Torana heaven Invercargill man owns so many Holden Toranas he’s lost count

When you arrive at John Armitstead’s home, near Invercargill, you are greeted by a glass wall, behind which sit six Holden Toranas.

Don’t ask him how many of the classic cars he owns. ‘‘I honestly couldn’t tell you,’’ he says.

‘‘There’s one under the house, a few more out at the farm, one at the panel beaters and a few out there in the shed,’’ he says as he waves vaguely towards his driveway. The ‘‘shed’’ is actually a former car dealership display room, home to those six Toranas, three of which are in original factory condition.

A self-described ‘‘dumb farmer by trade,’’ the 58-year-old picked up the ins and outs of an engine from a young age and does all the mechanical work on his cars himself.

‘‘Every time I go to Australia I come back with car parts stashed in my luggage . . . it’s made for a few funny moments going through the x-ray machines.’’

There are engines and car parts scattered across the workshop floor, in various stages of repair, and a Mini Cooper on the hoist – he’s got ‘‘a few’’ of those, too – he likes to race them.

‘‘I like Minis cos I was watching motorsport racing and I saw one holding off a Mark 2 Jag . . . My first car was a Mini when I was about 16.’’

Pinpointing when his love affair with Toranas began, however, is a little harder.

‘‘My stepfather was into Holdens, so maybe that’s it. I also remember seeing Peter Brock win his first Bathurst race in a Torana.’’

In fact, Armitstead’s most recent addition to his collection harks back to that race in 1972.

He imported an exact replica of Brock’s winning car, a LJ Torana GTR XU-1, from Perth about four months ago. He intends to race it in a Targa Rally.

Armitstead bought his first Torana for $4700 when he was 18 years old from a car dealer in New Plymouth.

‘‘There were 10 of them [Toranas] on the lot and I drove all of them that day.’’

Since then, his passion for the car has grown, from buying one to be the family car for 10 years in 1986 (not so practical; the Torana only had two doors and Armitstead has four children), to the one he races at Teretonga and throughout the South Island (in pieces at the moment after a nearserious crash a couple of years ago.)

New Holdens don’t interest him much, he prefers the romance and classic simplicity of the sixcylinder Torana.

‘‘It used to be you could pop the bonnet and figure it all out for yourself. These days with the computers in cars it could be a little wire somewhere [causing a problem],’’ he said.

‘‘They’re [Toranas] pretty good old workhorses.’’

He began collecting them about 10 years ago but reckons he is going to start selling them off soon.

‘‘I suppose I was going through a mid-life crisis, wanted something to do and could afford to.

‘‘I’m probably too old for a midlife crisis now.

‘‘I do wonder once our generation is gone, who is gonna take care of them.

‘‘Cars just don’t seem to mean today what they used to.’’