1968 Holden HK Monaro GTS 327
With the HK Monaro GTS 327 celebrating its 50th birthday in 2018, AMC presents 50 reasons to love and revere the first Holden muscle car.
Sudden impact
No Aussie-built car since the very rst Holden, the 48-215, has made a bigger rst impression than the Monaro. It was a hit from day dot. Those aged 55-plus still remember where they were when they rst clapped eyes on one in the esh.
First flex
IIt’s the rst Holden muscle car! And the rst of many to wear the GTS badge.
Special competition
t’s also the rst Holden competition special that was widely available to the public.
Super coupe
It’s the rst Holden-badged coupe. Interestingly, it’s not the rst Holden-built coupe, as the bodybuilding company rst produced a two-door body upon a Chevrolet chassis back in 1928.
Landmark model
It represented the red corner in the rst serious head-to-head battle between Holden and Ford for performance motoring supremacy and, as we’ll explore later, Bathurst bragging rights. In other words, it was central to the race that created the Ford versus Holden legend on magic mountain.
Quicker to 60mph
The GTS 327 was signi cantly faster than the XT Falcon GT from 0-60mph, taking 7.8 seconds to reach 60mph compared to the Ford’s 9.8 seconds. The two were line-ball over the standing quarter mile, with Falcon possibly a whisker faster, 16.3sec to 16.4sec.
Cheaper
The top of the line Monaro was signi cantly cheaper than its Blue Oval market rival. The GTS 327’s base price was $3790, compared to $4050 for the XT GT. A thing of beauty
The coupe styling just works. From any angle it’s handsome and purposeful. The pillarless side glass made a powerful street statement. Designers got the HK’s styling right the rst time, with very minor facelifts for the subsequent HT and HG models. On the map
It was such a styling success that it put Australian automotive design rmly on the world stage. Great name
The Monaro name has become as iconic as the cars themselves. It’s distinctly Australian, with indigenous origins, like an Aussie version of the most famous GM muscle car the Camaro. The story of how the Monaro name came to be suggested and used is told in the feature story that follows. Big seller
More than double the number of rst generation Monaros (HK to HG) were sold, 36,221, compared to the second generation coupes (HQ to HX), 15,395. This was achieved despite the original shape being on sale for half the time of its successor. This factoid says a lot about the original shape’s impact, style and desirability. Holden produced 15,637 HK coupe bodies. Short and sweet
The model lifespan of the HK Monaro was a ridiculously short, by modern standards, 11 months. Special K
The HK Monaro was available as three models – ‘Monaro’, ‘Monaro GTS’ and ‘Monaro GTS 327’. We think it’s cool that buyers largely steered clear of the base model tted with the 161ci six-cylinder, with more people buying the V8-engined models than those opting for the poverty pack. All up, an estimated 1192 GTS 327s were produced.
‘Only’ 19
With engine and transmissions, the HK Monaro model line-up ran to 19 model combinations, signifying Holden’s new era of ‘personalisation’ and offering a wide array of combos and options.
COTY
The HK Monaro won Wheels Car of the Year for 1968. The magazine described the pillarless coupe as a homegrown revelation.
Hero colour
Warwick Yellow quickly emerged as the hero colour for Holden’s new hero car thanks to McPhee’s Bathurst win and Holden’s advertising agency pushing it in preference to sales director John Bagshaw’s favoured Bright Blue Metallic. The other GTS colours were Ermine White, Inca Gold Metallic, Silver Mink Metallic and Picardy Red.
That image
Tell us another image from Australia’s storied motoring history that’s more famous than the catsuit shot? Or one that more perfectly sums up the vehicle that it glamorises? Ford fanatics will suggest the ‘HO down the Hume’ pic from Wheels’ October 1971 issue that showed a GT-HO Phase III’s speedometer beyond 140mph. But this was never seen as far and wide as Holden’s ‘out there’ and oh-so-hip fashion-style advertising. It’s difficult to put into words the catsuit image’s impact, but we’ll give it a go in the feature elsewhere in this issue.
