Issue 67
$9.95
NZ $11.99 (incl GST)
www.musclecarmag.com.au
Stories: Paul Gover, chief reporter, Carsguide
MusclE nEWs
w
F Series
flagship creates buzz
S
omething very, very special is coming to Australian roads in May. It’s a big banger from Holden Special Vehicles that promises to re-write the record books on local performance and push the limited-edition W427 back into the pages of history. Everything points to a supercharged V8 engine that will trump the W427 powerplant which cranked out 375 kiloWatts and 640 Newton-metres from a 7.0-litre V8 back in 2008. The standard for the current E Series cars from HSV is 325 kiloWatts from the 6.2-litre LS3 Gen4 V8. The hero engine is the headliner in an aggressive new F Series lineup – provided Ford does not contest the F tag the way it once did with Ferrari – that’s already a hit with the HSV insiders who have been present at early previews. “The car looks fantastic. The body kit is much more aggressive,” one of the guests present at an exclusive HSV preview revealed. “It’s going to set a power record,” said another. The F Series is the first HSV model to be developed since the death of HSV’s founder and guiding force, Tom Walkinshaw. He was one of the biggest fans of the four-door HSV 427 and even shipped one to Britain for use as his personal car. But, just as Tom was renowned for keeping secrets, HSV boss Phil Harding is giving absolutely no hints on the F Series despite a locked-and-loaded on-sale date before the start of June. “I cannot talk about future models. My job is to sell the cars I have now,” Harding says. E Series cars were in runout through April and HSV is still cleaning up from its 75,000-vehicle celebrations a month earlier. The landmark 75,000th car is a ClubSport painted in Perfect Blue, named after Peter Brock and also saluting the Formula Blue HDT Group A VK SS Commodore, which was an instant hit when it was released back in 1985. HSV built 12,426 cars at its original base at Notting Hill in Victoria – 1191 in the first year – before it moved to the former Nissan factory site in Clayton, now owned by Lindsay Fox, in December 1994. Cars have been flowing strongly since then and the 5000th car was a VN T30 built in June, 1991, number 20,000 was a 1997 Senator built in April, number 40,000 was a ClubSport built in August 2003, and the 50,000th completed was a VZ Clubsport built in July 2006. “The build of our 75,000th vehicle caps off a memorable 12 months for our company. In celebrating this milestone with our staff, it gave us the chance to reflect on all those who have contributed to the success this company has enjoyed over the past 25 years,” says Phil Harding. ED: Holden’s new Commodore SS V (in Fantale) is show above for VF illustrative purposes only.
2 www.musclecarmag.com.au
Ford’s racing future
S
ix from 28 is not a good result for Ford. But that’s the imbalance of power in V8 Supercars racing as the blue oval representation on the grid slumps to the same low levels as the Falcon’s recent results in showrooms. The current crew is the smallest since the late Howard Marsden was recruited back to Broadmeadows to put some much-needed respectability into the Ford presence back
John Morris/ Mpix
in 1999, when Holden absolutely dominated the starting line-up. The Falcon is outnumbered 2.5 to one by the 15 VF Commodores on the grid. Four Nissan Altimas and three Erebus-AMG E63s are running in 2013 and the Japanese brand says it would be happy to expand its presence in 2014 if things are going well. Ford Performance Racing, the nominated factory team, contributes four cars to the current total of six, with the only other Falcons on the track in 2013 the pair of cash-strapped hopefuls rolled out of Dick Johnson Racing. Inevitably, the low car count and the loss of Stone Brothers Racing for the first year of the Car of the Future category has brought questions about the future of Ford’s involvement in V8 Supercar racing. It’s one in a string of questions, as Ford only managed 831 Falcon deliveries in March, a total that was even bettered by the luxury-class Mercedes-Benz C-Class. Ford’s president, Bob Graziano, is clearly sick of having to defend his brand and its cars but still manages to produce some positives from
No show
O
ne of the most important motoring events of the year is dead for 2013 – and perhaps forever. The Australian International Motor Show was canned in March when fewer than 20 of the country’s car companies were prepared to commit to the event planned for Melbourne in June. The announcement came as a huge shock because car sales are heading towards another record year in the 1.1 million range, even though lots of companies are struggling to make worthwhile profits on deliveries. It hit Ford and Holden hard because they planned big reveals, with Holden locked on the VF
the current situation. “We had a really strong January, February was OK; it’s a good start to the year which is a big one for us – we have a couple of new vehicles launching this year, Kuga and the EcoSport freshening of Fiesta,” Graziano said. On the Falcon front, 2014 cannot come soon enough. “We’ve got the freshening coming for the Falcon in 2014, that’s what we’re focussed on. It will take us to the end of 2016,” he said, repeating the same mantra that’s chanted everywhere from Detroit to Broadmeadows. But what about the long-term future of the Falcon? “We haven’t made any decisions one way or another yet, once we do we’ll make the announcement and let everybody know,” he says. And what about V8 Supercars? “It’s something we’ve been involved with for quite some time and we’ll continue to look at the involvement we have. “We’re trying to be targeted with our sponsorships going forward, in any sport or event, to make sure that we’re getting what we need back out of it and we’re able to contribute to it.”
