STRAIGHT TALK
Old mate Ian Van Delden in Whanganui was a great bloke — I haven’t seen him in years, but I would imagine he still is. He and I chipped in a few bob each one day back in about 1973 or ’74 — well before either of us was anywhere near old enough to have our driver’s license — and bought some ugly old European scooter that didn’t go. We got it running just the once; Ian jumped on it and nailed the throttle while I held the back of it so that the tyre scarcely touched the ground, and we smoked the skinny little back tyre until it burst. The engine overheated in the process and stopped running, and we couldn’t get it to go again, so, a few weeks later, we threw it in the rubbish tip.
Ian’s list of cars back in the day was nothing extraordinary — a few old Pom bombs like a shitty old Commer Cob van, which was so defectively designed that it only had three wheel studs on each wheel. As 15-year-old kids in the mid 1970s, we’d pull into the Ingestre Street service station on a Friday night, pay for five bucks’ worth of gas — my dodgy old mate Gummy, who worked there, would give us 10 bucks worth — and that would keep us driving around Whanganui behaving like the sex-starved idiots that we were all weekend long. Actually, that was probably only me — Ian did just fine.
Sometime in the early 1980s (just into our 20s by then), Ian bought a tidy MkI Ford Capri, and — no doubt over a lot of drinking (probably big bottles of Waikato) — we decided that he should put a V8 into it. Ian was a fitter and turner by trade. He worked at the Railway Workshops, and, right from the start, he was always a clever bugger — one of those blokes who just had a natural mechanical aptitude, a ‘knack’, if you like, for mucking around with cars. Lots of guys would think; Ian would just do. So, with the numerous advantages of working for the Railways back then, plenty of mechanical ability, and no shortage of youthful energy, Ian got the project under way. He bought a 350 Chev engine, a turbo 350 three-speed transmission, and a Ford nine-inch diff. He narrowed the diff himself at work, mounted it on the Capri leaf springs, and gave it some decent shocks. He mounted the 350 and turbo 350 into the surprisingly spacious Capri engine bay using Ian-made engine mounts and transmission cross member, and a very short custom driveshaft. The intervention of 35 years prevents me from accurately recalling what he did to the front end, but I’m pretty sure that he adapted some better brakes up front and beefed up the front suspension.
Ian was an unassuming guy back then, as I expect he probably still is. He was the last guy on earth to talk up what he was doing, and he neither cared nor worried about what other people thought or said. He just did his own thing. No fuss. No bullshit — and ‘his thing’ was usually functional, satisfactory, but devoid of any frills or great finesse. So, none of us really expected the outcome to be much more than an old Capri with a V8 engine fitted into it. But Ian surprised the shit out of all of us.
Looking back some 35 years later, I’m more amazed now than ever before at what he achieved back then. It was one of those familiar stories where one thing leads to another; a high standard is set in one little corner of the car, and then that standard becomes the benchmark to which every other little corner must measure up. Ian suddenly became a detail guy. The front bumper was removed and the holes were filled. The front panel below the radiator was opened up and nicely shaped for improved cooling. A sexy little flushfitting aerial (early Commodore, I think) was fitted, and the rear guards were gently flared. We talked him into a tunnel-ram manifold and twin fours that looked as tough as Rambo poking through the engine hood, and then came a mild hydraulic cam and a set of headers on the otherwise-stock nothing-special motor. This thing was really shaping up. The body was in good condition — only a bit over 10 years old then, remember — so it was easy enough to massage it into shape before I gave it a black acrylic lacquer paint job, covered in red pearl, followed by custom graphics comprising multihues of reds and pinks and purples. A very ’80s-looking custom paint job, but that’s OK — it was the ’80s! Then Ian treated the pretty little car to the interior it deserved: lavish red velour throughout.
In hindsight, it must have been one of the best-looking cars built during the 1980s to never have been seen in a magazine. With good photography and the right backdrop, this thing would have been a hell of a feature car back then. Of course, that never would have occurred to Ian. We all like to act casual about that sort of thing, but Ian really wouldn’t have given a shit — if a magazine photographer had approached him to do a feature, he probably would have laughed and said, “Sorry, shag, I really can’t be f**ked cleaning it”.
The biggest surprise of all came when we took it to Thunderpark dragway for its one and only race meeting in — give or take a year — 1985. We drove over there, and Ian did two runs in it. It had 2.7:1 diff gears (better suited to Bonneville than a drag strip); pathetic little Firestone Wide Oval rear tyres; a full tank of gas; and a boot bursting full of Ian’s tent, chairs, camping gear, and two wooden crates of Waikato big bottles — because he couldn’t be arsed unpacking it all.
His first run — hazing the little Firestones all through first gear — netted a low 13 (holy shit!). Then, on his next run, the car ran a 12.9 — perhaps no big number nowadays, but, for a basic little 350 Chev– engined road car, let me tell you, that was damn quick 35 years ago. To give a comparison, I raced my Vauxhall Viva street-strip drag car (still small block–powered then) at that same meeting, and, with a 4-71 blown 307 Chev, 3.9:1 diff gears, and slicks, I only went a second quicker.
The astonishing ETs were completely lost on Ian, though. He didn’t bother having another run. The rest of the Whanganui boys were on the spectator bank drinking, so Ian just left the Capri parked in the pits, keys in the ignition, grabbed a crate of Waikato out of the boot, and wandered off to join his mates on the bank!
“Sorry, shag, I really can’t be f**ked cleaning it”