Way-out advertising
‘O ut to Drive you Wild’ was Monaro’s advertising catchphrase, wild being the operative word. Holden’s smash hit styling sensation was just so different from anything the company had offered to that point – and so was its advertising campaign. Gone was GMH’s staid, formal and conservative approach
to marketing. In its place was, well, something wild, re ecting the late sixties revolution in so many aspects of life.
Female focus
Think Monaro GTS and GTS 327 were brought to market to appeal solely to hairy-chested males? Ha! Wrong! It’s easy to view these models today as testosteronetargeted machines, but that would ignore the considerable time and effort Holden put into marketing them as fashion items to women, including, as we outline from page 38, an expensive and multifaceted advertising campaign in The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Those stripes
Prior to the Monaro’s launch, the only time stripes were seen on a Holden was when an EH or HR drove through the African Lion Safari’s big cat enclosure and a tiger jumped on the bonnet! So imagine how racy Monaro’s GTS stripes looked to those whose idea of exterior enhancement was opting for a white roof. Monaro’s stripes were far bolder than those that adorned the XR and XT GTs.
Those badges
Placing ‘GTS’ on the leading edge of the bonnet within the aforementioned stripes was so bold for the time. Ditto the similar treatment on the trailing edge of the bootlid.
That sound
The V8 burble completed the attack on the senses that Monaro offered the shocked marketplace. True, the V8 engine had been offered as an option on Holden models from the HK’s launch in January, six months ahead of Monaro’s introduction, but the sloopy coupe rammed home the message that Holden’s V8 age had begun.
Those gills
How purposeful do those four gills, sorry, cooling slots look on GTS Monaro’s front three-quarter panels? Standing still, the GTS looks like a Great White set to strike.
Built to race
Of course, the GTS 327 wasn’t only about style and looks. There was substance, too. With its Chevrolet-sourced V8 engine, heavyduty Saginaw four-speed gearbox, Chev diff, big fuel tank, et al, it was obvious that Holden had specced the car to do one thing – win Bathurst. Torquey Engine
The 5.3-litre V8 engine, with its castiron headers and four-barrel Rochester carburettor, had the torque to send the GTS 327s up the Mountain in ‘68. It was left the same as tted to Chevrolets and Pontiacs in the US. Its torque gave it the edge over the XT GTs up the hill and out of corners, while the Fords had the top-end advantage.
Unique taillights
Unique is an over-used word, but the tail panel strip that replicated full-width taillights was truly unique for the time. Never before and rarely (VT) since.
Big tank
The 25-gallon baffled fuel tank gave the GTS 327s a big range advantage over the Falcon and its 16.4-gallon tank.
That tacho
How wonderfully wacky is the consolemounted tachometer. A lack of space on the dash prompted the distinctive location.
Brakes... not so much
The GTS 327 certainly went like the clappers, but stopping wasn’t its strong point. Some would argue that this was an endearing feature and that it was a true sixties muscle car which concentrated on ‘go’ rather than ‘slow’.
Inspired by the GTO
The Monaro GTS 327 was the culmination in Australia of what GM had achieved in the US with the 1963 release of the Pontiac GTO.
AMC #70 told the story of the GTO set the ball rolling on our own uniquely-flavoured muscle car scene.
Elementary, my dear...
Watson, Bob Watson, that is, and Tony Roberts scored the Monaro’s first major race victory, in the 1968 Datsun Three-Hour Trophy at Sandown on September 15. In a perfect example of how, in that era, racing improved the breed, both were employed by Holden. The Warwick Yellow GTS 327 was personally owned by Roberts, who worked at GM-H as a draughtsman at the time, while Watson was in the engineering department and directly helped develop the GTS 327’s ride and handling. So this wasn’t your usual privateer effort.
Track debut
Watson and Roberts also have the distinction of first putting the Monaro on the racetrack at a meeting in Mallala in early August 1968. This was for the purposes of running the Roberts-owned car in. The pair only got to practice the car at Mallala because the GTS 327 was not yet homologated for racing and they didn’t have enough signatures on their racing licences to actually race it.
But wait, that’s not all...