FPR’s current three-year deal with Ford Australia concludes at the end of the season. Team co-owner Rod Nash told racing website Speedcafe.com that securing a new deal with Ford for 2014 and beyond is his number one priority, amid media reports suggesting that the troubled car maker was unlikely to renew as part of a complete exit from the category. Nash and racing stalwart Rusty French acquired FPR from British engineering firm Prodrive in late 2012. “It’s absolutely 110 percent wrong,” he said of suggestions that negotiations between FPR and Ford had broken down. “The negotiations with Ford are no different to any other year. FPR has traditionally had threeyear terms with Ford, and that has just come around to another period. “To lay the facts on the table, there have been no pullbacks from Ford in advising us that they’re not going forward or that there’s a restriction in monetary issues. “The conversations are confidential by nature but I can absolutely say that negotiations are ongoing.”
Commodore and Ford planning a teaser program for the 2014 Falcon and Territory updates. But a motor show costs a carmaker at least $1 million and most will demand a watertight connection between spending and sales that a motor show now struggles to deliver. The AIMS has been hurt by falling attendances over recent years, most notably in 2012 in Sydney at the outdated and undersized Darling Harbour Exhibition Centre, which is set for redevelopment in the coming years. Shows have also been in decline around the world, with the notable exception of China and the New York event in America. It has taken less than five years for oncesuccessful shows in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth to fold in Australia, as well as the amalgamation of the previously-rival events in Sydney and Melbourne after the Victorian Automobile Chamber
of Commerce and the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries finally agreed it was better to work together than continue to fight. The show now faces a total re-think and a new approach if it is to survive for the planned move to Homebush in Sydney’s west for 2014. “We’re ruling nothing in and nothing out on the future structure of the motor show,” the AIMS organiser, Russ Tyrie, admits. “We really want to start again. We’re exploring all the opportunities. We have a lot of research to help us and we intend to re-engage with our exhibitors.” There is talk of a rolling roadshow similar to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Britain, the only successful start-up show in recent years, and much more interactivity along the lines of Ford Australia’s $1 million outdoor ‘experience’ at the Sydney show in 2012.
3 www.musclecarmag.com.au
Monaro MusclE
w
a R r e l a e Holden D
Before the legendary Holden Dealer Team there was the Holden Dealer Racing Team. This was a short-lived entity born specifically for Bathurst 1968 and buried soon after. It achieved little, except for helping GM-H’s heavies decide how they should go about racing the following year. AMC examines the first incarnation of the dealer team by speaking to the Holden executive who was the General’s link man to it. We discover that Monaro GTS 327 runners were lucky to grid up for the 1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500. 4 www.musclecarmag.com.au
acing Team Marathon man McKay
B
Ray Berghouse
Holden dipped its big toe into the Bathurst waters via a trio of HDRT Monaros. AMC has discovered that, “It was touch and go as to whether [the ARDC] would let the cars start.”
