Dealer principle
The late ’60 and early ‘70s was the era of the dealer entrants in the Bathurst classic.
Back then the race was still inexpensive enough for motor dealers to get involved, either by running a car themselves or sponsoring a privateer with parts and maybe the odd mechanic and apprentice. In 1970 the majority of entrants were either full dealer entries or carried dealer support.
So did Holden lean on the dealers to forsake their Monaros in favour of Toranas? Not according to Joe Felice, who says it was more a simple case of the dealers being good team players. They were getting on board with XU-1s because Holden had declared the Torana to be its ‘motorsport’ car.
One Holden dealer-entrant who did want to stick with the Monaro for 1970 was Max Wright. It was his driver who convinced Wright to opt instead for the XU-1. That driver was Don Holland, who would go on to steer the Max Wright Motors Torana to third outright behind the two factory Fords. But for the late delivery of some Dunlop racing tyres, Holland to this day believes he could have got the better of both McPhee and Moffat in the closing stages to steal the win.
“We could have probably had bigger brakes, which it needed, and a bit more zot in a straight line, not that we really even needed that, and we’d have a bit more grip because we’d have been running on race tyres. The cars would have been at least a few seconds faster in 1970.
“It would also have had the bene t of another year’s development. That’s something that worked against the XU-1 that year – the XU-1 was still very new, and that’s probably partly why we had problems with them at Bathurst. The Monaros wouldn’t have had those kinds of problems because they were pretty well developed by then; with better brakes and a bit more power it would have been a good thing that year.
“Getting a bit more power out of the engine would have been pretty easy. Being a Chev, there were all sorts of things available for those engines in the States back then, whether it was carby, different camshaft, whatever – it wouldn’t have been hard to get another 30 or 40 horsepower.
“The diff in those cars was a cone-type, and they were ne. Much better than the clutchtype Ford used in ’69 – you can only put so much pressure on those before they start to spin. You’d follow a Ford up the hill and around the corner, and the inside wheel would just be spinning because there’s no limited slip diff any more. That’s when they went to the Detroit
Locker, but a Detroit Locker diff is a difficult bloody thing to drive.
“The Monaro was easy to drive, the engine had plenty of torque so you could drive it in a higher gear; you didn’t have to rev the shit out of them to make them go. I think we only used rst gear at the start. Even up Mountain Straight it was third gear in the corners up the hill.
“Look, it’s water under the bridge now, but it’s something I have thought about before, that we should have run Monaros at Bathurst in 1970 – and I think Bobby Morris has the same view of it.
“I think we could have won in 1970 with a Monaro.”