Howard Marsden and Holden
Howard Marsden’s rst job when he arrived in Australia was not to head up the factory Ford effort, but as team manager of a Holden V8-based race team. What you’re looking at here (above pic) is the creator of the Falcon GTHO Phase 3 and 4 working on a Holden 5.0-litre V8 racing engine at the Sydney headquarters of Frank Matich’s racing team, which was Marsden’s rst employer in Australia.
In 1969 Marsden was working at Frank Williams Racing Cars. One of his tasks at Williams that year was to organise the sale of a new McLaren M10B Formula 5000 to Frank Matich (this was the rst F5000 in Australia, powered initially by a 5.0-litre Chev V8 but soon to be installed with the new Repco-Holden V8). From that initial contact with Matich, some months later Marsden relocated to Australia to take up a team management position which Matich had offered him.
Fellow Englishman and long-time Matich mechanic, Derek Kneller, well remembers Marsden’s time at the Matich operation.
“He joined us in about November, 1969, and left after the ‘71 Tasman Series,” Kneller recalls. “That’s when he went to work for Ford.
“He was a really nice guy. Very softly spoken, he virtually whispered, but you always heard every word he said.”
Marsden was employed essentially to take some of the workload off Matich. Around that time the burgeoning Matich operation included the design and manufacture of the Matich Formula 5000 cars, with an exclusive (initially) deal with Repco to run its new Holden-based V8 F5000 engine, a race team to run the cars and Matich’s side business as the Australian agent for Goodyear racing tyres.
“Howard’s job was to run the commercial side of the business, and that allowed Frank to concentrate on the engineering side,” Kneller explains. “Prior to Howard arriving, Frank did everything.”
Marsden’s role included the day to day running of the workshop, organising the travel
arrangements for the team, and the allimportant task of dealing with the sponsors. He also smartened up the look of the team, arranging for specially embroidered team uniforms. At the track, Marsden did tyre temperature readings for Matich, as can be seen (above) from this pic from the 1971 Tasman Cup.
“We were very slick under Howard,” Kneller recalls. “When we arrived at New Zealand for the 1970 Tasman Series, there was a Rothmans-liveried van there for us, which Howard had arranged in advance; all of our spare parts were neatly boxed up and everything was properly organised for us.”
Kneller adds that in 1971 when Matich damaged the McLaren’s tub in a crash at Warwick Farm with Niel Allen, Marsden quickly swung into action – the replacement new tub which Marsden organised arrived from England only about 10 days later.
“When he left, we missed him from our side of it, in the workshop, because if we needed anything we would go to Howard and he would just organise it.
“But if you were in his position and had an opportunity to work for the Ford Motor Company, with all their resources, as opposed to a private race team, you’d take it every day.”
The fact that Marsden was in Australia with the Matich operation in 1970/’71 was probably fortuitous for Ford when time came to look for Al Turner’s replacement as head of the factory race team. Marsden just happened to be the ideal candidate: not just an experienced motorsport manager but someone who was already well acquainted with the Ford way of doing things from his years spent at Alan Mann Racing running factory-backed Lotus Cortinas in Europe and in the Trans-Am Series in the USA – which was where Marsden rst met Allan Moffat, ve years before he became Moffat’s boss at the factory Ford team.