5 www.musclecarmag.com.au
efore Harry Firth was contracted to run the Holden Dealer Team, GM/H dipped its big toe in the forbidden waters of circuit racing via motoring writer, entrepreneur and racing team owner David McKay. McKay – whose name is pronounced as in the North Queensland centre of Mackay – forged an impressive trail in the Aussie motorsport landscape (see breakout page 43). This included forming a race team, Scuderia Veloce, in the early 1960s and its spin-off, Scuderia Veloce Motors, which dealt in Ferraris, Volvos and Porsches before the decade was out. The dapper Sydneysider was a moustachioed man-about-town with countless motoring interests. Even more impeccable than his tweedy appearance, were his car industry and motor racing connections, which extended to Formula One. The only thing that didn’t quite fit the rest of his image was a stutter. McKay, as a man of many projects, was always up for a new adventure, especially when it gave him fodder for his role as motoring writer for Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers, both part of the Packer empire. That’s why the origins of the Holden Dealer Racing Team can be traced back to the announcement, in 1967, of the London-to-Sydney Marathon, sponsored by the UK’s Daily Express newspaper and set for November/December 1968. Sir Max Aitken, proprietor of the Pommie paper, wanted to create an event that would lift British spirits at a time of despondency in the Old Dart. The Marathon, Aitken believed, would act as a showcase of British automotive engineering and boost export sales in the countries through which it passed. Sir Max also put up a first prize of 10,000 pounds. When news of the Marathon reached McKay, he immediately contacted his boss at the Daily Telegraph, David McNicoll, suggesting the paper get involved. His autobiography, David McKay’s Scuderia Veloce, published in 2001, three years before he died, outlined what happened next. “All within five minutes, Sir Frank [Packer] had told McNicoll to cable Sir Max Aitken that the Daily
Monaro MusclE
w
Left: McKay’s three-car Bathurst 1968 effort was funded by Holden via its dealer sales promotion budget. Above: In contrast, McKay’s separate trio of Londonto-Sydney Monaros was funded by the Packer empire, which owned the Daily Telegraph. Below: McKay’s ties with Bill Patterson (both holding Coke bottles) went back to the 1950s racing scene.
Telegraph would pick up this end of the race and co-sponsor it with him. And my job was to get three cars and run a team for the paper. Sir Frank didn’t want to pay for the cars on top of everything else and surely I could talk GM-H into giving me three Holdens. Obvious choice, for nearly one out of every two cars on our roads at that time was a Holden and it was a useful tool with a proven rally record in Victoria.” Indeed it had, the company’s engineering department ran the Victorian Holden Dealers Trial Team since the mid 1960s, including with the HR model. “McNicoll, as a true Packer disciple, wouldn’t consider any other outcome than GM-H welcoming my request with open arms,” McKay continued. Of course, Holden declined the ‘opportunity’ to fund the Telegraph’s promotional exercise or provide cars gratis. After several knockbacks, McKay, in April 1968, finally got GM-H to agree to the LondonSydney Marathon project, on the proviso that Packer picked up the tab for the cars. It’s important to note, that in early ’68 McKay had no plans to take the marque into battle at Bathurst and he considered the Marathon a far bigger deal than the 500-mile Series Production race around Mount Panorama. After all, the Bathurst classic was still only five years old. In contrast, the use-by date of trials and global rallies like the London-to-Sydney was fast approaching. “Max Wilson was the local (GM-H) boss, John Bagshaw his sales director and perhaps most important of all was the approval of chief engineer Bill Steinhagen, whose department would carry the load. Briefly, the deal was that GM-H would build three cars to my basic requirements, which would be modified after my practice run over the course in June, that the paper would buy the cars for a nominal sum, and that I should find the crews and manage the whole affair.” While McKay’s writing does exude a degree of self-importance, he undoubtedly was a man of influence who got things done. Before leaving
to survey the route in a five-litre two-speed HK Premier, McKay ordered three of the yet-to-bereleased Monaros for Marathon duty. Upon returning from the recce he went back to his regular routines of motoring writing and overseeing Scuderia Veloce’s racing. “It was now July [1968] and after reporting my findings on the survey to GM-H, who were now enthusiastic and co-operative and fully behind the project, I became once more involved in my own team and our racing programme. “There were two [back-to-back] Queensland meetings, one each at Surfers and Lakeside, and I decided to stay at Surfers and catch up on my writing for I now had a fund of stories to tell.” This sojourn coincided with the launch of the Monaro on the Gold Coast.
