HM BEAST
FROM A GALAXIE FAR, FAR AWAY COMES THE LOUDEST, MEANEST FORD ON THE BIG-BLOCK – DENIS O’BRIEN’S RARE 1964 HOLMAN MOODY RACER. PREPARE TO BE DEAFENED!
Ona bitter mid-winter’ s day at windswept Calder Park, a tender scene between man and machine is being played out. Denis O’Brien is on his knee sat the open driver’ s door of his mighty Holman Moody G al axie, patiently warming up its 7.0- litre ‘427’ V 8 by gently resting his hand on the throttle pedal. Occasionally he glances up at t he trio of gauges atop the vast red dash and checks the engine’ s vitals, then drifts off to another world–the ear-splitting bass of one side of the big block exiting centimetres from his right ear through a four-inch pipe. It must be love.
Few people get to own a rare racecar in their lives, let alone own the same classic twice, 20 years apart. O’Brien has, and that partly explains why he gets all misty when he look sat his gargantuan Gal’.
It’s like reconnecting with an old flame.
In t he early ’70s, O’Brien had some success harrying factory touring car teams in his rebuilt ex-Tony Roberts Phase II (yes, the same X W that disappeared backwards down The Mountain at McPhillamy ), but he’d always had a yen for a ’64 Galaxie, like those raced here by Pommie peer Sir Gawaine Bail lie and local legend Len Lukey. Luckily, her an into Harry Firth.
“I wanted to be different and always had the fantasy of racing one ,” O’Brien recalls enthusiastic ally.
“I bumped into Harry and said ,‘ Do you know where I can find a Galaxie, has Len [Lukey] got anything left in his shed ?’ and Harry, who’s a pretty cagey guy said ,‘ Leave it wit h me’.”
Six weeks later, Firth rang and asked O’Brien if he had a big truck – a big truck – because he’d found a car. Intrigued, O’Brien high-tailed it to
“FIRTH OPENED THE GARAGE BUT THERE WAS NO CAR, JUST A PILE OF WOODEN BOXES”
Melbourne from Wagga Wagga, picked up Firth and drove to “Mrs Lukey’s” house in Toora k. Firth opened the garage but there was no car v isible, just a pile of wooden boxes stamped ‘Holman Moody’.
“The car’s in t he boxes,” Firt h deadpanned. “All t hat’s missing is t he body shell.” A wide-eyed O’Brien couldn’t believe his luck.
“There was a brand new ‘Hi-Riser’ 427, a luminium bumpers, diffs, gearboxes, a x les, roll-cage bars, polycarbonate windows – ever y t hing was t here but in si x million pieces. It had never been assembled. No one knows where the shell went or if one was even sent out. Holman Moody have no record of it.
“I didn’t even k now what model it was until I looked at the bumpers because the ’62, ’63 and ’64 models were a ll slight ly dif ferent. Si x of us staggered out of t he garage wit h t he chassis.”
Lukey bought the car direct from Holman Moody in the US and to get around import duties, it was shipped as parts. When Lukey fell ill, t he project sta lled and when he died, t he boxes were stacked in the garage and sat there until 1979 when a gobsmacked O’Brien entered Lukey’s Aladdin’s cave. Over t he next t hree years, O’Brien located a shell (in a chicken shed in Canberra), rebuilt t he Gala x ie, t hen raced it for t wo seasons in Appendix J but not in its f ull US spec.
“It was homologated with disc bra kes but I had to run it with drums and they [CAMS] didn’t like t he f ibreglass panels or t he a luminium bumpers it came with so I finished up hav ing to r un a ll-steel parts.
“It was horrif ic with just drums. At Sandown I t hought I’d eit her k nock t he fence down or finish up on Dandenong Road ever y time I went down t he back straight. It was terrif y ing. The novelt y wore of f af ter I couldn’t run it correct to t he period.”
Disenchanted, O’Brien accepted an offer he couldn’t ref use ($20,000) from a bloke in Melbourne who’d been keen on the car for a while, but it ended up sitting on his front law n under a tarp for 21 years. “He drove it ’round t he block a couple of times, got a fright, and put it away,” O’Brien laughs. “I bought t he car back in 2005.”
Once again, O’Brien had to restore t he
Galaxie and, after five years, it debuted at the 2009 Muscle Car Masters in as-new condition. The interior is original and beautifully trimmed in bright red, with a pair of NASCAR-st yle buckets and even has its original AM radio.
It’s a special car, particularly its engine – one of only 150 ‘Hi-Riser, centre-oiler’ 427s made by Holman Moody, which makes it hugely valuable .‘ Hi-Riser’ denotes the height of t he cylinder heads, inlet ports and inlet manifold. It was Ford’s answer to Chrysler’ s He mi and also explains the massive power bulge on the fibre glass bonnet. The engine simply wouldn’t fit under the stock steel one and Denis had to change the inlet manifold when he first raced the car.
If you’ve been to the drags and heard a Pro Stock car, t hen you’ll have some idea how loud the Gala x ie is before it even gets angry. Two-inch primary pipes dump into a collector and straight into a pair off our-inch pipes that jut tout either side of the car. Earplugs help, but t hat would be like watching AC/DC from a glass box.
O’Brien tells a story about then-teenaged Lee Holman, the son of HMfo under John, driving a sister Gala x ie – unregistered and unmuffled –1000 km from Charlotte, North Carolina, to New York so it could be shipped to the UK. We suspect he now wears a hearing aid.
The engine is exactly as built by HM, with the exception of heavy-duty Carillorods. The original, light‘ Le Mans’ versions are too fragile to risk using because the top-end of the 427 is almost irreplaceable, O’Brien says. Above t he Hi-Riser inlet manifold are a pair of 660cfm ‘centre squirter’
“ALL EIGHT BUTTERFLIES OPEN TOGETHER, THAT'S WHY IT'S SUCH A PIG OF A THING TO DRIVE”
Holleys, which give t he raucous engine its, er, character, says Denis.
“The road engine came with 425 vacuum secondary Holleys to make them drive able. On this engine, all eight butterflies open together, that’ s why it’s such a pig of a thing to drive; you’ve either got all eight or nothing. The power band runs from 4500 to 7500rpm and we usually rev it to 5500-6000, but at Muscle Car Masters last year it was pulling 7300rpm in top gear. I don’t know how fast that was but it was fairly rock in ’.”
The rest of the hardcore mechanicals are almost identical to what the Phase III Falcons ran and are bulletproof, from t he 11-inch steel Borg & Beck clutch to t he close-ratio, ‘bull nose’ Top Loader four-speed (it’ll do 100k m/h in first !) and n in e-inch diff with Detroit Locker centre.
“With the Locker, as soon as you touch the throttle th ediff locks up ,” O’Brien explains. “Every time you hit the accelerator it jumps sideways so you just hold it on the throttle, slide it out of corners t hen stick your boot in and disappear...
“The thing is agricultural, but it’s a lot of fun. It gets your attention, you’ve got to grab hold of it and wrest le wit h it. With no power steering, you need arms like a gorilla to drive it, but you never get more than about half a turn of lock because you drive it with the throttle .”
At Calder, after regulations lo w-ish laps for photography, John Bowe was just starting to explore the G al axie’ s outer limits when one of its 46- year-old axles hollered enough mid-corner and the show was over for the day. Bowe was gutted, but Denis was his usual, sanguine self.
That minor f law only made him love the big Gal’ even more