Australian Muscle Car

The Corvette has long been perceived as America’s Ferrari. You can see it even in the lines of some of the Corvette generations: the original C1 bears a less-than-vague resemblance to the Ferrari 250 GT which preceded it by a few years; you could say the same about the early ‘80s C4 Vette and the Ferrari 308/328. The current C8 was quite obviously conceived with the Ferrari 488 in mind, right down to the ‘supercar’ mid-engined transaxle drivetrain layout – the first Corvette with no V8 ‘under the hood’ in the 70-year history of the nameplate. It might even be argued that GM has also gone after Ferrari with the Chevy V8 powerplant which, in the case of the Z06, does not feature the classic small-block Chevy pushrod two-valve configuration…

John French is probably best known for exploits in Ford Falcons in touring car racing. He raced Falcon GTHOs in the early ‘70s both as a works team driver and as a privateer, and he partnered Dick Johnson to victory at Bathurst in 1980 in the Tru-Blu Falcon XD. That was the biggest win of French’s career, but it was far from the only highlight of his near 30 years in the sport. He was, in fact, one of the very first Holden star drivers, with his modified early model ‘Humpy’ in the late 1950s. The car served during the week as his sales rep transport; on weekends he’d swap the standard ‘Grey’ six for a hot Repco-headed engine and go racing. At a time before the Australian Touring Car…

They’re still out there… Donington Auctions is offering for sale this remarkable ‘barn find’ HQ Monaro – a 1974 HQ GTS coupe (in Barbados Green with black vinyl upholstery) that’s said to have been shedded since around 2006. As can be seen, it appears to be in very tidy order inside and out and remains largely unmolested (apart from those black Ford XA/B/C side mirrors!). The car had a front subframe change in the 1980s, and it can’t be confirmed whether or not the engine is the original 5.0-litre V8 as factory fitted – although there’s a good chance it is as the QT-prefixed engine block is date coded April 1974 (the car left the factory in May 1974). It was last registered in 2006 and shows 78,067km on the…

Joe Felice was not a racing driver, but he was the man who made racing happen for Holden through the 1970s – he was the GM-H connection between the Holden Dealer Team racing effort and Holden head office, and was the keeper of the General’s cheque book. Holden’s involvement in racing started with the mid-‘60s appointment of John Bagshaw as sales and marketing manager. Bagshaw saw racing as a way of shaking off Holden’s image as a solid, dependable (rather than exciting, as well as solid and dependable) brand, which he saw as the key to arresting the inroads into Holden’s (enormous) market share that were steadily being made by Ford and Chrysler. As Bagshaw’s right-hand man, Joe Felice was charged with the task of overseeing Bagshaw’s planned Holden racing…

The Touring Car Masters Series kicked off in fine style at SMSP’s Supercars round. Andrew Fisher took pole in his Jesus Racing Torana, but in the Trophy Race Jude Bargwanna took the win in his Duggan Family Hotels Commodore VB, in what was his very first TCM race start. Mechanical gremlins intervened later the weekend for Bargwanna, however, leaving Camaro driver Joel Heinrich to take the points lead with two wins on Sunday, along with a second place in race one behind Fisher.…

Scenes from this year’s Repco Adelaide Motorsport Festival at the Adelaide Parklands circuit. The 2025 Repco AMF featured the usual smorgasbord of some of our – and indeed the world’s – best racing, sports and touring cars, and even some very notable road cars. The latter included the Holden Coupe 60 concept car (below), the coupe that would have been the VE/VF series Monaro had Holden continued with the 2000s Monaro reboot.…