Torana The fififififirst first and last A9X
The V8 Sleuth’s detective work has uncovered a surviving A9X Torana with an amazing history and several claims to fame. Its life story includes being the very first GMP&A racing chassis built and the last A9X to win an ATCC race.
Last year in the pages of Australian Muscle Car magazine we brought you the story of the Allan Grice Craven Mild Torana A9X racecar that ended up in the hands of Frank Gardner’s chiropractor and continues to race on today in Historic competition. While penning that story, one thought constantly crossed our minds: what happened to the other ‘replacement’ A9X that Grice and his team used late in 1979?
There have been plenty of theories abound relating to that car in recent years. Some say that particular car was dead and buried; others have allegedly claimed to have it tucked away in a shed as it last raced. But some email correspondence that came across this reporter’s desk a little while ago appears to have finally answered the question as to what happened to this car, which holds a special place in the history books as the last Torana to win an Australian Touring Car Championship race, in Grice’s hands, at Wanneroo in Perth in April, 1980.
This particular chassis actually started its life as Bob Forbes’ first A9X hatchback, the car he and Kevin Bartlett shared at Bathurst in 1977. According to AMC #35’s interview with GM-H production control supervisor Mike Prowse, this blue machine was the first GMP&A race A9X to be walked down the Dandenong production line, receiving modifications with racing in mind.
Forbes elected to race his old L34 in the 1977 Hang-Ten 400 at Sandown, with his new A9X debuting three weeks later at Bathurst. The car ran strongly throughout and was poised for a result well inside the top 10 when its engine failed late race, having covered 147 laps.
It was eventually replaced by Forbes’ ‘Martini’-liveried A9X. It was put up for sale (advertised at the time as having had 11 race meetings since Bathurst ‘77) and was bought by the Craven Mild team in ’ 79. Around the same time the Grice team also acquired the Bond’s Gotcha A9X, after Grice’s two existing hatchbacks were written-off in accidents during that season.
The ex-Forbes car was deemed the better of the two and was used as the #6 car at Bathurst, fi nishing fourth in the hands of Grice and Alfredo Costanzo.
It was detuned for 1980 when the Torana wasn’t permitted to race in A9X specification. Instead it ran as an LX SS with drum brakes and low-emission cylinder heads that dropped power signifi cantly. However, Grice still managed a podium at Symmons Plains and victory at Wanneroo’s Courier-Australia Cup before it all went wrong in the fi nal round at Oran Park.
Held on Monday, June 16, after officials had delayed the race a day due to a waterlogged infield, things went very wrong for Grice around half race distance. Reports of the time indicated a suspension failure left the pilot brakeless and he ended up catapulting into the concrete wall that sat on the outside of the approach to turn two after the kink.
The damage to the right-hand side of the #7 Craven Mild hatchback was massive, the car pancaked from the huge impact. Its racing life was deemed over and, with a Commodore to focus on for the remainder of the season, the team sold off the bodyshell. And that’s where we pick up the story with the man that had towed the wreck away on a flat bed truck on the day of the crash, Robert Stevenson.
“I bought the shell off him (Grice) the week after the race with intentions of building a Sports Sedan,” says Stevenson. “The majority of the cage had been cut out of it before I got it. The front was absolutely mangled. I cut the front-end off and replaced it with a front-end I cut from another hatch that had been burnt out. I was going to centre-mount an engine and run it as a Sports Sedan but I lost interest and ran out of money.
“The (crashed) Grice front end went to the tip and was buried with all tags in place. I sold the shell some years later with little progress with a one-piece fibreglass front with box flares, purchased from Bob Hall. He did the fibreglass work on the Craven Mild BMW, closing off the rear flares.”
From there the current owner – whose identity we’ll keep private, so let’s call him ‘Mr Torana’ – spotted the Torana in a workshop in the mid1980s and eventually did a deal to acquire it and turn it into his own Sports Sedan.
“I saw the shell sitting in the front of the workshop in Appin in New South Wales while I was on my way to the beach in the mid 1980s,” he recalls. “I went in and made some enquiries to the old chap in the pump station and he said the boss had been trying to get the young bloke that owned it to get rid of it. He said to come back next week, so I waited a week and went out there again and the guy confirmed that, yes, the owner did want to get rid of it. So I had to wait two weeks from the day I first saw it until I rang the guy mid-week and it was mine.
“It took me three hard years to get it into any type of condition. I got all the hanging panels and interior parts I needed to build the car back up. The front of the chassis had been repaired with the replacement front end and the rear quarter panels had been cut to put the box panels onto so I had them replaced and the inner guards reattached.
“It was in undercoat when I got it. When you cut back through it all the gold and white Craven Mild paint was there. In places there are also still parts of the original blue underneath the car too.”
Mr Torana’s interest in the history of his car brought him into contact with the late Frank Gardner, ex of the Craven Mild team, who stepped through the history of it, leaving him in no doubt as to what he had in hispossession.
Further research at the time was met with negativity from experts of such types of cars, which has somewhat dissuaded the owner from conducting much other research over the last decade. But Stevenson has no doubt as to exactly what car Mr Torana has. After all, he nearly fell over when, 30 years on, the current owner tracked him down and produced the original receipt from the purchase of the car!
“I went for a drive up to where that workshop is in Appin and there was a [phone] number on the workshop for a guy that was actually selling it,” Mr Torana recalls. “He didn’t know anything about the original people who owned the workshop but [as I was speaking to him] a bloke came out from around the corner of the shop and he was a local. He told me that the head mechanic had opened up another shop not far out of Appin and gave me an address to go and speak to him.
“So off I went, into a new industrial estate, and went in, turned left then right and there [the workshop] was. I get out of the car and head in and an old fellow in his mid 60s is there. I tell him that 32 years ago I had bought a Torana bodyshell from the workshop I had just visited and I
was trying to find the bloke I bought it from. He had a salad sandwich in his hand and instantly dropped it in shock!
“He says, ‘bloody hell mate, are you fair dinkum?’ and I said I was and had brought all my paperwork with me to verify it. He said he was the mechanic that worked with the young bloke that had been trying to put that car back together! He said Robert was in Nowra and he had his number and would call him up to tell him.
“So he calls up and puts it on speaker phone and the next thing you can hear in the background is the screech of tyres and stones in the guards, it literally stopped him in his tracks! We took a photo of the receipt and text messaged it to him and he said he had to hang up because his heart was going to go!
“He rang back in five minutes and he said, ‘My God, I’ve been trying to find you for 32 bloody years!’ So that’s how I got onto him. It was an unbelievable situation, just unbelievable.”
The issue of how ‘historic’ this car can be deemed, or if it could realistically be restored to its 1977, ‘79 or ‘80 appearance and specification given the changes made to it over the years, is one that Mr Torana doesn’t wish to get dragged into.
“How I look at it is that the remains of that vehicle were incorporated into what became my Sports Sedan,” says Mr Torana.
“The front was changed after the car had been smashed and the tags were gone with it. We saved the remains of the original body shell, I’d never say the car is how it ran in 1977, ‘78, ‘79 or ‘80. If anyone asked to show them the chassis number, I simply can’t because the front was replaced.
“The original bits of the chassis are the firewall rearward; the A and B-pillars, the turret, hatch and floor section. What I have has some really interesting DNA and I’m happy for it to be what it is, my Sports Sedan that gave me a lot of joy when I had the chance to take it out onto the track.
How appropriate that the fi rst A9X racing bodyshell built, which was also the last to record a victory in topline competition, lives on today in some form.