Goodbye, farewell

Not a bad way to slide out of the editor’s chair, Luke, with an issue full of good stuff. I very much appreciated your comments

in Muscle Mail about my ongoing submissions to AMC’s letters section. I often felt I was going along for the ride as well, which was good. Hope Grant, the owner of issue #108’s cover car, the Repco GT-HO, gets his answers to the ‘nitty gritty’ stuff that, at the time of writing, remained a mystery. Meanwhile, the story on the carrot farmers from Mildura, the Lamattina family, in issue #108 and their XW GT struck a chord with me. It’s a beautiful car in the right hands of ownership. The farm ‘junk’ struck a chord, too.

It was great for my own car, my father’s Fairlane, to appear in your nal issue in the ‘My Muscle Car’ section. My Dad was a real petrolhead and my reference in that piece to him showing me under the bonnet of his brand new Fairlane about two weeks after taking delivery of the vehicle needs a little bit of further explanation. At the time, my girl and I journeyed from Lithgow, where we were living, one Friday after work, down to Bateman’s Bay where my Mum and Dad lived. Because of the distance we arrived around midnight, but before cups of tea were poured he said: “Come downstairs and have a look at this.”

Anyway, he red up the little 289 and comes around under the bonnet and with his hand on the accelerator lever to the carby and he shows me how responsive that engine was. Meanwhile, I was looking at the label on the left-side rocker cover and it said ‘289 SPECIAL.’ And it was.

Sincere best wishes to you and yours. And Steve will step right in; no training required there. Eric Waples

Albion Park, NSW