NEW CLASS / SERIES; Historic Sports Sedans. formation meeting.20/04/13 ACC

[John McKechnie]

Steve- on post 193, you show Moffatt and co. What is the date of this meeting does anyone know?
On November 14 1971, the program shows Moffatt number 9 [Coke colours in your 193 he is 4] and Geoghegan [white ]were running at the Dunlop International, no Gardner entered.
How many times did Moffatt come here and the dates ,in this Mustang , any takers?

[Rod Grimwood]

2 or 3 John he ran in silver Brut colours last time at Bay Park and Puke. Geoghegan is in Grace bros colours in photo

[Steve Holmes]

Steve- on post 193, you show Moffatt and co. What is the date of this meeting does anyone know?
On November 14 1971, the program shows Moffatt number 9 [Coke colours in your 193 he is 4] and Geoghegan [white ]were running at the Dunlop International, no Gardner entered.
How many times did Moffatt come here and the dates ,in this Mustang , any takers?

John, the date for that event pictured above of Moffat and co would be December 31, 1972. It was the Bay Park Xmas meeting.

Someone may correct me on this, but I believe Moffat first raced the Mustang in NZ at that November 1971 event at Puke you referred to. Unfortunately they had virtually no competition as several of the Kiwi's had actually gone to race in Australia! Geoghegan was racing his '67 Mustang GTA at this event. I believe this was the last time Geoghegan ever raced that car. Moffat's Mustang stayed in NZ, and according to magazine reports, our very own Wally Wilmott prepared it so Moffat could run it at the Bay Park Xmas meeting. After Bay Park he ran it at the NZIGP at Pukekohe.

He returned to NZ the following season to run at the 1972 Bay Park Xmas meeting, as pictured above, plus the NZIGP at Pukekohe in early 1973.

For the NZ 1973/74 season, he returned again, this time with the car painted silver and green with Brut 33 sponsorship, and ran at the Bay Park Xmas meeting, and the Lady Wigram Trophy event at Wigram in January 1974.

Then in the 1974/75 season, he returned once again with the Mustang now in blue/white/red Union Travel colours, and ran at the Bay Park Xmas meeting and the Lady Wigram event. The Wigram event was the last time he ever raced the Mustang. This was January 1975.

I think I got that about right?

[John McKechnie]

Steve H- I think you have that Nov 1971 meeting right.
NZ competition against the Aussies were John Riley- Mustang, Rod Coppins- Camaro, Dexter Dunlop- Mustang and Jim Carlyle- Monaro.
Any body got results from this Trans-Tasman clash?
So Fahey and Dawson were in Australia at this time? I remember about this time Mrs Dawson writing to Motorman saying Red had not blown a motor as reported , just oiled the plugs.
Always liked Moffatt in Coke colours- Alan Boyles Mini and Viva never looked as hot.

[Steve Holmes]

There were three races at that November Puke event; two were scratch races, the other a handicap. Moffat won both the scratch races from Geoghegan. Their main opposition was Rod Coppins in the Camaro, but he blew a head gasket while leading the first race, and although he crossed the line in 3rd, he was out for the rest of the event. The only other real opposition was John Riley in the ex-Fahey Mustang, but he wasn't really on the pace of the two Aussie cars in the first race, then his diff failed in the second. But after a big effort to fix the diff between races, he did manage to win the handicap from Geoghegan and Jim Richards in his production GTHO.

Other than Coppins and Riley, there was really no other opposition. The field was made up of the 4.2 litre cars of Alan Boyle, Don Halliday, Peter Sundberg etc. Fahey (Escort) and Dennis Marwood (Camaro) were in Australia. I'm not sure why Dawson wasn't there, it might be that he'd sold the Mustang by that stage, as he would have been nearly finished building up his new Camaro.

There was no mention of either Dunlop or Carlyle in the race review, but they might have been there somewhere but just further down the field?

Unfortunately this wasn't a classic Trans-Tasman battle.

[John McKechnie]

Steve H- you are to congratulated for finding the answers and posting them so quickly to help out us working guys as we have our lunch break- better service than at many fast food outlets.

[Steve Holmes]

Ha ha ha, thanks John.