The dynamic duo of Roberts and Watson drove this same pioneering Monaro over a 24-hour period at Sandown over the weekend of August 17-18, 1968, to set 16 Australian endurance records. They covered 1664.44 miles (2778.65km). This was certainly a punishing and unorthodox preparation ahead of the Sandown and Bathurst enduro classics.
Onto Bathurst
Roberts and Watson had intended to give the GTS 327 a breather by trailering it to Bathurst and back. But when the trailer proved unstable at speed early in the journey, they elected to abandon it on the outskirts of Melbourne – by coincidence leaving it just outside the Ford factory. They unloaded the Monaro and drove it the rest of the way there and back again. The pair had a trouble-free run to third place on the Mount.
Holden’s first Bathurst winner
The Monaro GTS 327 is, of course, Holden’s first Bathurst-winning model. Holden chassis engineer Bob Watson may have finished third that day in a privateer effort, but
you could argue that he was a winner anyway, given the role he played, with fellow engineer John Finlayson, in turning the company’s image car into a Bathurst victor.
The legend of Bruce McPhee
Wily endurance racing veteran Bruce McPhee goes down in history as the General’s rst Bathurst winnner. While this self-taught mechanic/engineer possessed no formal quali cations, he had innate skills and feel to pull off the biggest race win of his career in what was effectively a new era of racing. Back in 2004, a few short years before his passing, McPhee was interviewed for
AMC #17. In the interview, the Central Coast, NSW, driver says he quickly recognised the Monaro GTS 327’s Achilles Heel – brakes – and focused his energies on making them last. “From day one I said there was only one problem; it looked to be a pretty strong car, but it’s got no brakes. I said those brakes with those size shoes and pistons aren’t going to last very long (in a long distance race). I said forget about under the bonnet; everyone else will have their heads down and backsides up for weeks chasing more power. I said let’s forget that and concentrate on the brakes. I also reckoned that the race was won in the last 20 or 30 laps. It was then and it still is today. Your car has to be in really good shape towards the end to be in contention to win it.” McPhee identi ed a problem with the master cylinder after nishing sixth at Sandown, with the x involving linishing the piston. He used Hardie-Ferodo brand DS 11 pads on the front and “really hard sintered linings on the rear shoes, which worked better the hotter they got.” Wear was further minimalised by a carburetor tune – which took the idling jet out of play – that not only improved fuel economy but assisted with engine braking. This combo ensured his car made it through the race without a pad change.
The legend of Barry Mulholland
McPhee’s co-driver Barry Mulholland’s ‘stint’ behind the wheel comprised just a solitary lap, with the car owner undertaking the other 129. “The rules said there had to be a driver change but they didn’t say how long the codriver had to drive for, so Barry would do just the one lap,” McPhee told us in 2004. “I had good reasons for doing that. I was supplying the car and paying for the whole thing so I thought I should be driving the car. I was also aware that if I drove the whole distance bar that one lap, I could really lock in and get fully in tune with the car and the circuit. Barry was a good kid and damn good little driver, who was only too happy to do that one lap of Bathurst each year – he was just thrilled be there! After all, I couldn’t ask a name driver to sit up on the pit wall all day and drive one lap of the race. It was a funny arrangement, I guess, but it worked well.”
The legend of lucky #13
McPhee’s Bathurst ‘68-winning Monaro GTS 327 is surely the holy grail of Holden MIA searches. Sadly, we have not received any rm leads on its whereabouts today despite several calls in these pages for info on what became of it. While that’s disappointing, the ip side is that at least we haven’t received news of its demise. The most credible information we’ve received is that #13D is thought to reside today in regional Western Australia [ED: Well that narrows it down to some 2.5 million square kilometres!], with its owner oblivious to the fact he owns a valuable piece of Aussie motoring history. Get in touch with us via email at amceditorial@chevron.com.au
Holden’s first ATCC round winner
The HK Monaro also delivered Holden its rst win ATCC race win, via Norm Beechey’s victory at Surfers Paradise International Raceway’s penultimate round of the 1969 championship. It’s often overlooked that when the GTS 327 was coming on stream, sales director John Bagshaw eyed it off as a contender in Improved Production competition in the hands of Norm Beechey. Stormin’ Norm debuted his rst Monaro at Calder Park in October 1968 in ne style, beating Pete Geoghegan’s Mustang. This was just two weeks after the Monaro’s famous Series Production victory in that year’s Hardie-Ferodo 500, giving the new Monaro additional cred. Footage of this race can be found on YouTube.
