A whole life in one magazine
Issue 398 covered of f quite a few things for me. The Austin 7 stor y reminded me of Dad’s ta les of his own 7. And those Holden FEs; I had a couple of them. Seeing the 48/215 and the EJ on page 110 reminded me of the same two my parents had a lbeit the 48/215 was black. It was a lovely car until, someone T-boned it one day at an intersection and wrote it of f. The EJ lasted a bit longer; until Dad saw a HG Holden Premier 253 Trimatic for sa le in a dealership. It was just 12 months old and too good to pass up. Dad spoke to the prev ious owner about the car and that was the clincher. Well, t hat HG is still in t he garage at home.
The Capri: Ah what a nice car that was. A mate of mine had a V6, in ice blue . It went well and, t he sound of it was like a V8. What a shame the SV6 doesn’t sound like t hat.
As for dif ferent t hings leav ing t he Holden factor y: I worked in the body shop at the Acacia Ridge plant from 1972 until it closed in 84. The weirdest one I saw was, a t hree-door L J Torana. Hyundai Veloster eat your heart out. Ever y t hing on LJs lined up toget her perfect ly and this one had one door on the passenger side and t wo on t he driver’s side. At t he time I t hought it was a great concept a lbeit I would have swapped the sides around. That body, by the way never left the body shop, let a lone t he factor y.
One of t he jobs I did t here was cut holes out in t he f loor for t he autos and the manuals. These were the same except for those manuals with a bench seat. They had an extra piece cut out of them. That was to accommodate the bent gear shif t. Similar to one I saw in a greeny/blue HR 186 station wagon belonging to a bloke I k new, and factor y f itted. I t hink t hey used an Opel gearbox in those ones. I hope that doesn’t open up an old wound with some readers.
During the HQ production we cut a hole in t he f loor which I t hought was quite la rge. It a lso went down the side of the tunnel. I was told it was for a manual 350. I had cut out t he auto ones but, t his was the only manual one I had seen. I was told it was for either a Saginaw or Muncie gearbox. I’m not sure which and I never saw it when it came out. Perhaps one of your readers may know a bit more about them. I would love to have some of those cars now, that we made back then, especia lly my blue LJ Torana GTR, but t hat’s another stor y.
Ken Silsby,
NOW THIS is very interesting, Ken. I’ve heard the rumours of a three-door LJ Torana before (I think I may have mentioned it in this column before today) but I’d never talked to anybody who’d
seen it in person. Until you, that is. Nice one. The story I heard gels with your account, too, in that the body never made it out of the factory and was quietly taken away and crushed to avoid embarrassment. Or something along those lines.
As for holes in the floor for manual gearshifts, I recall that some of the HQ commercials had bench seats with floor shifters and they were a dogleg design. My dad had a HQ 253 manual sedan but it had bucket seats and the optional centre console. So, no dogleg shift. I’ve only ever seen one factory HR four-speed and it, too, had bucket seats. It was an X2, so that would add up. The point is it didn’t have a dogleg shift either.
But I think you’re right when you say the HR four-speeds (rare beasts that they were) did use the wretched old Opel gearbox which was also fitted to early GTR Toranas and even six-cylinder variants of the early Monaros. From what I can gather, the early V8 Monaros used a Saginaw four-speed manual (which could be optioned on to HK-T-G V8 sedans) while the HQ with the optional 350 cubic-inch Chevy engine got a Muncie four-speed. Interestingly, in US-made GM cars, the Saginaw mounts the shifter on the extension housing, but this was moved to the cross-member for Aussie applications.
Meantime, there’s another thing we have in common, Ken: While I was never employed by Holden to do so, I’ve cut plenty of holes in the floors of HQ Holdens. In my case, it was to fit a three-speed Speco shifter to the old all-synchro three-speed. ‘Cos we all knew that a car couldn’t be sporty with a column-shift. I got better at it as the years passed, but I recall my first attempt involved a cold chisel. And I’ll tell you something else for free; there’s real metal in the trans tunnel of a HQ; they really took some butchering.