[Grant Sprague]

Geeeeees John & Steve , are you both transcending into the 5th Dimension & dragging this out of the ether...... perhaps you are both doing TM [like me ] lol

[George Sheweiry]

Here are some photos of most of the peoples cars who promised to be at the first meeting.

[George Sheweiry]

[George Sheweiry]

Sorry about all the different sizes but this site wouldn't let me put them on any different ( that's just Dumb !!)

[Steve Holmes]

Those appear to be the actual size of the images George, not the site doing weird things to their sizes.

[George Sheweiry]

Nope, I'm afraid not Steve, for instance the Roger Davis Torana I had to decrease to 1/8 of its size to fit on!

[Ellis]

I sent this pic to George a few years ago.....pic courtesy of Perry Drury in Launceston Tas

It looked the goods then and I seen some of it recently at HD ? and it still is the Bees Knees.



Here is another Perry Drury pic......

[Rod Grimwood]

Nope, I'm afraid not Steve, for instance the Roger Davis Torana I had to decrease to 1/8 of its size to fit on!

Hopefully Roger has a good size photo of this car, it is a neat thing, all built by them. Be great to see it again

[Steve Holmes]

Nope, I'm afraid not Steve, for instance the Roger Davis Torana I had to decrease to 1/8 of its size to fit on!

George, you're reducing the image dimensions to get them to fit when you should be reducing the image file sizes. That way you can make the dimensions as large as you like, within reason. All discussion forums have image file size limits, as each owner of the forum (me, in this case) has to pay for a hosting package. Also, if the image file sizes get too large, the pages take forever to load and people get frustrated.

Because The Roaring Season is image heavy with lots of photo collections etc, I've made the maximum image size a lot larger than most forums. Most will have a maximum of 95 - 120kb, The Roaring Season is 170kb.

You can email the images to me and I'll resize them for you to fit, without loss of dimension size, or alternatively, use an image hosting site, such as Imageshack or Tinypic.

[Steve Holmes]

They are admired world wide...even in a shed close by in Tassie

Wow, that is cool!

[Steve Holmes]

George,

By the way I envy you having the mustang. That car is one of the biggest regrets of my racing exploits. I had a choice to make. Buy the Sidchrome Mustang and move to Australia or buy the formula pacific that I did.
My Shellsport team were all going to move over with me if I bought the Mustang. As JR told Neville Bailey my main man, we would not win against Moffat and Co but we would get noticed. I was 19 years old at the time and who knows.

Anyway George, glad you have the car, you are the right guy to look after it.

That is an awesome story Steve! But I reckon, even if you did buy the Sidchrome, you'd probably still have regrets, because eventually you would have sold it to buy something quicker eventually?

[George Sheweiry]

Apparently, according to jandals, when the car arrived back in NZ it went to Trevor Mcleans workshop at Takanini where he and jandals checked it out as Trevor was interested in buying it but after looking it over he decided against it. Anyway one thing is for sure it wont be a "trailer Queen" in my hands! Yes historic racing cars are worth a lot of money but I just cant see the point in owning a historic racer just to be able to say that you own it and bask in its former glory poncing around at shows or race events, cause people want to see and hear those old Big bangers snarling around the race track. Those people are just depriving us of seeing these neat old cars doing what they were built for and should sell them to someone who will use them accordingly. " oh no its too nice to race" !!! and all the other excuses, those people are either too tight or haven't got the balls to race them. This new race series is the cheapest form of racing of these types of cars you could possibly do. We will all go out there and give it our best shot but at the same time look after these neat old cars and there will still be the after race banter of, well I nearly had you coming out of the sweeper! or wow you got me under brakes but I got you back on the straight! You guys who have been there you know what I am talking about. Just the great comradery and excitement of manhandling a fiery beast around the track in close combat and then coming in to shoot the shit at the end of the day. Nine weeks to go!! can't wait!!

[Rod Grimwood]

George, may be we can get a big old water truck and do the track for the second race so little fellas can tickle you big bullies up a little.
loved that one at Bay Park years back when you had just got the Stang and it rained, boy that was fun, your arms were like a bungy cord (one way then quick back the other) going down the straight. Noticed over time your right foot became alot better co-ordinated with the movement of the car.
Good times alright. Have you organized a group fridge.