Race and rally
The Monaro HT GTS 350’s life as Holden’s frontline contender in racing and rallying was short – but remarkably sweet. In fact, the often overlooked HT Monaro was only occasionally beaten by Ford’s Falcon XW GT-HO and it won almost every major Series Production race from October ’69 through to February the next year. The common factor in all of that success was one man: Colin Bond.
IIn the three months following the ’69 Bathurst 500, Colin Bond was undefeated on the track, adding victory in the 1970 Surfers Paradise 12 Hour to his Bathurst win back in October. That’s not a bad rst three months as a factory driver in a brand new factory team. Sandown and Bathurst had been Harry Firth’s rst two races with the HDT. Barry Ferguson was the existing Holden rally ace and continued with the new Monaros as Firth pressed Bond into service for the remaining year’s racing programme, as well as the odd rally. Of the Bathurst squad, Bond, Roberts and Brock were retained, although it would be well into the new year before Brock was making regular
race appearances for the HDT.
“Just after the Bathurst race,” Bond says, “Harry sort of got Peter and myself on board, although it was a little while before Peter was completely on board. I did the Lakeside 1500, the Surfers 12 Hour with Tony Roberts, and the Tasman Cup Series production races.”
And he won most of them. In the four month period from October to February, Bond was only beaten twice on the track, each time by Moffat.
The Surfers enduro was a particularly gruelling affair – arguably tougher than the Bathurst 500. It was just about twice as long as the Great Race, it took place in the early January summer Gold Coast heat and humidity, and the Surfers track surface was notorious for its abrasiveness.
Bond and the HDT suffered several tyre failures, as did most of the eld. But Bond says the Monaro was also well suited to the Queensland track.
“Because of the torque characteristics of the motor, you could leave it in a gear for a long time. We were using third and top gear most of the time. At Surfers Paradise it was faster leaving it in a higher gear, even though it didn’t feel faster – it always feels faster when you’re in a lower gear and giving it plenty! But you were using the torque of the motor, and it was quicker around there trying to hang on to higher gears. I actually took that into my rallying a bit, trying to use the torque of the motor in a higher gear and trying to balance the car.”
The 1970 Tasman Touring Series ran in conjunction with some Australian rounds of the prestigious Tasman Cup openwheeler series.
Here Bond came up against Moffat, the works GT-HO driver defeating
Victory at Bathurst and the Surfers Paradise 12 Hour, second place in the Australian Rally Championship and third in the Ampol Round Australia Trial, and all in a 12-month period – the Monaro HT GTS 350 boasts a pretty handy competition record.
Bond in the opening round at Surfers Paradise after the Monaro blew a tyre.
Bond turned the tables on Moffat seven days later at Warwick Farm, but the following weekend saw Moffat victorious at Sandown in a win that clinched the series for the emerging Ford star.
That was Bond’s last race start in a Monaro as Holden and Firth prepared for the debut of the Torana LC GTR XU-1.
It wasn’t Bond’s last competition start in a Monaro, though. A car the size and weight of the Monaro HT 350 GTS did not look at rst glance like the ideal rally contender, but its record in the forests and in rallycross was more than respectable.
Two weeks after his Bathurst win, Bond drove a HDT Monaro to victory in a round of the Victorian rally series. It was powered by the new 253 Holden V8 engine – which would have made this the rst competition success ever for a Holden V8 engine.
A week later Bond steered the 253 Monaro
to third place in what was the very rst rallycross meeting in Australia, at Calder. It was won by John Keran in a factory-backed Volvo, with Bond’s Bathurst and Surfers 12 Hour cowinner Tony Roberts nishing second (in a GTS 350) to make it a HDT Monaro two-three.
Bond went on to run the 350 Monaro in the 1970 ARC. He went winless, but a pair of second placings were enough to secure second overall in the championship.
Back on the track, while the HDT itself took a winter sojourn, Holden was well represented by privateer Monaro GTS 350 drivers, Bob Morris and Bob Jane in particular. Each enjoyed their share of success, with Morris dominant in NSW events and Jane getting the better of Moffat in the wet in a one-hour Series Production clash at Calder on August 16.
That was the last major Series Production race win for the HT GTS 350, as Bond debuted the new XU-1 to victory at Warwick Farm on September 6.
The XU-1 would be Holden’s attack weapon to take on Ford’s new Phase II version of the XW GT-HO at Bathurst. Despite the fact that the GTS 350-mounted Jane had beaten Moffat’s factory GT-HO less than two months earlier, at Bathurst there was only the solitary privateer Monaro, for David Sheldon. With Moffat’s pole winning time in the new Falcon in ‘70 being a fraction slower than Geoghegan’s effort the year before, and with Bond qualifying the XU-1 two-tenths slower than he’d done so in the Monaro 12 months earlier, it’s tempting to wonder whether Holden (as well as the privateer Holden drivers) had made a mistake in rushing to embrace the XU-1.
Could a GTS 350 have won Bathurst in 1970? Perhaps not, but Bond himself believes they might have been better off with a Monaro on the Mountain that year.
“I do think we should have stayed with the Monaro for another year. The XU-1 was a fantastic car for rallying, and for just about every circuit – but not Bathurst.You needed the grunt to get up the hill, but where the cars were fast, across the top, you’d get stuck behind a Falcon and lose even more time.”