Maybe it's time for another story...
Fast that’s Past... Bob Jane’s Camaro.MYLES JOHNSON has a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in his workshop. It’s been battered and beat, but it’s his intention to return it to original. It’s the car that won two successive Australian Touring Car Championships for its owner, Bob Jane.
But Myles has more reasons to restore it than that. “This car,” he says, “was a milestone. It could be said it started a lot of the local racing industry as we know it.” Miles wants to see it as a living display, a testament to its creators, and those who had any part in its success.
Bob Jane had been a two-time winner of the ATCC long before he boarded the jet with John Harvey to seek out a new car in America. He was then racing his third Mustang, but the emergence of Moffat’s TransAm version had eclipsed everything racing here. It was time for something new, and as a GM-H dealer Bob headed for Chevrolet for the answers.
Ford had stolen the march with the Mustang, but Chevrolet had caught up quickly in the US racing, thanks in no small part to the skills of the Penske organisation and Mark Donohue. Their Camaro had a lot of success.
But, like the success of the Mustang, it wasn’t lightly won. These ‘ponycars’ took some taming, and the Camaro possibly took more than the Mustang. To that end, the deal struck at Chevrolet included full-size drawings from one of the successful American car builders. Bob shipped out two of the base cars.
And base cars they were, indeed. “They were a Belmont version with an alloy 7-litre engine,” Harvey explained. Johnson adds that the lowest level of trim (he calls it a ‘poverty pack’
helped, there being less soundproofing, fewer heavy bits to take off. The ZL1 was a low-volume model made to homologate the alloy engine for drag racing.
Once the cars arrived, the red one was torn down and was to become the first Touring Car ever built in Australia using a surface plate. It’s worth mentioning at this stage that the Bob Jane Racing Team was a big operation. They were running a Mustang, the lithe McLaren, and the Brabham open wheeler.
In charge of construction was John Sawyer, while fabricator John Brookfield was very much in evidence, Bob Kitchen and others contributing along the way. Even with this manpower, the car took many months to put together.
The biggest part of the job was fabricating the ‘rigid bridge’ that was the roll cage, built to the American plans as far as was allowed under local rules. Added in was a Gies 12-bolt rear end with fully-floating axles and disc brakes, while the standard alloy engine and Muncie gearbox got a thorough working over, with good rods, cam etc going into the building.
Among the other features of the build were a drop fuel tank and a Watts linkage on the rear suspension that mounted to the box that carried the fuel cell. It was in the fabrication of parts for this car that Ron Harrop got his start in business.
Sawyer remembers that there was no time to fit the planned fuel injection. “Bob wanted to race at Calder, so we sent him out there with the assurance that it would have plenty of torque,” he says. It had so much that all the car ever carried was a 1200cfm Holley, in fact, it proved many times to have too much.
That February outing started 1971 well enough with a lap record at 47.6 as Bob diced for the lead, but better was to come at Sandown with two wins over Moffat (including a nudge at Dandenong Road) in the International support races and a shared lap record.
Bob’s eye was on the title, however, and these races were shakedowns in readiness for the March meeting at Symmons. Here rain set the scene, and though Bob led from pole position, Moffat took the race. Another good getaway at Calder was spoiled by the flywheel flying apart before the first lap was over.
Sandown brought the first title race win in April, and another record at 1:14.1, with top gear only towards the end of the race. The achilles heel of the car was beginning to show.
The efforts taken to defeat the weakness of the gearbox, taxed thoroughly by all that torque, was a part of the story Myles is trying to preserve. Illegal though it might have been, the team set out to remedy the situation by building an unbreakable box.
Brookfield fabricated the housing (which had an increased centre distance for the shafts) in steel, which was then blasted and sprayed to make it look like an alloy housing, while Peter Holinger built the gearset. Of this effort, Pat Purcell told us: “It was a good thing there were so many in the crew and we could do so much of that in-house, otherwise the word would have got out...”
Calder was Bob’s own track, and it was to be the only place he ran in non title events until the championship was over. May saw him take two wins and lower the record to 47.2 prior to heading to Surfers and second place behind Moffat. Then Mallala brought pole and a win, Lakeside a third behind Moffat and Pete Geoghegan so that the final round at Oran Park was a cliffhanger.
