:18
Craig Lowndes’ Holden ZB Commodore
- 2018 Auckland Supersprint Livery
As a team with one of the richest
histories in Australian motorsport,
hell V-Power Racing Team / DJR Team
enske celebrate a special themed
very based on Dick Johnson’s Shell
Ultra-Hi Racing Ford Sierra RS500
which he drove to win the 1988
Australian Touring Car Championship –
with 2018 marking the 30th Anniversary
of the achievement. Great for any DJ
or Ford fan.
Craig Lowndes’ ZB Commodore as raced at the Auckland Supersprint
round 15 in New Zealand. Great for any Craig Lowndes fan.
$179.99 Collectors
Club Price: $170.99
$199.99 Collectors
Club Price: $189.99
Scott McLaughlin/Alexandre Premat Ford FGX Falcon
– 2018 Sandown 500 Retro Livery
1:18

Action
Out of
Some muscle cars are bought by loving owners who pamper them
like members of the family. Other muscle cars, though, aren’t so
lucky. Some get stolen, smashed or thrashed. Some get parked
and lost under a layer of dust in an old shed, others get left outside
to brave the elements and slowly rust away. Sad, but true.
We eyeball plenty of beautifully maintained and/or fully restored
muscle classics in AMC, but as serious car pervs we have to admit
there’s few things more intriguing – or exciting – than spotting an old
classic in a paddock, or a shed, or under a shady tree, that’s seen better
days and in need of some TLC. Some are beyond saving, but they all
have a story to tell.
So, get out your cameras and start snapping some old muscle cars
you come across in your travels that are definitely Out of Action, or close
to it.
We don’t want to know where they are and we won’t be publishing
specific locations, because above all we must respect people’s
privacy. Please note: we don’t publish images we suspect involved
the act of trespassing. We just want to see some good, clean pics of
these forgotten cars and short personal stories to go with them.
For a chance to win, send your entries to amceditorial@chevron.
com.au or by post to Locked Bag 5555, St Leonards, NSW 1590.
This is a front yard in North East, Victoria. There’s a mix of machinery from Japan,
America and Australia. The collector seems to have a particular bent towards
Dodge gear as there is American and Australian production examples in the yard,
a smattering of blue oval product with an old finned Fairlane, XB sedan and some
XF utes. Holden representation is from the older EK Holdens and then there’s a lone
Datsun 120Y, just for a bit of something different.
Simon
This issue’s Out Of Action winner will receive this
beaut 1:18 scale muscle car model from Classic
rlectables. AMC will contact this issue’s winner soon
h further details. So, keep sending in those great
otos and short stories for your chance to win!

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and early ‘70s: Norm Beechey’s
Monaro GTS 350, Bob Jane’s
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113

Whaddayakn
Autopics.com.au
YYes, we know, this isn’t a
muscle car. But stick with
us here, because there is
a muscle car connection,
tenuous though it may be.
More on that in a bit.
Recently in AMC #111 we
profiled Sue Ransom as part of
our Muscle Woman series, noting
that she shared a Ford Capri with then husband
Bill Brown in the 1978 Bathurst 1000. The ‘Susie/
Billy’ driver pairing is not the time a Great Race
featured a husband and his wife in the field –
Fred and Christine Gibson drove in the same
Bathurst 1000 race, although not together in the
same car. It has been generally assumed that
Ransom/Brown were the first married couple to
compete as a driver pairing at Bathurst.
Not so, however. The first married couple (at
least that AMC is aware of) to race at Bathurst
was in fact Max and Diane Dickson, aboard a
Ford Cortina MkII 240.
This is where the muscle car connection
comes in. The Dicksons’ Cortina was part of
the first McLeod Ford assault on the Mountain
in 1969. That’s right, the Dicksons’ team-mates
were John Goss, in his first Bathurst start, and
Denis Cribbin in their Starlight Blue Falcon GT-
HO (inset). No pressure then.
The Cortina 240, also finished in Starlight
Blue, was no ball of fire, even with the optional
1600cc crossflow engine, giving away over 20
horsepower to the all-conquering Datsun 1600.
Not surprisingly it was the only Cortina entered –
but there were a few other optimists in the class
in unlikely cars such as VW Type 3 Notchback,
Morris 1500 and even a Renault 10!
Back in AMC issue #78 we covered the
Starlight Blue Falcon GT-HO’s ill-fated run in
the 1969 Bathurst 500 and its subsequent
resurrection and restoration. This writer
Bill Forsyth
interviewed John Goss and team patron Max
McLeod about their first Bathurst, and the
Dickson Cortina rated an unfavourable mention
with both men.
“We entered a Ford Cortina 240 (MkII) for
husband and wife Max and Diane Dickson,”
recalled Max McLeod. “That was a big mistake,
but Ford provided support for us to run the
Cortina though the car wasn’t up to the mark.”
Goss remembered the Cortina as a
distraction. “I had to attend to that car’s strategy,
though it ran well in the race and finished.”
Indeed the Cortina did finish sixth in class
behind five Datsun 1600s for 31st outright on
108 laps. Not a bad effort around an unforgiving
track like Mount Panorama.
What has us stumped is we can’t find a
record of Max and Diane Dickson racing
anywhere else. They must have, of course,
in order to get off their ‘three stripes’, allowing
them entry into the 500 in the first place.
There is no mention of Diane Dickson in the
popular ‘Ladies Races’ held at Oran Park
during that period. It’s a given that the Cortina
would have disappeared into the abyss, but what
about the Dicksons? As far as we can tell, it
doesn’t look like the couple ever raced again. So
Whaddayaknow?
Update
We’ve struck, ahem, gold with the Stacey/
McIntyre Falcon XR GT. Both the (lead)
driver and car survive. Stay tuned for an
upcoming feature, we promise it will be a
cracking read!
Autopics.com.au
Autopics.com.au
Whaddayaknow? Contact AMC via amceditorial@chevron.com.au and please outline details in y
114

AUSTRALIAN RELEASES
C4019 Holden L34 Torana
1977 ATCC
C4025 Holden ZB Commodore
2018 Bathurst Winner
C4028 Ford XY Falcon
Phase III GT-HO 1973 ATCC Winner
C4037 Ford XW Falcon
Phase I GT-HO Silver Fox
C4039 Ford XB Falcon GT
1975 Bathurst
Check out the Scalextric range
at your Toy and Hobby Retailer now!
Ph (08) 8277 0869
A1440 Australian Muscle Car

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