KITS AND PIECES
Native snake
Murray Scaife has spent most of his life in Upper Hutt. His father owned a factory only two doors down from Almac Cars, one of Upper Hutt’s most prolific car manufacturers after General Motors.
There are some noteworthy differences between the two car plants. One was manufacturing several cars per hour, while the other was manufacturing several cars per year. With a total workforce of no more than two, Almac was always several leagues removed from the General. Most of its cars have departed through its doors in kitset form. However, General Motors has gone now, while the Almac car factory is still where it has been since the early ’80s.
WINDS OF CHANGE
Alex Mcdonald, the CEO of Almac Cars, emigrated to New Zealand with his Kiwi wife in the late ’60s. In England, he had developed a fascination for the kit car industry and had built a Jem Marsh kit called the ‘Sirocco’. Jem Marsh would later go on to found Marcos Cars with Frank Costin. The process of building the Sirocco taught Alex how to work with fibreglass and he was impressed by the ease of making complex shapes with this relatively new product.
In 1971, Alex started his own fibreglass manufacturing company called ‘Almac Plastics’. Once the business was up and running, Alex, a car builder to the core, turned his thoughts to creating his own kit car. His first attempt was a Mini-based sports car, but it never got past the mock-up stage. At that time, most kit cars were based on the VW Beetle floorpan, so for his second attempt
Alex used a VW chassis to create the ‘Yellow Car’. This was a wedge-shaped coupé, which was a popular style at the time shared by cars such as TVR and the Lotus Esprit.
As his father’s building was so close to the Almac factory in the late ’70s, Murray, who had just completed his apprenticeship, was present at the inception of Almac Cars. Murray saw the Yellow Car in its early stages and convinced Alex to let him be involved in its construction — until he and his wife Bev decided to go on an OE together to Canada.
While Murray was in Canada, Alex’s friends convinced him that designing his own car for an unknown marque was taking too big a risk and that it would be a safer bet to build a replica first.
In 1971, Alex started his own fibreglass company called Almac Plastics. Once the business was up and running, Alex turned his thoughts to creating his own kit car
BUG V. SNAKE
In 1981, the Yellow Car was moved to the side of the factory and Alex started work on another wood and plaster plug, based on one of the most exciting cars in the world, the 427 S/C Cobra.
‘S/C’ was an abbreviation for semi-competition. As its creator, Carroll Shelby, could not sell enough 427 racing cars, he detuned them, fitted a windscreen, and registered them for road use. Alex modelled his car on the 427 S/C, as only about 30 of these cars had been manufactured. It was also, in his opinion, the best-looking Cobra of the lot. As there were no actual 427 Cobras in the country that Alex could use for reference, he created the plug for the body using measurements from a book, a 1/24-scale die-cast model, and by eye. Although the car is visually correct, many measurements were slightly different from the original. This turned out to be helpful, given Ford’s sensitivity about the Cobra name and copies. For this reason the Almac car has always been called the Almac 427SC.
CHASSIS CHAT
As the plug was nearing completion, Grahame Berry, a local hot rod and drag car builder, heard of the Cobra
Alex believed he would be able to sell only 25–30 before had saturated the market. He could not have been more wrong
project and approached Alex to buy a body. As Grahame intended to build his own chassis for the car, he reached an agreement with Almac Cars that customers who did not want to build their own could buy a chassis from Grahame’s company, Graham Berry Race Cars.
Grahame, a qualified pattern maker, also decided to make patterns for many of the unique aluminium parts on the original cars such as the AC pedals and the Cobra mag-wheel centre. Grahame had these cast out of aluminium and machined them himself, intending to sell them as options to go with his chassis.
In 1984, the prototype 427SC was displayed for the first time at the National Hot Rod Show as a rolling chassis with the body and steering fitted. Alex believed he would be able to sell only 25–30 cars, at which point the market would be saturated. He could not have been more wrong. Seventeen 427SCS were sold in the first year of production, and within three years he had exceeded the number of 427s produced by AC cars. The demand is not as great now as it was in the heyday of the 1980s but at least five 427SCS leave the factory each year. Having produced well over 300 cars and a variety of other models over the years, Almac is easily the biggest, and now the only, producer of Cobra-style kit cars in New Zealand.
HARDTOP
Once the original kit had been manufactured there was little development required. With the popular Jaguar rear end and a supply of V8s readily available, there was nothing to stop the steady stream of kits making their way out of the factory doors — but they have undergone some changes over the years. After about 55 cars had been sold, the floorpan was lowered to give drivers more protection from the wind. The front suspension has been changed from LX Torana to a version designed and fabricated by Grahame. Just before he retired in the early 2000s, Grahame also designed a new independent rear end to give buyers an alternative to the Jaguar. The most recent development has been a hardtop, developed by Alex, to help protect the driver from the elements. These days most cars are sold as turn-key with only a few examples going to home builders.
The year 1984 marked Murray and Bev’s return to our shores. Murray started working for Les Evans of Whakatiki Engineering and later that year bought the business. Coincidentally, his factory was located in the same building as Graham Berry Race Cars and Les Evans Engineering was making parts for that business for its Almac chassis.
While he was in Canada, Murray had owned a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am and a Z28 Camaro. Much later, and back here in 2013, he saw an Almac 427SC for sale. The car was sold before he could take it any further but the seed was sown. Accepting he wouldn’t have time now to build his own, he contacted a local company about building a brand new Almac 427SC for him. If he was going to buy a Cobra replica, he might as well buy one with character, one with strong personal connections, and have it built with the features he wanted.
AUTHENTIC IMPULSE
Murray decided to keep his car as authentic to the original racing 427s as possible, selecting the 1965 427 S/C Cobra in full racing trim as the goal. He had quick-lift bars fitted rather than bumpers. The interior is as close to accurate as Murray could make it. Even the speedo is in miles per hour, as per the American original. One of the few concessions Murray made — headrests and a windscreen being compulsory mods — was the fitting of a Tremec five-speed gearbox to improve petrol economy.
The engine is a Ford 427-cubic-inch (seven-litre) crate engine imported from the US. He had a choice of either a 535bhp (399kw) or a 450bhp (336kw) engine. Murray opted for the 450bhp engine, believing it to be not only in keeping with the original car’s power rating but also more than adequate for a road-going car weighing about 1000kg. In this configuration, the car has a 0–100kph time of just over four seconds. Not exactly slow.
Murray’s car took just over two years to build. A major teething problem was that the American 427 engine was not compatible with our low-octane petrol, which caused excessive detonation in the cylinders. It was only discovered one day when Murray was driving the car in Wairarapa and he heard a rattle as part of a piston made its way out his exhaust. That resulted in an engine rebuild to specifications suitable for our fuel and the fitment of larger mufflers and exhaust pipes. Since then, Murray has driven about 9000 miles in the car and he has no intention of ever selling it.
Murray opted for the 450bhp engine in keeping with the original. It is more than adequate for road-going car weighing about 1000kg