163 replies to this topic

[brucemoxon]

That's a very interesting photo of the Mustang, I cannot recall any political advertising apart from that year. I think there was another that had Liberal advertising, it may have been Murray Carter but I could be wrong.

Lawrie Nelson carried Liberal Party sponsorship on his Capri, didn't he?

Interesting that the current sedan-car rules ban political advertising, despite the class depending on government subsidies for several races.




Bruce Moxon

[Wirra]

Have been unable to find a color pic of the car...

[eldougo]

Thanks Peter that is it passing BillBrown at OranPark just before Sutton,s corner Love that color scheme.(No vote Liberal) must have been after the WON.

[Ellis French]

Baskerville Tas.......

[eldougo]

The color scheme has changed NO Green Strips on the Bonnet like Oran Park and No Ansett sticker .

Great Pic Ellis (what year was it any ideas).

[Ellis French]

Great Pic Ellis (what year was it any ideas).

Without looking up old prog ...maybe early summer 74

[Lee Nicolle]

Even then paint schemes changed meeting to meeting. personally not my favorite scheme on that car. The Coca Cola red is the way that car will always be remembered and Bowdens have got it right.
Though I am sure Alan liked them all as they paid the bills. The extra green on the Brut colors looked the best of all the Brut variations.

[Ray Bell]

February, 1974 Doug...

There's also a painting of the Moffat Falcon on the February issue cover, with a little bit more green on the front guard.

And Bruce, Lawrie Nelson wasn't in a Falcon, so he's not the one who had the 'Liberal' signage. Like I said, I think it was Jim Keogh.

[Ellis French]

Baskerville Tas....same meeting as previous
plus Cook in V8 Torana

[Ellis French]

Symmons Plains lap of Honor on bonnet......when you could ...in Mar 71

[dat2kman]

As a young kid, I lived in Lambert Rd Toorak, just around the corner from the workshop/garage/petrol station???, on Malvern Rd, and I would knock on the front door and ask for bearings to build a billy cart, not knowing then what the bearings were from, they were good for leaving decent scratches in the footpath down Orrong Rd!
I later found out they were from the twin rail top loader gearboxes.
Bloody good billy carts they were. Damn fast too.
( Used to ride my old pushbike around the back cobblestone lane hoping to get a glimpse of a race car, Allans "office" window is right in the back overlooking the laneway! )

Jump a few years and an uncle, Peter Arcadipane, would from time to time do some fibreglass work and would spray paint some cars, i can distinctly remember spending a boring? weekend at Peter"s Heidleberg workshop wet and dry rubbing the car that was to be painted in the Federation Insurance scheme.
Peter went on to to build the Mad Max cars, and do a lot of fibreglassing, he did the Taipan Torana, and did noses and wings on panel vans, he is now resident in Germany designing cars for various automakers. When in Australia, he started out at GM, then went to FoMoCo as a designer. He was quite instrumental in the XD body, codenamed "Blackwood"

Cut to a few years later, many, and for some time, my father in law was the vice president of FoMoCo at Broadmeadows, and he was and still is very close to Allan, and of all the past Ford execs, my father in law is considerd by Allan as a pretty good fella.
He wrote the cheques to fund the racing, but it got political, hence the reduced factory effort.
The body shells ( tudors) were "very special" builds up the production line, and many Ford employees were at the time quite proud to have been a part of the build process of Allan's cars.

Hanging up and stored in cupboards in my shed today, I still have quite a few of Peter's design drawings and mock ups of what the two doors could have looked like, along with some very over characterised drawings of Al Pal, and various race cars, mostly on designer trace paper.
That's my two bob's worth!
Had a lot of fun as a kid, still do today!

[David Shaw]

I read that those XA shells were a very special batch. IIRC at the end of 1973 when FoMoCo pulled the funds on the race team, Gibson got Marsden's orange mule (which had been used to prove the worth of rear disc brakes with Black Pete at the wheel at the Sandown 250, my first event) and Moffat got Gibson's car, as Allan had written off his own car at Phillip Island.

[Hank the Deuce]

I read that those XA shells were a very special batch. IIRC at the end of 1973 when FoMoCo pulled the funds on the race team, Gibson got Marsden's orange mule (which had been used to prove the worth of rear disc brakes with Black Pete at the wheel at the Sandown 250, my first event) and Moffat got Gibson's car, as Allan had written off his own car at Phillip Island.

the stuff I read on the XA's said that the two works race cars were Polar White RPO83 GT's straight off the line, with consecutive VIN's.

The 1977 #2 car was likely to have been a tad more special, ie one of the 15 "Bathurst"-spec cars with the very liberal tolerances on wheel arch dimensions (which was apparently set up with Moffat's "Project B52" rebuild of the ex-Gibson/Seton XA mid-1974, done by Moffat's Kar Kraft contacts in the States... I can imagine that the "Phoenix" car, built mid-76, was done in a similar vein too.

[275 GTB-4]

the things ya see in the street...