Australian Muscle Car 2020-02

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.
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