AMC BEST LETTER
RIP Calais
Once again well done on another issue. No doubt you will get a ton of emails about the article you wrote about the death of the Commodore (which by the time 115 gets printed the brand will just about be nished for good in the new car section).
Wind the clock back and in regards to the deletion of Commodore from the lineup, one other thing that meant was the end of the Calais nameplate. While the Calais was a spin-off from the Commodore, it still had its own following and had its own unique history (without the Calais there would have been no Senator for HSV and no Director for HDT).
While people will argue until the end of time if the ZB should have been called a Commodore (I don’t think it would have made much of a difference), personally I think the ZB Calais (V) was arguably the best of the breed.
A Calais is about luxury, style and gadgets it doesn’t have to be a V8 (the VL Calais has a huge following and not because of the V8 option), the ZB Calais V ticks all of those boxes very easily – it has style, is by far the most luxurious gadget-packed Calais we have ever seen, and the V6 has enough punch to it – although a 2.0 AWD would have been the icing on the cake.
Unfortunately Holden’s marketing department obviously forgot the Calais was in the ZB lineup, so most people forgot there was a Calais.
I have attached a picture of my dad’s garage which is probably the only garage in Australia to proudly house a ZB Calais V next to a MY17 Calais V V8.
Two complete different interpretations of a Calais but both are de nitely worthy of wearing the Calais badge. (The VF we bought brand new and the ZB we bought as a dealer demo which was given to my manager but driven by his wife as she loved it!).
Keep up the great work as you guys always do. Luke Charteris
Peter Perfect
One of the great things I really enjoy in your magazine is all the little pieces of history in Australian Motorsport that you bring to light. In issue 113 in your editorial I noticed one piece that you had not known. How it came about that Peter Brock got his nickname Peter Perfect. To shed some light on this one I saw Brock interviewed back in either 1983 or 1984 by Channel Seven’s Pat Welsh who asked him that very question.
Brock’s answer was that it was started by Bob Morris’ kids who use to watch the cartoon
Wacky Races. In the show the driver of car number nine was called. ‘Peter Perfect’ and they soon started calling Brocky the same which obviously caught on.
Graeme Murphy
Seldo says
Iam slightly embarrassed by the extent of the article on myself in AMC #114 but, thank you very much! Since I really only answered questions in our interview I didn’t really take the chance to acknowledge and thank people who gave me the opportunities in the sport.
Tony, and in particular Gerry Lister gave me starts in various different cars and I managed to destroy a couple of them – one my fault, another not. And quite a few of Tony’s on the road…. My nicknames were ‘Speed’ and ‘Crash’… Not something to be proud of.
Others – the late Colin Wear of Welsor fame, the late Ron Hodgson, the late John Giddings, John McNicol, George Shepheard, Gary Leggatt/
Bob Williamson, Alf Grant, Digby Cooke and Paul Bray.
Without the support of people like these, my motorsport would not have come as far as it did.
With that amazing wisdom of hindsight, I would have done a lot of things differently.
I was a bit of a young tear-arse and a bit rough around the edges, and managed to get the quite in uential David McKay offside very early on by wearing a souvenir T-shirt in the pits at Surfers Paradise denigrating the Police in some way, to the point that he chipped me about it. And rightly so, although I thought it was smart at the time…
Later on he used to come and give me little tips from time-to-time. Like at Oran Park one meeting and he tugged my sleeve and said “Lllllisten to me Ddddavid…..Yyyou’d be a lot qquicker if you kkept it sssstraight coming out of En..En..Energol !”
Smartarse replies: “I know that David, but I know I can’t catch the RX7s in front anyway, and the crowd seem to like it… so just putting on a show…”
Back then I also was fairly quiet and a bit shy, so I eschewed any chance at PR or selfpromotion – which of course today needs to be one of the main skills required for any aspiring race-driver.
Now I could talk for hours about the ‘away’ trips that always seemed to turn into some disaster or another! Like one trip from Sydney down to Hume Weir. I only had a racecar – no towcar or trailer, both of which were always begged, borrowed or hired, and almost always a different combination.
I had arranged with Tony Lister to use a compact Fairlane that we were trading, but when it came in it didn’t have a hook. So I contacted Repco at Mascot on the Friday afternoon (of a long weekend) and asked if they had a tow-bar in stock (Yes) and what time did they close? (5.15) “I’m on my way! I’ll be there by 5!”
…and you guessed it – at 4.55 they were long gone!
We had another Volvo 122, and we had a tow-bar to suit that. So that was tted up, and off I go to the servo to hire the trailer (which had no brakes), and we were nally loaded-up and on our way by about midnight to drive all night and be ready for practice at the Weir on Sat morning, 600km away…
As we headed south we had several monumental loses with the dreaded trailer-sway with our grossly overloaded rig, and after one death-defying episode I decided that we’d never make it alive.
So, we unloaded the racecar and pressed on, me driving the racecar with open exhaust, race-tyres, numbers, no rego or plates – and the clutch-slave-cylinder failing… Crazy stuff!
Can you imagine trying to drive this thing inconspicuously up the main street of Holbrook at 8.30 on a Saturday morning! Stop. Engine off. To start, into gear and turn the key and lurch away...
Anyway, we made it, borrowed the slavecylinder from the tow-car, and was quite chuffed to qualify on the second row of the grid with Peter Manton’s Mini on pole, Robin Bessant’s Lotus-Cortina second, Norm Beechey’s Chev Nova third, and me fourth.
