The Roaring Season

Steve Holmes wrote:So how about we start a thread on race cars that appear to have vanished from trace. See if we can't track a few of them down.

Here is one I've been trying to learn the fate of for some time, with no luck. I first found out about this car when writing an article for Australian Muscle Car mag a couple of years ago. The reason it grabbed my attention was because it was built in the Wairarapa, in New Zealand, where I moved with my partner Helen a few years ago. While researching various magazines gathering info for the article, I stumbled upon details of this car.

It was built around 1971 by Wayne Fuller, and fitted with an FVA motor reportedly from Paul Faheys Escort. Fuller raced the car in OSCA during the 1971/72 season, and was often the fastest car in the field. At the end of the season Fuller set his sites a little higher, and took the car to Graham Berry (of Berry & Chung hot rodding fame) to have a heap of fabrication work done on the firewall and transmission tunnel, so he could fit a 350ci small block Chevy, with twin off-set Holleys.

This was quite an ambitious project at the time, and appeared to have quite a bit of potential. The newly rebuilt Escort finally debuted at Bay Park in late 1973, driven by 24 year old Roger Brader, another Wairarapa hot shoe. It was very quick in a straight line, as fast as the front running machines of Allan Moffat, Jim Richards, Leo Leonard (in Mustangs), Red Dawson (Camaro), Rod Coppins (Firebird), and Paul Fahey (Capri), but required some development work on suspension and brakes.

Brader and Fuller raced the car at several events throughout the 1973/74 season, but at seasons end Fuller decided to sell it and go boat racing instead. The Escort was sold engineless to Warren Steel in the Hawkes Bay. Steel had planned to fit a smaller Chevy motor to compete in the 4.2 Saloon Car Championship, but failed his eyesight test, and had to sell the car.

It was purchased by John Scott in Auckland, who owned a transport company. This would have been late 1974, or early 1975. From there, the trail goes dead. I'm not sure if the John Scott who purchased the Escort was the same John Scott who raced speedway in the '70s and '80s, but that John Scott did happen to own a transport company, also in Auckland, so perhaps it was the same person. Either way, I've not been able to track him down.

Would love to know what happened to this car, and if it survived. Obviously Escorts were pretty popular during the '70s, and it could have ended up anywhere. Was it converted for ShellSport? Was it scrapped? Was it pushed into someones shed and forgotten about?

Anyway, here is a pic of the car at Levin when it was still fitted with the FVA. It changed little when the Chevy was shoe-horned in, except the wheels became slightly wider. It was silver with a green stripe down each flank, then later had a red or orange stripe.

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Go Slideways wrote:

BMCBOY wrote:


Thanks mate, these ones are from Jac Jac's personal collection

BMCBOY wrote:

Go Slideways wrote:Jac Jac Eastons Mustang - "This was a genuine Trans Am bought into NZ by Dexter Dunlop"]

I found this in the archives from Manfield 1977

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Go Slideways wrote:Jac Jac just told me that his car:
"wasn't Neville Crightons it was raced by Jim Richards and Steve Millen at Levin motor races were they crashed it and repaired to drive it back to Auckland and got written off at tokoroa when they crashed into a lake. Jerry Clayton then turned it into a speedway car for Richards and Millen - I put it in vote national colours during the elections, because I always pick a winner lol"

Shoreboy57 wrote:I recall (if memory correct) Ian Easton doing demonstration laps at Manfeild in a sprintcar back in the day - it looked pretty wild, especially since it had to turn right as well as left.

Go Slideways wrote:I'm pretty sure that the Monaro was originally raced by Ian Easton before Jim Richards, but I'll check. I do know that Jac Jac was the first one to put stars on it, and during the election period he ran the "Vote National" slogan because it was fairly easy for farmers to tell the tax man that Monaro's and associated costs were in fact tractors lol.

This photo is from Ian Easton's personal collection.




I think that the car was originally a tarmac race car from brand new but was crashed while driving it from Levin circuit to Auckland at Tokoroa, and then converted to a speedway car.

Steve Holmes wrote:Ok, I'm on a roll here, so I'll keep going. In the early 1970s, when Jim Richards still lived in New Zealand and was taking just about any drive offered to him, he did quite a bit of speedway and rallying. Those helping his career along were Jim Carney and Jerry Clayton. Clayton would later supply the 302 Boss Mustang he and Murray Bunn would build into the Sidchrome Mustang, but prior to that, had a speedway saloon built from an HQ Holden Monaro, which, at the time, would have been a near new car. From what I can tell, the Monaro sported a couple of different paint schemes, including one for Sidchrome Tools, as pictured.

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Richards raced the Monaro out of Waikaraka Park, though I don't know how much travelling he would have done with the car to other tracks.

It would eventually be sold to Palmerston North racer Bill Dorn, who did just about everything in speedway, including Stockcars and Modifieds. All Dorns race cars were painted up like large American flags, and the Monaro was the same. He raced the car during the 70s, when it was sold to another Palmy racer. It was eventually retired, but I'm quite certain, later re-appeared as a Streetstock, painted black, when Streetstock racing was introduced to Palmerston North speedway in the late '80s/early '90s.

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Most Streetstocks end up getting crushed, as they're eventually no good for anything else. Was this the case with the old Jim Richards Sidchrome Monaro?

MarkQ wrote:Hi Jack, new family = no race car for a while at least. Lots of clever engineering in many of the cars competing up the hill.
Probably one of the last international race meetings that you pretty much have no rule book and a smart thinking guy can build something awesome and compete at the top level. Definitely your sort of event Jack!