From a third place getaway, Jane and his Camaro powered past Geoghegan and chased Moffat, getting by when the Mustang gearbox jammed in the esses and surviving the return charge from the arch-rival to take the win and the title.
More minor wins at Calder followed, along with another record, then the alloy engine blew itself to bits at Warwick Farm as Jane raced down Hume Straight in practice. Repaired, it had another minor win at Calder and a retirement, then two big wins at the November Warwick Farm, beating Geoghegan in the Super Falcon.
With Geoghegan carless for the December Calder, Jane loaned him the Camaro for two races, one of which saw him carve his way through the field to fourth after not having the engine fire in time for the start.
The final event of 1971 was at Hume Weir, where Jane took a wet win and a dry win ahead of Norm Beechey, then set a new record in a handicap.
For 1972 there was a change in the regulations which outlawed the 7-litre engine. It also put paid to disc rear brakes on the Mustangs, but the Camaro was “the most optioned car ever produced,” according to Myles, and as such it retained the discs. A 350 engine was fitted, but the car didn’t race until March and the start of the title defence. Moffat beat Jane into second place there, but at Calder Jane won from Malcolm Ramsay’s Kingswood after everyone else had problems.
This was the first year of the championship including points for classes, and Michael Stillwell was to be a thorn in Jane’s side as he kept winning the 2-litre division. Bathurst at Easter saw an engine problem which did nothing to help, then second place at Sandown after a spin was small relief.
Adelaide’s first ATCC race saw a win as Moffat struck oil problems, and so the gap to Stillwell’s points lead came down. Warwick Farm in July went to Moffat after a controversial incident on the Causeway, but second helped out again, so that when Surfers came around Jane had Harvey installed in the new Monaro (which he had expected to step into himself, if it was competitive) to help out in his battle with Moffat. The Mustang broke its throttle linkage and it was a Bob Jane 1 – 2.
Once again it was down to an Oran Park finale, with the Warwick Farm issue still unresolved in the appeals process, and Geoghegan was running away with the race in the Super Falcon. Harvey was again in as a spoiler, taunting Moffat as he used its strong 350’s power to prevent him passing in the straight. But Moffat got through and was there to take the win when the Falcon faltered, Jane filling third and scoring enough points to take the series after the judiciary took away Moffat’s Warwick Farm points.
While Jane had not run anything but the title races and Calder in the serious months of 1971, he did venture to Surfers in May of 1972 and to score two seconds and a win from the back of the grid. The Calder meetings had again seen a mixed bag of results, and then Harvey had a drive of the car to score some placings behind the boss as he took the wheel of the Monaro.
The two seasons were then over and the car was partly dismantled. When Frank Gardner came out for the International events the next year he bought the engine and gearbox and took them to England to win the British Championship. Jim Smith bought the car for Sports Sedan racing (the ATCC went over to Series Production cars) and fitted a Weslake-headed engine. Later the car was sold to Tasmania, was repossessed by a finance company and sold at auction to a drag racer, then Michael Tydell dragged it in Melbourne before Jane repurchased it and handed it over to Myles for restoration.
The twin car, which was blue, had gone drag racing much earlier, driven by Joe Parotta. It was ultimately written off in a road accident.
The effort that had gone into the Camaro was not lost altogether with its retirement. Those drawings later went on to Kevin Bartlett to assist him with the preparation of his car. And Myles is doing his utmost to return the car to perfection, largely as a tribute to “those who worked on her, to make her a milestone, and to Bob, who gave me my start in Australia.”
Ray Bell
Illegal?Some might feel I have dealt lightly with the issue of the gearbox. It’s far too late for anyone to cry now, anyway, but recounting a conversation had late at night in the pits at Lakeside might throw some light on things.
Hearing from another driver that Jane was using a Ford gearbox “because no Chev box would take the grunt,” I said to him that someone should protest. The retort, whether correct or not, was: “They can’t do that, they’re all illegal.”
Maybe it's time for another story...