But I blew the clutch-plate after a dozen laps of practice with no spare…
Not to worry! We can pull the clutch out of the tow-car, says some genius. So we did. In for a penny...
Next day, raceday, I was having a ball, and Beechey was being kind and played with me for a few laps and let me lead him for a bit and then... Kaboom! Clutch gone again.
That signalled a total disaster, end of weekend. But just about then my wonderful mate Norm Ellis (R.I.P.) who was a copper and had had to work so didn’t come down with us, arrived.
When I say he arrived, he actually arrived chauffeuring a big black Mercedes 600 Grosser with Bob Jane and Johnny Harvey in the back! Don’t ask me how it happened as he never really explained fully, but I suspect that Harves had driven the car up planning to meet Bob at the airport and Norm also arrived, and for a laugh why don’t I chauffeur you…
Anyway, when Norm heard of the clutch problem and that we had no spare, armed with the information that an MGB or Austin Freeway clutch would suffice, and where would you nd one in Albury on a Sunday morning anyway, he disappeared to ‘see what I can do….’
Now, Norm was an amazing man. I could tell lots of almost unbelievable stories, but as it was subsequently revealed he stopped ‘old mate’ at the gate as they entered and borrowed his ute!
As you do! And high-tailed it into town. There, he apparently tracked down the local BMC dealer, knocked on his door at his home and got him to come downtown and open up his business and supply a clutch…
Easy…
So, with a new clutch in hand we installed it in time, had another great “dice” with Beechey, and then of course had to pull it back out again and t to the tow-car to go home.
After some careful re-packing and with the trailer now better balanced we attempted to return to Sydney only to have that clutch slavecylinder also fail halfway and drove the rest of the way with no clutch. To stop, you slip it into neutral, and to go you turn the engine off, into 1st gear and then turn the key…..pulling a trailer and race-car and tools and spare wheels..
I didn’t need any rocking to get to sleep that night…
Anyway, many thanks for the write-up!
David Seldon
True Blue Falcons
Not sure if you’re running a story about Steve’s TCM XD, but I was fortunate enough to get a hot lap and a photo of my DJR beside the new beast at Lakeside on the 10th of February. De nitely a pretty cool photo, I thought, of the two together.
Geoff Suzanne
ED: As you can see, Geoff, we have run a story on the Johnson TCM XD – and you’re right, the two blue Falcons do look cool together!
Tank Fairlane 1
With regard to the article on Steve Reed’s 1959 Tank Fairlane in issue 114, here is a photo of GZT-510 which was mentioned in the article. It would be interesting to nd out the history of these rst 10 or so Tanks. It would make sense that these cars were a sort of pre-production prototype and all of them were probably registered on the same day. Hopefully someone can get in touch with you who knows a bit more about them. David Stewart
Tank Fairlane 2
Never expected to see a feature on the 1959 US Ford in AMC, but will lap it up because I used to own one, albeit the Aussie version that was released out here in 1961. Bought it in ‘65 with 16,000miles on the clock and kept it for 6 years. It went everywhere including to Perth in 1969. Was still the big block engine but at 332CI displacement. That engine was also available in a 390CI displacement which was in the Aussie 1965 Galaxie as an option.
Attached pic’ taken at the top of Eucla Pass on the only bitumen out on the Nullabor back then; (all 250 metres of it).
Eric Waples
Castlereagh old timer
Some memories were evoked for me with the article on Brian Keegan. I was responsible for wiring the Castlereagh track when the ARDC took it over. We used ‘Don 8’ wiring [steel core with twisted copper strands and rubber and cotton insulation] which was a leftover from army WW2 stores. Times were down to two decimal places as we only used analogue stopwatches and electro-magnetic operational system. [ex PMG] Not very sophisticated by today’s standards.
Ian Mudge
ED: Maybe not very sophisticated by today’s standards, Ian, but I dare say a lot more advanced that what was happening with road racing lap timing back then.
Hey Charger?
Iwas searching through a heap of old photos the other day and came across this print – thought you might be interested. It belonged to a mate of mine back in the day (1976). I think he only kept it for about a year before selling it when he moved to NSW to do his pilot training. We went to school together on the Eastern Shore of Hobart and were both motorsport mad – he was more into bikes and raced motocross for a while. I won’t give you his name as we had some outrageous times in that Charger – 130 mph down the Southern Outlet on the way to a party at Kingston Beach was the quickest I ever saw in it. We saw some guys in a Mazda RX3 going to the same party on the way up the outlet (quite steep heading up to the Mt Nelson turn-off) and had a bit of an impromptu race – pretty one sided, though! They were at strap in third doing around 70 mph while we were in top and hit 110 mph before the top… He came around to my place in Lindisfarne the day he bought it to go for a spin in it – proud as punch, of course. We went up to the U-turn bay from the bottom main road to the top main road and he gave it probably the same amount of throttle as his Datsun 180B SSS – and promptly looped it in the geranium bed and back onto the bottom road! Not an auspicious start but it didn’t take him long to get a handle on it.
I did have a drive of it coming back from Sandford Moto X track one Sunday – just unbelievable torque! So planted and stable at speed, too. I had been in (and driven) a couple of LJ XU-1s (one with the Bathurst pack) but the E49 was in a different league for me – hugely impressive back then. I lost touch with him over 30 years ago. Wonder if the Charger survived. It was the Vitamin C orange in colour.
Lindsay Ross oldracephotos.com