“Staying at the same hotel were Max Wilson and John Bagshaw [ED: Geez, what a coincidence, who would have thought!] with them Bill Patterson and Bill’s local manager Jan Woelders, both known as advocates of changing the GM worldwide ‘no motorsport’ policy. “We were all sitting around the pool one morning when the talk turned to the Marathon and whether the big Monaros would live up to my expectations. Suddenly Bill Patterson said to me, ‘How much would it cost for you to run three Monaros in the 500?’ “We kicked this around for a while, I not thinking it was a serious question, quite apart from the fact that the 500 was held early in October and surely the Marathon was the first priority. I explained that as the Bathurst regulations required standard cars there was no great cost involved apart from careful assembly of all components, which should be done at the
“We were all sitting around the pool one morning when the talk turned to the Marathon and whether the big Monaros would live up to my expectations. suddenly Bill Patterson said to me, ‘How much would it cost for you to run three Monaros in the 500?’” McKay on taking the Monaro to Bathurst
6 www.musclecarmag.com.au
David McKay ew in Australian motorsport history blazed as many trails as David McKay,
F
factory. My team would only be involved on receipt of the cars and we would take them to Bathurst, run them and perhaps win. I pulled a figure out of the air, perhaps $10,000, which seemed a lot to me but obviously delighted the others and the next thing I knew we were in business. Could I register a business name ‘Holden Dealer Racing Team’ and enter the cars under it? Yes, I could and I still have that certificate somewhere, pinpointing the birth of the team that was to grow into the multimillion dollar company of today. “In due course the three new Monaros arrived at our workshop in Wahroonga (on Sydney’s upper North Shore) to be followed by three complete rear axle assemblies. This was because the Monaro was listed with two final-drive ratios and in GM-H thinking it was simpler to drop one rear axle and fit another than mess around with crown wheels and pinions. “The premises were hardly spacious and were soon full of Monaros and spare parts.” McKay’s Scuderia Veloce operation was overseen by his long-time mechanic Bob Atkins. Atkins had successfully prepared machinery as varied as standard production cars and justsuperseded grand prix cars, so preparing a trio of near showroom spec Holden Monaros GTS 327s would hardly have stretched him. Not technically, at least. However, Atkins’ big workload in running the SV Motors service department probably robbed him of the time needed to fine tune the GTS 327s to the level of eventual race winner Bruce McPhee (as outlined in AMC #17). McKay had every confidence in Atkins though. “While it was relatively easy for me to organise these deals and plan race strategy, the bulk of the work fell on Atkins’ broad shoulders and he had great capacity for getting the job done. I read many years later that the three Marathon cars were also prepared in our workshop which was very flattering but quite untrue. GM-H did all the work [on prepping the Marathon cars] including the styling of the war-paint and even their vast resources at Fishermans Bend were stretched to have everything completed on time.” The three-car Holden Dealer Racing Team appeared at Bathurst with each car bearing the names of the same three dealers: Patterson Motors (Victoria), Midway Motors (Queensland, later to be Motorama) and Sutton Motors (NSW). As we will discover, the HDRT trio of cars, and the other Monaros, very nearly didn’t get to start the race – something McKay didn’t address in his autobiography.
