ROUGH DIAMOND

This VG Pacer was dragged out of the desert, riddled with bullet holes. Now it lives to fight another day

Icar at a car show is also T’S not often that the most talked-about definitely the case with David the worst-looking one, but that was Pacer hardtop at this year’s Rawnsley’s bullet hole-ridden VG by the semi-trailer load Red Centrenats. This thing had patina the bush not far from Aileron, from spending almost 30 years in Alice. a little town about two hours out of and heard about a Mustard “I moved to Alice Springs in 2002 says. “All my questions fell Pacer dumped north of town,” David in about 2009 a mate through on no one knowing the car; then, seen one north-west of Alice Valiant circles mentioned his dad had Australian Muscle Car in in the 90s. In 2012 an article appeared asked them to send my details to magazine. I emailed the editor and few weeks later a mate rang me the person who sent the image. A a mud map and advised which and said it was his pic. He supplied cattle station the car was on.” or so ringing the cattle station David then spent the next six months Christmas Eve 2012, they gave three times a week, until finally, on remove the car. him permission to enter the land and back at David’s place – well, By Australia Day 2013 the car was front and rear bumpers, no what was left of it. “It had a bootlid, stone tray was there and the tail-lights, no doors, no guards, the half,” says David. In effect, it was bonnet was on the ground folded in more on that later. basically yard art at this point, but end up in their final resting Ordinarily, the story of how these cars to dig up a bit of this Val’s place is lost to time, but David managed a bloke originally from Sydney history. Apparently it was owned by 80s, and one of his mates who drag-raced the car in the early

THE BULLET HOLE-RIDDEN PACER HAD PATINA BY THE SEMITRAILER LOAD FROM SPENDING ALMOST 30 YEARS IN THE BUSH

I INITIALLY THOUGHT IT WAS TOO STUFFED, LOOK BUT I HAD A MATE AT IT AND HE SAID: “MATE, THIS CAR’S 90 BETTER THAN PER CENT OF THE CARS PEOPLE ARE RESTORING”

recalled that the car had run a four-barrel in the past, which requires the relocation of the wiper washer bottle, and there is evidence of this having been done in the engine bay. “The last probable owner worked on cattle stations in the mid-80s in the NT; he returned back to Sydney in about 1986 without the car,” David explains. “The story I got was that the car had a rear suspension failure on a backroad where it ended up either upside down or on its side. The left rear B-pillar was badly bent and the right rear spring front hanger had been torn out of the floor when I started working on it. It had been poorly repaired at least once prior to this.” You would think with the way that David has brought this car back to life using well-worn but original parts that he’d be a Valiant nut from way back, but that’s not the case at all: “Back when I was a young fella in Melbourne, it was only the wogs that owned Valiants. My step-father was a race car driver, so for my first car he asked me: ‘What do you want in a car?’ so I said: ‘I want two doors, lots of carbies and lots of gears!’ He said: ‘Get a Charger,’ but they only had three gears, so at the time I had the choice of two cars. I could buy a $3000 E38 or a $3000 Datsun 180B coupe, and I bought the 180B in the end because only wogs buy Valiants!” It was actually David’s wife that turned him on to Vals; she wanted him to build her a Charger. “I started collecting whatever bits I could find in Central Australia, buying anything that came up for sale,” he says. “At one stage, I think I had 32 Valiants in the yard. Lucky I’ve got seven acres!” The initial plans David had for the car may make a few Valiant fans wince. In all likelihood, if it had’ve been an ordinary VG coupe, not a Pacer, it probably would have ended up in the garden as yard art or sliced in half and hung up on the shed wall! “I initially thought it was too stuffed, but I had a mate come over from Sydney and he looked at it and said: ‘Mate, this car’s better than 90 per cent of the cars people are restoring,’” David says. “We’re spoiled for choice out here in Alice Springs; there’s no rust out here. Apart from where the paint is gone from the bullets, there’s not a speck of rust in it.” With a project David was working on for a mate stalling around Easter time, it looked like it was finally time for the Pacer to cop a bit of love. Not too much, just sort out the mechanicals and leave as much of the car’s history intact as possible. The VG was pushed into the shed on 29 April, which meant there was a little over four months to turn the gutted shell into a running and driving car in time for Red Centrenats. “I wanted it to be as close to a genuine Pacer as I could – that was full of bullet holes,” says David. Fortunately, Hot Mustard was a pretty popular colour choice back in 1970, so David managed to track down the missing body panels in matching original, including an original Pacer front-left guard. The other panels just needed a bit of masking tape and flat black paint to replicate the Pacer stripe. Thankfully, David didn’t go to the extent of shooting the new panels up with a shotgun to make them an even more perfect match! David even managed to save the original bonnet, which was in

AFTER MAKING A SPLASH AT RED CENTRENATS, DAVID’S PLANS ARE TO GET THE CAR LICENSED AND ON THE STREET

some fairly major surgery: “I really bad shape, although it took in it, so in the end I cut straightened it out, but it had no strength another bonnet.” The other the skin off it and glued the skin to required was the left-hand major piece of bodywork that was whack. “When I got the car B-pillar, which had taken a pretty big inches, so a back window the B-pillar was pushed in six-to-eight “So we put a Porta Power wouldn’t fit in the car,” David says. it without losing any paint.” in there to push it back out and did to be pushed back out to fit The right rear quarter also needed done to the rest of the panel. a wheel under it, but very little was No point making it look too nice! lot more liveable with a set The interior has also been made a door trims, and a genuine of high-back bucket seats, carpet and in. Powering the car is a Pacer instrument cluster went back that came out of NBA star rebuilt Pacer engine and three-speed it out for a 360. At least Andrew Bogut’s Pacer after he swapped it’s gone to a good home. a small dust storm – at Red After making a splash – or perhaps get the car licensed and on Centrenats, David’s plans are to are exit holes, so they’ve the street: “Some of the bullet holes have to belt those in. I got quite sharp edges and I’d probably but she drives dead really thought it would be driving sideways, – except for the wind noise straight. It’s quite a nice car to drive s from all the holes in the firewall!”