Micks
27-09-2017, 06:03 AM
Great article from the Courier Mail
EVERY life needs at least one pilgrimage.
For some it might be Camino de Santiago or Mecca, or, given there is no accounting for taste, perhaps even Graceland.
For me this year it is Bathurst, Australia’s annual celebration of high octane fuel, howling V8s, and the decades long rivalry between the red and the blue, Holden and Ford.
I’m not a passionate follower of all things motorsport but, like most Australians of my era, Bathurst is something that’s in my blood.
Bathurst is memories of Toranas and Falcon coupes almost airborne at the top of Mt Panorama, and of the 05 Commodore piloted by the man whose poster adorned the wall of my childhood bedroom, Peter Brock.
For a bloke who grew up in the car culture of suburban Brisbane in the ‘70s and early ‘80s it is a celebration of Oz muscle cars, and the eternal quest to wring a few more horsepower from what’s under the bonnet of a tonne and a half of Australian-manufactured steel.
My first car was an LC Torana, and I’ve had Holden in my veins since. (Pic: Supplied)
This Bathurst, at least for me, marks the end of an era.
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/f0397e17b5dad93c415aa3a1827a3db5?width=650
Ford Australia ceased manufacturing last year and the last Holden rolls off the company’s Adelaide assembly line on October 20, not quite 70 years after the first 48-215 made its debut in November 1948.
Since then Holden has built more than 7 million vehicles and there would be very few of us who have not shared at least a part of our lives with a Holden of some make or model.
So this is likely to be the last ever Bathurst 1000 where the contest is between homegrown Falcons and Commodores screaming down Conrod straight at 300km/h.
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/d40f377e32b059da6ac69e29d758c875?width=650
My love affair with Holdens began in earnest as a 16-year-old when part time earnings gave me enough savings to buy my first car — a restoration project to occupy me until I was old enough to get a drivers licence.
That LC Torana, which was modified to close to XU1 specifications but needed a lot more work, was swapped for one of the few Fords I ever owned, a 4.9 litre 1970 GS Falcon. This was a great thundering lump of metal, mag wheels and twin exhausts that I used to delight in driving to my snooty private high school just to lower the tone of the joint, and watch the sniffy looks of disapproval.
Peter Brock wins at Bathurst in 1975. (Pic: Ken Matts)
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/1c870c2829104f850d628d2cca82e6c9?width=650
This was a youth of weekends spent with mates in various suburban driveways and garages, portable lights hung over engine bays, piles of spanners on the ground alongside the empty beer cans; of grease stained hands and T-shirts and AC/DC or The Angels pumping out of a cassette player.
It was a time of endless circular arguments about the relative merits of the red lion versus the blue oval, of cruising the used car yards on a Saturday afternoon, and the streets on a Saturday night.
I’ve owned a lot of cars over the years, but only two weren’t Australian made Holdens, Fords or Valiants. For the record one was a pile of steaming excrement Mini (what the bloody hell was I thinking?), and the other a 1963 Dodge Phoenix that handled like an aircraft carrier and wasn’t exactly well suited to the narrow streets of inner city Sydney where I lived at the time.
For the last 20 something years, though, it has been nothing but Holden Commodores or their HSV high performance variants, each one progressively better than the last, and never a disappointment to be had.
Over the years there have been epic road adventures: over the Snowy Mountains and swooping through the curves of the Great Ocean Road in an SSV, fanging it along near the mouth of Murray river in a mate’s 1970 Monaro, a mini pilgrimage to Silverton outside Broken Hill behind the wheel of a purple Clubsport to visit the Mad Max Museum. And so many more.
MD Harold Bettle drives first Holden 48-215 (later commonly called FX) sedan off assembly line in Adelaide with chief engineer Russ Begg in 1948. (Pic: Supplied)
And now there’s the Bathurst odyssey, in what is quite literally — as Barry the underground mechanic responsible for putting together the Interceptor in Mad Max puts it — “the last of the V8s”.
Next week the Syvret household’s big black HSV, its 6.2 litre supercharged V8 growling away happily under the bonnet, hits the road and heads to the mountain — a trip I view with equal measure of excitement, and deep sadness at the loss of our local car industry.
I’ve written at length before about the scorched earth economics of neoliberalism that wanted to assume Australia could be the only virgin in the global brothel when it came to automotive subsidies and tariffs.
That debate is now long lost and Australia will be poorer for it economically as the closure of the remaining Toyota and Holden plants take with them thousands of jobs in the wider automotive components and engineering sectors.
These are skills and advanced manufacturing capacity that will never be replaced. We’ve lost so much more though.
As a country we’ve sacrificed part of our national identity, our soul, on the altar of economic rationalism.
As Australian as meat pies, kangaroos and German-built Opels just doesn’t cut it.