What a drag
It wasn’t just in circuit racing that the HK performed. In drag racing, Perfectune’s Dave Bennett ensured the GTS 327 won admirers in a whole other motorsport market.
50 years of dining out
The big Monaro’s racing success earned the car and the Holden brand immediate race and rally heritage and brand values that the company traded on thereafter.
World champ was nearly first Monaro winner
How’s this for a quirk of motor racing history? If not for inadvertently popping the bonnet during a pitstop, the ‘ rst race winner in a Monaro’ tag would likely have been applied to 1980 Formula 1 World Champion Alan Jones. AJ and co-driver Clive Millis nished a close second to Watson/Roberts in the ’68 Sandown enduro, an extra pitstop to properly secure the bonnet robbing them of victory. See Whaddayaknow?
GTS 307 heaven
Special mention to the often overlooked GTS 307, a muscle car in its own right that’s lived in the shadow of the so-called ‘Bathurst Monaros’ but shouldn’t. Ditto GTS models tted with the sweet 186S six.
HDRT
Before Harry Firth was contracted to run the Holden Dealer Team, GM-H dipped its
big toe in the long forbidden waters of circuit racing via motoring writer, entrepreneur and racing team owner David McKay. McKay was front man for an entity born speci cally for Bathurst 1968 and buried soon after – the Holden Dealer Racing Team. The HDRT was an undercover operation acting on behalf of Fishermans Bend that ultimately achieved very little, except for helping Holden’s heavies decide how they should go about racing the following year. As it turned out, the trio of HDRT GTS 327s were upstaged by a pair of privateer Monaros. It was these two cars that won the two big endurance races held in late ’68, Sandown and Bathurst. The full story of the short-lived HDRT was told in AMC #67.
Golden anniversary rush
That sound you hear is the rush to complete the restoration of a handful of GTS 327s ahead of the various 50th birthday celebrations planned for the second half of 2018. Among the Monaros soon to resurface after many, many years off the road is Victorian Ken Turner’s machine, pictured above right. Turner, who purchased the car way back in 1983, plans to drive his pride and joy to the Mountain this October where he will again ‘check-in’ to the Bathurst Hilton campsite. We look forward to showing you Ken’s fully-restored beast, back in its original Silver Mink paint, in an upcoming ‘My Muscle Car’.
Our media darling
Sam Bonaccorso (standing far left in image below) is the proud owner of our magni cent Picardy Red feature car. It’s something of a media darling, previously featuring in various magazines. Sam purchased the matching numbers GTS 327 in the ‘noughties’, with it previously owned by another AMC favourite, Rob Losurdo. This car has won more than its fair share of ‘best car’ awards at club and Monaro show ‘n’ shines.
Stellar investment
On one hand we hate to label classic muscle cars as good nancial investments. Yet, on the other hand, value is simply a re ection of desirability, race pedigree and historical signi cance. On that front the Monaro GTS 327 has few peers. Several good examples have changed hands in the last 12 months in the $200,000 to $280,000 range. This is at least double what corresponding 1968 XT Falcon GT fetch.
Survivors
According to Monaro expert Ben Stewart (holdenhistoricalservices.com.au) two of earliest Monaros to be built, in April 1968, still survive today. If their owners read this, we’d love to see pics and learn more about them.
Nationals exposure
The Monaro Nationals take on extra signi cance this year given the nameplate’s golden anniversary and Tassie’s rst hosting of the biannual event. The 2018 Monaro Nationals will be held between November 30 and December 3 in Launceston organised by the Monaro and GM Club of Tasmania.
Prodded Ford
It’s ultimately responsible for the GT-HO version of the Falcon. The Monaro’s rst successful Bathurst sortie saw the arms race escalate further for 1969 with the formation of Ford’s in-house competition department.