ALLEN MACFADYEN
> GEELONG, VICTORIA
ALLEN Macfadyen has spent most of his life buying, selling, breaking and fixing classic Aussie metal around Geelong and beyond. He’s also indoctrinated three sons into the carmad lifestyle, including Torana racer Scott (SM, May ’11). We caught up with him at his Breakwater workshop for a yarn.
So what’s your background, mate?
Cars are our lives. I’ve been in the car trade for 50 years now, starting out as an 18-yearold salesman at Wyres Brothers Holden in Ballarat. After that, I ran South Geelong Autos for 35 years. I’m a self-taught painter and panel beater at our workshop, so that’s how I keep busy when things are quiet.
No doubt you would’ve had some rockets come through the yard.
I’ve had them all! I think every performance car you could buy came through there. We had all sorts of Monaros and plenty of GT Falcons – which aren’t as quick as people think they are!
Did you keep many for yourselves?
We were in a lucky position being in the trade; if we saw a car in Melbourne or wherever we’d just jump on it and say: ‘Here we go again!’ One of the best cars we had was a Brock VK Director. It was just lightning-fast, like a race car on the road. I’ll always remember taking my son down to Barwon Heads for footy on a Saturday morning and hitting 240km/h on the way. You wouldn’t dare do it now!
How do you keep yourself busy these days?
I got out of the car yard about eight years ago. My son Scotty took it over, so I went down and started restoring some of the cars that were sitting in the workshop. We have a few here now: old Fairlanes, an HK ute, even a twodoor LJ Torana. This year hasn’t really changed things for me; I’ve just been working away as usual and the car yard has been busy.
Tell us a bit about the XT you’ve got here.
We built this ute 13 or 14 years ago as a GT tribute. It’s got a 351 Windsor in it, which we bought as a brand new block. Eugene at Flowcraft built it for us and did the heads; it’s a tough motor. It’s got a manualised C4 with a 4500rpm stall, and a nine-inch diff with 4.11 gears. It’s a good, quick ute – about twice as fast as the old XW GT I had before that. You can just jump into it and have a bit of fun. I’ve had it facing the wrong way a few times on Australia Day cruises – I’m not much of a steerer! The boys always have a laugh at that.
I’ve had it facing the wrong way a few times on Australia Day cruises – I’m not much of a steerer!