[b]Fast that’s Past... Bob Jane’s Camaro.[/b]
MYLES JOHNSON has a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in his workshop. It’s been battered and beat, but it’s his intention to return it to original. It’s the car that won two successive Australian Touring Car Championships for its owner, Bob Jane.
But Myles has more reasons to restore it than that. “This car,” he says, “was a milestone. It could be said it started a lot of the local racing industry as we know it.” Miles wants to see it as a living display, a testament to its creators, and those who had any part in its success.
Bob Jane had been a two-time winner of the ATCC long before he boarded the jet with John Harvey to seek out a new car in America. He was then racing his third Mustang, but the emergence of Moffat’s TransAm version had eclipsed everything racing here. It was time for something new, and as a GM-H dealer Bob headed for Chevrolet for the answers.
Ford had stolen the march with the Mustang, but Chevrolet had caught up quickly in the US racing, thanks in no small part to the skills of the Penske organisation and Mark Donohue. Their Camaro had a lot of success.
But, like the success of the Mustang, it wasn’t lightly won. These ‘ponycars’ took some taming, and the Camaro possibly took more than the Mustang. To that end, the deal struck at Chevrolet included full-size drawings from one of the successful American car builders. Bob shipped out two of the base cars.
And base cars they were, indeed. “They were a Belmont version with an alloy 7-litre engine,” Harvey explained. Johnson adds that the lowest level of trim (he calls it a ‘poverty pack’ ;) helped, there being less soundproofing, fewer heavy bits to take off. The ZL1 was a low-volume model made to homologate the alloy engine for drag racing.
Once the cars arrived, the red one was torn down and was to become the first Touring Car ever built in Australia using a surface plate. It’s worth mentioning at this stage that the Bob Jane Racing Team was a big operation. They were running a Mustang, the lithe McLaren, and the Brabham open wheeler.
In charge of construction was John Sawyer, while fabricator John Brookfield was very much in evidence, Bob Kitchen and others contributing along the way. Even with this manpower, the car took many months to put together.
The biggest part of the job was fabricating the ‘rigid bridge’ that was the roll cage, built to the American plans as far as was allowed under local rules. Added in was a Gies 12-bolt rear end with fully-floating axles and disc brakes, while the standard alloy engine and Muncie gearbox got a thorough working over, with good rods, cam etc going into the building.
Among the other features of the build were a drop fuel tank and a Watts linkage on the rear suspension that mounted to the box that carried the fuel cell. It was in the fabrication of parts for this car that Ron Harrop got his start in business.
Sawyer remembers that there was no time to fit the planned fuel injection. “Bob wanted to race at Calder, so we sent him out there with the assurance that it would have plenty of torque,” he says. It had so much that all the car ever carried was a 1200cfm Holley, in fact, it proved many times to have too much.
That February outing started 1971 well enough with a lap record at 47.6 as Bob diced for the lead, but better was to come at Sandown with two wins over Moffat (including a nudge at Dandenong Road) in the International support races and a shared lap record.
Bob’s eye was on the title, however, and these races were shakedowns in readiness for the March meeting at Symmons. Here rain set the scene, and though Bob led from pole position, Moffat took the race. Another good getaway at Calder was spoiled by the flywheel flying apart before the first lap was over.
Sandown brought the first title race win in April, and another record at 1:14.1, with top gear only towards the end of the race. The achilles heel of the car was beginning to show.
The efforts taken to defeat the weakness of the gearbox, taxed thoroughly by all that torque, was a part of the story Myles is trying to preserve. Illegal though it might have been, the team set out to remedy the situation by building an unbreakable box.
Brookfield fabricated the housing (which had an increased centre distance for the shafts) in steel, which was then blasted and sprayed to make it look like an alloy housing, while Peter Holinger built the gearset. Of this effort, Pat Purcell told us: “It was a good thing there were so many in the crew and we could do so much of that in-house, otherwise the word would have got out...”
Calder was Bob’s own track, and it was to be the only place he ran in non title events until the championship was over. May saw him take two wins and lower the record to 47.2 prior to heading to Surfers and second place behind Moffat. Then Mallala brought pole and a win, Lakeside a third behind Moffat and Pete Geoghegan so that the final round at Oran Park was a cliffhanger.