both as a driver and team owner. Eight years before fronting Holden’s first dealer team at Bathurst, McKay drove a Jaguar to victory in the inaugural Australian Touring Car Championship in 1960 at Orange’s Gnoo Blas circuit. This was just a year after the long-time Ferrari enthusiast formed Scuderia Veloce – Italian for Team Speed – arguably Australia’s first professional racing team. Under the SV banner he imported some glamour cars, such as a Ferrari 250 LM and a P4 prototype, which captured the attention of racing enthusiasts. He also attracted star drivers from overseas, including Formula 1 world champions Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart. McKay was born in Sydney in 1921 and private school educated. He served in World War II as a tank driver, spending two years on active service in New Guinea. After the war McKay drove trucks interstate and by 1950 was racing MGs at Mount Panorama. He competed in the early Redex round-Australia trials, before heading to Europe as a member of the Kangaroo Stable, racing an Aston Martin with such luminaries as Tony Gaze. Back in Australia he won the 1958 Australian Tourist Trophy in an Aston Martin at Bathurst. He would have won the 1961 Australian Grand Prix at Mallala if not for a one-minute penalty for jumping the start. His Cooper-Climax finished third, one spot ahead of the Holden dealer who, seven years later, was a driving force behind the HDRT, Bill Patterson. Two years later, at Warwick Farm, McKay finished fourth and first locally-domiciled driver home behind a stellar podium of Jack Brabham, John Surtees and Bruce McLaren. In touring cars, McKay and Brian Foley won their class and were second outright in the 1961 Armstrong 500 at Phillip Island in a Studebaker Lark. This was his best result in the Great Race, although he posted an impressive third place in the 1971 affair, driving solo in a XY Ford Falcon GT-HO Phase III and finishing just a lap behind the winning works entry of Allan Moffat. McKay’s final Bathurst enduro was the 1979 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 when he and Spencer Martin drove a standard Volvo 242GT on street tyres to 20th place. It was an exercise to see what a bog-standard production car could do against the race-bred Group C machines of the day. He also championed the careers of many young drivers, including helping Larry Perkins get to F1. Outside of racing he was also a hard-hitting motoring writer of great influence. This aspect of his career began via a motoring page for Smith’s Weekly, a publication which his father, Claude, had founded with Clyde Packer Snr. It was the first contact with the Packer family. He was later installed as motoring editor of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph between 1956 and 1975. He was known for his blunt and opinionated style that was in direct contrast to the powder-puff offerings of some other journalists. His writing also gave him a reputation as a road safety activist, before that term truly entered the English lexicon. McKay the businessman established Scuderia Veloce Motors in 1963, by securing the Ferrari franchise for NSW. By the end of the decade, SVM had become a Volvo agency for Sydney’s North Shore and the Porsche dealer for NSW. SVM continued to diversify before he sold it to the Sutton Motors Group, another link to one of the three key dealers behind the HDRT of ’68. McKay died in late 2004, aged 83.
Left: John Bagshaw found a way for GM to go racing in Australia.
7 www.musclecarmag.com.au
reborn
Story: David Cook Images: Clair Negri (modern), David Cook (archival)
QUARTER MILE MUSCLE
The Big O
8 www.musclecarmag.com.au
An article published in AMC 10 years ago turned on the light for the owner of an original XW GT-HO, revealing a factorysupported competition history from 196970. Next came a massive restoration program, which extended to recreating the entire Big O show.
1970
2013 9 www.musclecarmag.com.au
QuarTEr MIlE MusclE
w
T
ime Machine: It’s 1968 and Larry Ormsby, a Melbourne businessman, is attracted to the burgeoning sport of drag racing when it is suggested he should take his 289ci XR GT Falcon out to Calder for a squirt. An initial reluctance soon becomes full-on enthusiasm and Orsmby, with the guiding hand of employee Colin Russell as his mechanic, begins to develop a serious race car out of what had been the daily driver Ford. That, of course, is never going to be entirely successful, despite the accomplishments he enjoys. To his surprise he’s contacted by B.S. Stilwell Ford in Kew, to tell him that a guy named Al Turner at Ford wants to talk to him. Turner offers factory assistance with parts and technical support, and the potential for ‘The Big O’, as Ormsby has become known, to buy a new Falcon of his choice at a dealer price through Stilwell’s. Ormsby discusses it with Russell. They’ve been copping a hard time from the new 327ci Monaros and are keen to move to a vehicle which will return them to their dominance in the sedan racing scene, but the best that Ford can offer is the 302 engine.
