Muscle Mail
Writers unravel rumours of SL/E manuals; take us behind the Chook Shed; and dig up more Sacred Sites … among other things.
Muscle Mail best letter winners for 2016 will receive a limited edition House of Muscle small-batch 10mm acrylic print with stand – RRP $149. Choose one from 12 different designs featuring Monaro GTS 327(shown), Kings of the Mountain, GT-HO Phase III, 1977 Bathurst 1-2, Moff’s Boss 302 Mustang or the world famous XB Interceptor.
Before the chook shed
After
reading issue #85 I thought I would share my memories of the chook shed Commodore and its owner.
In the early 1990s I was in my last years as an apprentice printing machinist. The company I worked for was Amazon Printing in the country Victorian town of Warrnambool, who sublet the rear of their small factory to Marsh Motor Sport.
I had many a lunch sandwich out the back chatting to its proprietor Allan Swampy Marsh. Swampy was a great guy and often shared his weekend rally stories which I lapped up as any young teenage motorsport fan would. Swampy always said the hot rally Commodore he owned was an ex-Peter Brock item, which incidentally was in fairly rough order when it turned up, particularly the roof, which looked like a tap dancing show had been performed on it.
To Swampy’s credit he had the ex-HDT machine looking pretty sharp with ELGAS sponsorship emblazoned all over. I remember the roll-cage being a real work of art, due to its HDT heritage no doubt, with the addition of two spare rally wheels bolted to it in the backseat area. The nudge bar in your picture also had two huge spotlights permanently attached. As your article stated, It did indeed spend time as
an auto. Swampy claimed at the time he was sick of breaking weak manual gear boxes.
Remarkably the car ran on a straight diet of LPG to pay worship to the ELGAS sponsorship. How many ex-Peter Brock machines could lay claim to being run wholly on LPG at any stage of their life? Wouldn’t be too many! As part of the ELGAS sponsorship deal Swampy had the use a VL Calais V8 also running on LPG. Funny thing is the Calais never saw much road time. As things broke on the VK, the VL Calais donated many of its compatible parts to keep the rally car going.
On a side note, Amazon Printing, which is still in business today, did many small print run jobs for Peter Brock. The printing business was partly owned by the family of former Bathurst racer [and Brock Motor Company business partner] Tony Noske.
The work for Peter Brock included the stickers for Sam Scodella’s Brock B8 pictured on page 67 of issue #82. I’m glad to see they have stood the test of time; I must have done a good job!
I still have some of those later version stickers and have attached pictures of them along with a promotional sticker I did for Tony Noske and Gary Rush’s 1987 Bathurst campaign.