Ah yes - my old "black car" now finished in Orange and owned by Jim Templeton here in Brisbane.
Greetings all. Seldo has pointed me to this thread and I've just wasted 2 hours reading it. Fascinating!
I drove Baron Revelman's car for nearly ten years, I know it was a car that Seldo raced in and it was called "Welsor Waggot" in the logbook but now I'm confused as to whether it was #7 or #8 (see "orange with black stripe" in Dave's earlier comments).
After I blew my bank account with the Tiga Mazda I "retired", but the bug came back quickly and I heard about Baron's car which Bill Norton had converted to 1300 Corolla but had not raced it. Baron wanted to sell it at the time.
I talked to Baron about renting it as I told him he wouldn't sell it if it hadn't been racing, but when I took it out to Oran Park it had so many problems I told Baron I would only race it if I didn't pay. To my surprise he said "OK".
Once we got all the problems sorted out it was a fun car to drive - as Seldo says, a killer under brakes, but for some illogical reason I decided that as I didn't own it I wouldn't put new tyres on it . Accordingly I put up with terminal understeer - particularly at corner 1 on the OP short circuit.
It was incredible off the line - really put its power down. So much so that at my first standing start the trailing arms bent and I found myself sitting on the tarmac! Harry Galloway made some new stronger rods for me and guess what - at the next meeting, same thing! We finally solved the problem with some very expensive material used for F/Pacifics. I have a video somehere of me starting on the third row of the grid at Wakefield and leading for almost all of the first lap.
After about a year Baron told me that he had decided that he didn't want to sell the car and would "hang it on his wall one day" - so that lead to 10 years of competition before I got bored with the small fields and decided to "retire" to the "slower pace" of FVee which was booming at the time.
Some retirement...! Here I was, an unfit, overweight 45 year old racing against 19 year olds with no fear, no brains and Dad's money. But that's off topic.