From a third place getaway, Jane and his Camaro powered past Geoghegan and chased Moffat, getting by when the Mustang gearbox jammed in the esses and surviving the return charge from the arch-rival to take the win and the title.
More minor wins at Calder followed, along with another record, then the alloy engine blew itself to bits at Warwick Farm as Jane raced down Hume Straight in practice. Repaired, it had another minor win at Calder and a retirement, then two big wins at the November Warwick Farm, beating Geoghegan in the Super Falcon.
With Geoghegan carless for the December Calder, Jane loaned him the Camaro for two races, one of which saw him carve his way through the field to fourth after not having the engine fire in time for the start.
The final event of 1971 was at Hume Weir, where Jane took a wet win and a dry win ahead of Norm Beechey, then set a new record in a handicap.
For 1972 there was a change in the regulations which outlawed the 7-litre engine. It also put paid to disc rear brakes on the Mustangs, but the Camaro was “the most optioned car ever produced,” according to Myles, and as such it retained the discs. A 350 engine was fitted, but the car didn’t race until March and the start of the title defence. Moffat beat Jane into second place there, but at Calder Jane won from Malcolm Ramsay’s Kingswood after everyone else had problems.
This was the first year of the championship including points for classes, and Michael Stillwell was to be a thorn in Jane’s side as he kept winning the 2-litre division. Bathurst at Easter saw an engine problem which did nothing to help, then second place at Sandown after a spin was small relief.
Adelaide’s first ATCC race saw a win as Moffat struck oil problems, and so the gap to Stillwell’s points lead came down. Warwick Farm in July went to Moffat after a controversial incident on the Causeway, but second helped out again, so that when Surfers came around Jane had Harvey installed in the new Monaro (which he had expected to step into himself, if it was competitive) to help out in his battle with Moffat. The Mustang broke its throttle linkage and it was a Bob Jane 1 – 2.
Once again it was down to an Oran Park finale, with the Warwick Farm issue still unresolved in the appeals process, and Geoghegan was running away with the race in the Super Falcon. Harvey was again in as a spoiler, taunting Moffat as he used its strong 350’s power to prevent him passing in the straight. But Moffat got through and was there to take the win when the Falcon faltered, Jane filling third and scoring enough points to take the series after the judiciary took away Moffat’s Warwick Farm points.
While Jane had not run anything but the title races and Calder in the serious months of 1971, he did venture to Surfers in May of 1972 and to score two seconds and a win from the back of the grid. The Calder meetings had again seen a mixed bag of results, and then Harvey had a drive of the car to score some placings behind the boss as he took the wheel of the Monaro.
The two seasons were then over and the car was partly dismantled. When Frank Gardner came out for the International events the next year he bought the engine and gearbox and took them to England to win the British Championship. Jim Smith bought the car for Sports Sedan racing (the ATCC went over to Series Production cars) and fitted a Weslake-headed engine. Later the car was sold to Tasmania, was repossessed by a finance company and sold at auction to a drag racer, then Michael Tydell dragged it in Melbourne before Jane repurchased it and handed it over to Myles for restoration.
The twin car, which was blue, had gone drag racing much earlier, driven by Joe Parotta. It was ultimately written off in a road accident.
The effort that had gone into the Camaro was not lost altogether with its retirement. Those drawings later went on to Kevin Bartlett to assist him with the preparation of his car. And Myles is doing his utmost to return the car to perfection, largely as a tribute to “those who worked on her, to make her a milestone, and to Bob, who gave me my start in Australia.”
Ray Bell
[b]Illegal?[/b]
Some might feel I have dealt lightly with the issue of the gearbox. It’s far too late for anyone to cry now, anyway, but recounting a conversation had late at night in the pits at Lakeside might throw some light on things.
Hearing from another driver that Jane was using a Ford gearbox “because no Chev box would take the grunt,” I said to him that someone should protest. The retort, whether correct or not, was: “They can’t do that, they’re all illegal.”