Roadways A9Xs
They were running mates in the late 1970s, spent nearly two decades apart and now they’ve again found a home with each other, as AMC discovers.
They were running mates in the late 1970s, spent nearly two decades apart and now they’ve again found a home with each other, as AMC discovers.
Holden’s A9X Torana is one of Australia’s most iconic racecars. It helped define a golden era of Australian touring car racing, winning two Bathurst titles and waging war against the last of Ford’s Falcon hardtops. Last issue AMC marked the 40th anniversary of the mighty A9X and our feature touching on 25 of the surviving hatchback and four-door A9X racecars generated plenty of interest.
Continuing our celebration of the A9X’s major milestone, this issue we take a closer look at a pair of privateer cars we haven’t stopped before to closely examine; the Roadways/Gown-Hindhaugh four-door and hatchback A9Xs that were running mates in 1979, the last year of the A9X in action.
It’s not just their race histories that make these cars extra special, but how after nearly 40 years they’re still together and making appearances on racetracks across the nation thanks to current owner, Steve Perrott.
Perrott is a Melbourne-based plumber with a firm connection to the A9X, having grown up cheering them on as a youngster.
“I still remember the early days of the A9Xs, watching Brock and Bob Morris and all those guys hooting around the racetracks was pretty awesome! I really loved the shape of them and the noise they made,” he recalls.
“I actually remember my Philips car too. It looked really good, but I probably didn’t know much about them so I didn’t really follow that car.”
The now 47-year old didn’t realise it then as a kid, but his connection to Bathurst and the A9X would deepen later in life when, in 1998, the opportunity arose to own the Roadways/ Gown-Hindhaugh A9X Torana four-door – a car that may just have done the most laps of Bathurst without ever starting the race.
“I had done a little bit of karting, but nothing serious,” Perrott recalls. “I did a lot in my late teens and 20s but, being an apprentice plumber, I didn’t have a lot of money, so I just did some club racing as a bit of social fun.
“I also had a couple of road-going A9Xs and we did a few track days in them at Phillip Island, but they were just too nice to run on track. But then I saw an advertisement in Auto Action and Steve Harrington from Roadways still owned these pair of Philips cars.
“He was left the cars from his late father, Ian Harrington, as he was the founder of the Roadways Asphalt Company based in Tasmania. So I went and had a look at the ads and Steve had the car, but I actually missed out on it because the car was up for tender.
“A guy from Benalla bought the cars (Willy van Wersch), but it was about four months later he was bringing a car out from overseas and needed some cash, so I called him up and asked if he still had the car. He told me to bring a bag of cash and it was mine, so I literally did bring him a bag of cash and that’s how I came across that car.
“Since the end of 1979 it didn’t do anything on the track. Ian Harrington was really good for keeping cars, so both the four-door and the two-door were basically put up on blocks in the big Roadways machinery workshop in Tassie for years and years.”
Perrott tells us that his four-door started life as a Harry Firth-sourced GMP&A (General Motors Parts and Accessories) racing chassis and was built by the East-Melbourne-based Gown-Hindhaugh team at the back end of 1977 alongside the team’s first hatchback A9X.
Holden supplied up to a dozen LX four-door sedans for competition use. But while the 33 GMP&A hatchbacks destined for the racetrack were produced at GM-H’s vehicle assembly plant at Dandenong, under the watchful eye of production control supervisor Mike Prowse, the four-door racecars had their chassis modifications done off-site. This was a reflection of both team demand and that the factory was very much focused on the hatchback.
Only a handful of teams built new four-door Toranas as A9Xs, many instead opting for the
hatchback or upgrading the outgoing L34 Torana to A9X specification.
The Roadways four-door had a solid race history (see breakout) in the hands of a range of drivers over its career.
With such little running since its heyday, the car has been kept in remarkably original condition. It retains its original running gear and even its original hand-painted Philips livery from the ’79 season. The car has received some very light restoration work to keep it looking sharp, but for the most part is as raced in ’79.
“We’ve tried to preserve it as much as we can,” says Perrott.
