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

Al Turner: the passing of a Ford legend

Best seat in the house

Hedley’s Hornet

Vale Denis Gregory

Auction update

Carter’s Calder chaos

Oriental Express derailed

Muscle Mail

AMC BEST LETTER

Anything but Mild • It was a brutal looking beast of a thing – and yet at the same time it was a stylishly beautiful race car. It boasted some very sophisticated technology but up front it was no-nonsense fuel injected Chev 350 V8 grunt. It was the brainchild of master race car engineer John Sheppard and it was built especially for touring car race legend Ian ‘Pete’ Geoghegan. It is the Craven-Mild HJ Monaro GTS Sports Sedan, and after a painstaking restoration over some 15 years, here it is.

From HJ to HQ

Through the years

Cobra strikes...... gold! • For much of its existence since 1978, the Ford Falcon XC Cobra has been something of an orphan, a side story in the rich tapestry of collectable Australian muscle cars. But that has changed over the last few years, with the Cobra becoming increasingly appreciated – as well as increasingly appreciating in market value. The car featured here recently changed hands for as much as $600,000 – it is the rarest of rare Cobras, one of only 30 Bathurst homologation special Cobras built as part of the run of 400 cars, unrestored and unmolested.

Feeling the heat

The last Bathurst Holden • It was the last genuine production-based car Bathurst Holden. As a muscle road car, the VN Commodore SS Group A SV was a superb achievement 30 years ago – and as the last Holden of its type, it was a fitting way to go out. In racing, though, it was doomed from the start – by race regulations weighted in favour of the turbos cars, and by the arrival of the all-wheel drive twin-turbo Nissan GT-R. AMC spoke to former Holden Racing Team crew chief Wally Storey about the development of the VN Group A race car and that tumultuous final year of Group A touring car racing.

A bloke called Hoddo • He was the only person ever to drive a Falcon GTHO Phase IV in motorsport competition – and he did it as part of the Ford factory team. But that is just one small chapter in the motorsporting life of Bruce ‘Hoddo’ Hodgson.

Split personality • Meet Harvey ‘2 Face’, a HZ Holden ute with something of a split personality. Stewart Wilson spoke to the husband-and-wife team that ‘conceived’ the 2 Face ute in a lengthy and meticulously executed ‘half-done’ restoration – and how 2 Face became an unlikely a social media superstar towards the end of 2021.

King Leo The Kiwi Brock • Australian readers of AMC mostly know Leo Leonard as a 1970s and ‘80s Bathurst co-driver from across the ditch. But our New Zealand cousins know him as much more than that, because in the Shaky Isles his is sometimes described as the Kiwi Brock. With a win record in the Pukekohe 500/1000 (the Bathurst 1000 of New Zealand) that is unsurpassed, a long and successful career in New Zealand’s equivalent of Sports Sedan racing and eight starts in our Great Race, it’s hard to argue with that claim.

Slot car addiction

The McGee dynasty part II • For an Australian family engine tuning business to design and develop their own engine to take on the American drag racing scene is surely something akin to a ‘taking coals to Newcastle’ exercise. But the McGees must have been onto something with their revolutionary quad-cam design, because powerful elements within the American drag racing hierarchy viewed...