Australian Muscle Car

Australian Muscle Car is a fresh, proudly Australian publication dedicated to preserving the legend of the unique ‘Australian made’ Ford vs Holden muscle car heritage. From 1960s classic Bathurst muscle to the super sophisticated Falcon and Commodore performance cars of the new millennium and everything in between.

Steve Normoyle

Australian Muscle Car

New look TCM for ‘22 • “It’s about making a serious effort to cater to the people who have existing cars sitting in garages, and then looking at people who are interested in joining the category and have appropriate machinery to do so.”

The NSW Supercars Championship

HDTLH Sports Sedan on the market

Tribute Tribute Cars Cars

Auction update

Holden commemorative collection

Muscle Mail

AMC BEST LETTER

Wally’s Words • Which way does the track go – and what’s the lap record?

Adventures with Brocky: tales from Peter Brock’s PR chief

Guest column Luke West • When Luke West climbed out of the AMC editor’s chair in 2019 after eight years in the role, he was well-equipped to write a book about the greats of the local racing scene. So that’s what he did, as he explains as this issue’s guest columnist.

Paul Newby

The Final Phase the fastest four-door production sedan in the world • It wasn’t meant to be the final phase of Ford’s early Series Production racing homologation specials, but it turned out to be the last word in high performance Bathurstbred Falcons. In 1971 it was the fastest four-door mass produced road car in the world – half a century on it remains the ultimate Australian muscle car.

Tony Gerace

HI HO: watch the Fords go by • Even today it’s still the ultimate Bathurst-bred Ford. The GTHO Phase III was the last of its line, and it was partly responsible for steering Australian touring car racing away from a stock-standard showroom formula and onto the course that would lead to today’s Supercars. Its legend was born 50 years ago on a windswept October afternoon in the NSW central tablelands.

Bathurst is the Big One

Chrysler lacks class

Show stoppers Holden concepts cars • In the short time from the late ‘90s to the mid 2000s Holden produced a dazzling array of concept car show-stoppers – one of which became the V2 Monaro. During a pause in the pandemic lockdowns, Bruce Newton sat down for a pub lunch with ex-Holden designers Richard Ferlazzo and Peter Hughes to reflect on this brief golden period at Holden when almost anything seemed possible.

The promoter • Allan Horsley was the high-profile motor racing promoter of Oran Park who wielded significant influence and bought much innovation to motorsport during the 1970s. He then changed his spots and played a significant part in bringing Japanese manufacturer Mazda into the sport with Allan Moffat’s successful RX7 program, and consolidated the brand’s performance reputation with the formation of Mazda Motorsport. This would oversee unparalleled success in four 12 Hour endurance races, culminating in homegrown SP versions of Mazda’s iconic sports cars range. Horsley’s straight-shooting, no-nonsense style meant that he always got things done – on and off the track.

Q&A

Purebred orchids • Orchids are renowned as a beautifully flowering plant which can be grown from the stem. This lovely pair of ‘Orchid Metallics’ weren’t created by that method – they were in fact made in a Holden factory – but they share identical Holden DNA and are a matching pair in all respects apart from one of them being a Sandman panel van and the other a Monaro GTS four-door. These painstakingly restored matching-numbers orchid-hued machines make for a very rare twin-set of HQ Holdens.

Global ambition • It was an ambitious move to design and manufacture a quad-cam cylinder head conversion for...