“We’ve painted the engine bay and cleaned up a few areas, but all the paint down the sides, the roof and the bonnet, that’s the original hand-written sign writing in incredibly original condition. We’ve touched up a few of the bumper bars and resprayed the nose cone because they just get riddled with stone chips. It’s a little bit tatty in some spots; if you do a full restoration the cars look magnificent, but give it a couple of race meetings and they don’t look that good anymore!”
The four-door also retains its original dry sump setup, which was first permitted under the rules in 1979 and adapted to the four-door by the Gown-Hindhaugh team for that season.
Perrott’s other car is the second A9X hatchback that the Roadways/GownHindhaugh team built at the beginning of 1978. Many believed that the Gown-Hindhaugh team only built one hatchback, when in fact they built two. This one, despite twice competing at Bathurst – in ’78 and ’79 – was lightly raced.
The first Roadways A9X hatchback, featuring a red and white livery, also lives on in the hands of historic racer Mick Cameron and his wife Anna. Perrott recalls being approached by Cameron at a historic meeting over a decade ago. “He asked me what the go was with the mock-up,” recalls Perrott. “He believed there was only one hatch, so I told him there was two and I gave him some photos
of the three cars sitting in the Gown-Hindhaugh workshop. I showed Mick and he said, ‘Well there you go!’ It’s great that all three of the team’s A9Xs live on.
“The easiest way to tell the difference between the hatchbacks is that Mick’s had a completely different roll cage to mine.”
Perrott purchased the hatchback in 2000 after its previous owner went through a divorce. The car was located in Sydney and had done a brief amount of racing in Sports Sedans and with the then-emerging Group C Association in the 1990s.
Thankfully the car escaped any modification and was kept in remarkably original condition like its four-door sibling, though its second owner repainted it.
“Everything has been stamped with ‘GMP&A’ by Gown-Hindhaugh. It’s got stamps on the diff, gearboxes and even under the cross-members it’s got ‘Gown-Hindhaugh Box Hill’ written underneath it with markers.
“I had a chat to Norm Gown before he died. When he heard that I had one of the four-doors, he got hold of my number through someone else and asked what colour it was. When I told him it was the blue and white one he said Harry Firth had got those bodyshells for them.
“So they built them in the GownHindhaugh workshop, but I believe that somehow Harry had his contacts and actually got the bodyshells out of GM-H for Roadways. That’s what Norm told me. I had a couple of chats with Norm over the years before he passed away. There’s still a lot of the old mechanics still kicking around that we have a chat to regularly as well.”
Perrott has raced his pair of Toranas in a number of Historic meetings with the hatchback being the favoured of the two for his more competitive outings in the popular Heritage Touring Cars category for Historic Group C/A touring cars.
He’s picked up a championship win in the car – the overall winner of the Group C championship in 2011 – and collected the Peter Brock Memorial Trophy for his efforts. Despite the soaring value of these original cars, Perrott would rather take them out onto the track than keep them cooped up in the corner of the garage under covers.
“I reckon we’ve got a responsibility to keep the cars as they ran in the day,” he says. “They were built for racing, so if your ability’s there and you’re responsible I think you’ve got to get the things out there. It’s all about showing the next generation what they used to race in the 1970s and ’80s. I probably don’t drive the cars as hard as I used to, but they definitely should be raced!
“The trouble is they’ve started getting so expensive now that when you take them out you think, ‘Oh no, I better not do that dive-bomb on that car because his car is worth a lot and my car’s worth a lot’, so you don’t want to smash the things up too much. But we have a bit of a touch here and there.”
Perrott has another historic Holden being prepared for the race track too – an ex-Larry Perkins Enzed Group A Commodore VK – that will mean a change from his pair of Toranas when it finally appears on the Heritage Touring Cars grid.
“I’m planning on semi-retiring the Toranas,” he says. “I’ll bring them out for special occasions but I want to do the Heritage Touring Car rounds in the VK next year.”
So would he ever part with the pair of Philips Roadways/Gown-Hindhaugh Toranas as a result of the Commodore re-emerging onto the track?
“No, if someone offered me absolutely crazy money, I might think about selling, but I like looking at them too!”
There’s no doubt we also like looking at them. The fact this pair of Toranas has survived and ended up back together again is fantastic for all, a reminder of a brilliant era of racing and Aussie touring car history.