“Colin and I talked about it, and he said nothing beats cubes,” Ormsby is to recall later. “We were already experiencing that, with the 289 just unable to hack it against the 327s. We reckoned that the 302 just wouldn’t be much better, even though there was a lot more muscle available through Ford for the 302 than the 289. Ford told us that the 351 was coming so we reckoned it was worth waiting for. I made a choice to bide our time.” In October 1969 Ormsby debuts a new XW GT-HO, with its 351 Windsor engine. But it isn’t just the cheaper purchase of the vehicle which launches Ormsby into national prominence; it is the open door to a vast array of parts and knowledge which really make a difference. “Ford arranged for us to buy the . . . car through Bib Stillwell’s dealership,” Ormsby is to tell Australian Muscle Car in a 2003 article, “but it opened the opportunity for the supply of new tyres, diff ratios that we would never have dreamed of having access to, inlet manifolds, Dominator carburettors, all the boys’ toys that you would wet your knickers for. “It was just perfectly poised to be a killer race
10 www.musclecarmag.com.au
car and exceptionally competitive.” As Ford’s involvement steps up – thanks to the success of the XW making the final round in all but six of its 23 race events in 1970, winning the national Mr Drag Racer points score that year and the Street Eliminator title at the 1971 Nationals at Surfers Paradise – Ormsby moves in 1970 to a new fully factory-backed 351 Cleveland XY GT-HO and the XW is converted back to original trim and sold off to Melbourne drag racer John Maher as a street car. Time Machine: We zoom ahead to 2005, and in Perth Mark Negri, a Ford fan (though until about 17 years ago he admits to a preference for the GM’s products) and successful businessman in the building profession, receives a phone call from friend Robin Chalwell, who has been reading an old copy of Australia Muscle Car. A particular photo in that, of the rear three-quarter of an XW raced by Larry Ormsby suddenly lights a mental bulb about the origins of the XW GT-HO owned by Negri and about which they’d been pondering for some time. The car had been bought several years before from a local, who lived near Mark. He’d owned it for 27 years, and he’d been told by the car’s previous owner that the car had some racing background, but they didn’t know exactly what. That owner had made some attempts to trace it but had had no luck. Mark, who had known of the car for many years before buying it, had made his own enquiries but had not been able to trace it beyond its original registration number in Victoria. When a friend, Don Behets (who has been involved with many race cars over the years) was speaking to Chalwell about this he called Mark and read out the rego number in the photo. It matched the data Mark had tracked for the car and suddenly he knew he was sitting on a significant piece of drag racing history. “When I realised this I figured on a restoration of some kind,” Mark told AMC, “but I didn’t plan to go a full nut-and-bolt restoration, I was just going to clean the car up. But the more you talk in these
Above: Larry Ormsby’s factory-assisted GT-HO effort threw its opponents off the trail of their allconquering ‘combo’ via a red herring. Spacer blocks between the bonnet hinges and bonnet itself lifted it three inches at the windscreen end to, supposedly, provide aerodynamic advantages. Right: Current owner Mark Negri has taken eight years to get the restoration program (encompassing more than just the Big O’s XW GT-HO) right. circles the more people suggested that the full hog restoration was the way to go, and to have it professionally done. My wife Sharyn was the one who probably kicked it all off, saying, ‘You can’t just sit on this.’ I think by about year three she was asking, ‘What have I done?’ “Five years and over $100,000 down the track it’s finally finished.” But things didn’t stop with the Falcon. After chasing down a pic of the Falcon on the back of Ormsby’s D-Series Ford truck transporter, complete with caravan behind, Mark became convinced that he’d have to find one of those, if not the original. “A bit of homework and a number of phone calls later I had traced the truck through [circuit racers] Murray Carter and Paul Trevethan to a speedway racer and then to a Christmas tree farm on the Mornington Peninsula, in Victoria,” Mark says. “A deal was done over the phone and me and a friend and our wives flew to Melbourne, the wives went shopping and we drove the truck back to Perth.” The old truck was pretty rough around the edges, but drove well and across the Nullarbor was sitting on 110km/h and passing lots of later model vehicles and trucks (to their owners’ surprise), thanks to the Cleveland fitted by past owner Murray Carter. “Of course, one thing leads to another, and we were looking at the picture showing the caravan so we figured let’s get it all together,” Mark explains. “The van that we found obviously isn’t the original but it’s sympathetic to the cause. It’s the same make and shape and style and would have been