EVERY life needs at least one pilgrimage.
For some it might be Camino de Santiago or Mecca, or, given there is no accounting for taste, perhaps even Graceland.
For me this year it is Bathurst, Australia’s annual celebration of high octane fuel, howling V8s, and the decades long rivalry between the red and the blue, Holden and Ford.
I’m not a passionate follower of all things motorsport but, like most Australians of my era, Bathurst is something that’s in my blood.
Bathurst is memories of Toranas and Falcon coupes almost airborne at the top of Mt Panorama, and of the 05 Commodore piloted by the man whose poster adorned the wall of my childhood bedroom, Peter Brock.
For a bloke who grew up in the car culture of suburban Brisbane in the ‘70s and early ‘80s it is a celebration of Oz muscle cars, and the eternal quest to wring a few more horsepower from what’s under the bonnet of a tonne and a half of Australian-manufactured steel.
My first car was an LC Torana, and I’ve had Holden in my veins since. (Pic: Supplied)
This Bathurst, at least for me, marks the end of an era.
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/f0397e17b5dad93c415aa3a1827a3db5?width=650
Ford Australia ceased manufacturing last year and the last Holden rolls off the company’s Adelaide assembly line on October 20, not quite 70 years after the first 48-215 made its debut in November 1948.
Since then Holden has built more than 7 million vehicles and there would be very few of us who have not shared at least a part of our lives with a Holden of some make or model.
So this is likely to be the last ever Bathurst 1000 where the contest is between homegrown Falcons and Commodores screaming down Conrod straight at 300km/h.
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/d40f377e32b059da6ac69e29d758c875?width=650
My love affair with Holdens began in earnest as a 16-year-old when part time earnings gave me enough savings to buy my first car — a restoration project to occupy me until I was old enough to get a drivers licence.
That LC Torana, which was modified to close to XU1 specifications but needed a lot more work, was swapped for one of the few Fords I ever owned, a 4.9 litre 1970 GS Falcon. This was a great thundering lump of metal, mag wheels and twin exhausts that I used to delight in driving to my snooty private high school just to lower the tone of the joint, and watch the sniffy looks of disapproval.
Peter Brock wins at Bathurst in 1975. (Pic: Ken Matts)
http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/1c870c2829104f850d628d2cca82e6c9?width=650
This was a youth of weekends spent with mates in various suburban driveways and garages, portable lights hung over engine bays, piles of spanners on the ground alongside the empty beer cans; of grease stained hands and T-shirts and AC/DC or The Angels pumping out of a cassette player.
It was a time of endless circular arguments about the relative merits of the red lion versus the blue oval, of cruising the used car yards on a Saturday afternoon, and the streets on a Saturday night.
I’ve owned a lot of cars over the years, but only two weren’t Australian made Holdens, Fords or Valiants. For the record one was a pile of steaming excrement Mini (what the bloody hell was I thinking?), and the other a 1963 Dodge Phoenix that handled like an aircraft carrier and wasn’t exactly well suited to the narrow streets of inner city Sydney where I lived at the time.
For the last 20 something years, though, it has been nothing but Holden Commodores or their HSV high performance variants, each one progressively better than the last, and never a disappointment to be had.
Over the years there have been epic road adventures: over the Snowy Mountains and swooping through the curves of the Great Ocean Road in an SSV, fanging it along near the mouth of Murray river in a mate’s 1970 Monaro, a mini pilgrimage to Silverton outside Broken Hill behind the wheel of a purple Clubsport to visit the Mad Max Museum. And so many more.
MD Harold Bettle drives first Holden 48-215 (later commonly called FX) sedan off assembly line in Adelaide with chief engineer Russ Begg in 1948. (Pic: Supplied)
And now there’s the Bathurst odyssey, in what is quite literally — as Barry the underground mechanic responsible for putting together the Interceptor in Mad Max puts it — “the last of the V8s”.
Next week the Syvret household’s big black HSV, its 6.2 litre supercharged V8 growling away happily under the bonnet, hits the road and heads to the mountain — a trip I view with equal measure of excitement, and deep sadness at the loss of our local car industry.
I’ve written at length before about the scorched earth economics of neoliberalism that wanted to assume Australia could be the only virgin in the global brothel when it came to automotive subsidies and tariffs.
That debate is now long lost and Australia will be poorer for it economically as the closure of the remaining Toyota and Holden plants take with them thousands of jobs in the wider automotive components and engineering sectors.
These are skills and advanced manufacturing capacity that will never be replaced. We’ve lost so much more though.
As a country we’ve sacrificed part of our national identity, our soul, on the altar of economic rationalism.
As Australian as meat pies, kangaroos and German-built Opels just doesn’t cut it.