11 www.musclecarmag.com.au
rocKInG MusclE
w
RIP vantastic old magazines W
hen panel vans took over Australian roads in the 1970s, with an entire generation of young people hopping aboard for the ride, a new breed of magazine revved up as well. Biggest, b boldest oldest and brightest of the mags was Van Wheels Wheels, the brainchild of veteran automotive writer Bill Tuckey, then the managing editor of Murray Publishers, which also produced Wheels. “We had started Hot Rodding Review in the ’60s, and that had begun to die off, so when we could see the van thing happening, I started Van Wheels Wheels,” Tuckey said in an interview for the new book The Vans That Rocked. Trouble was, the publishing company’s managing director was not convinced a van magazine was a good idea. According to Tuckey: “He was very cautious. He wasn’t switched on to teenage trends. I said: ‘We’ve got to have Van Wheels because that’s spot on the market for this generation.’ But he was horrified by the idea that these vans might be used for s-e-x.”
12 www.musclecarmag.com.au
Two dummy issues were made, to show the bosses what Tuckey’s team had in mind and to line up advertising. Then – Shock! Horror! – out came issue one, complete with a painting of a topless woman on the cover. “I really snuck that one in, the first cover,” said Tuckey. The magazine would buy “soft-porn stuff, a little risqué, but pretty harmless” from an overseas photo agency, he said, and one of those photos was used as the basis for the cover artwork. And many more of the naughty photos were in the drawer to pop up over the next nine issues. “The idea was to make it cheeky and contemporary,” he said. “But I think management got a bit scared. They didn’t know which way to go, however the thing took off like a rocket. We really hit the button. It was a time when cars were fun, part of the whole lifestyle thing. We recognised, as we had in the ’60s and coming into the ’70s, this new freedom among young people. There was a sub-25s revolution – they could do what they liked. It was a time of
freedom, kicking off the traces of the 1950s.” And vans were the perfect vehicle to do it. “At the time, they were great,” said Tuckey. “At roundabouts you’d dump your right foot and leave lots of smoke and black marks. Of course you’d have crossply tyres because only poofters had cars with radials. They were pretty crude weapons – it was like living inside a 44-gallon drum with some, thanks to the lack of soundproofing. On the other hand, some others got very well insulated by the time they were fitted out with the obligatory mattress and shag-pile carpet.” Planning for Van Wheels started in 1976 but, after a couple of false starts and re-thinks, it took until about September-October 1977 for the first issue to reach newsagents, says the founding editor, Bruce Flynn. It proved worth the wait, for readers and the staff. “None of us took it very seriously,” he says. “We would have done it without being paid, because we were having so much fun. It was politically incorrect, but that was the ’70s. It was incredibly sexist, looking back on it. There were wicked
women and probably a bit of dope floating around. It must seem wild and crazy to young people today.” The plan was to bring out an issue every two months, but it was always late, Flynn says. “At one stage there was a year’s gap between two issues. We didn’t get serious about the whole genre of modified cars till Street Machine. “The girls in the mag were mainly girlfriends of the guys who owned the vans, and some of them weren’t too thrilled about getting their gear off. We did take some fullfrontal photos, but they didn’t get into print. Looking back, it preceded the lad mags like Ralph and FHM by many years.” No wonder the 10 issues of Van Wheels, and a ‘best of’ edition, have become collector’s items. It even led to a short-lived spin-off, Treads, where vans and 4WDs coexisted for a few issues. Instead of being killed off overnight, the August-September 1981 issue – with
13 www.musclecarmag.com.au