Here is the GTR of the convicts. (It’s Tuesday here where the car was made! That OK?)
Let me explain, many will know that Australia started out as a massive Alcatraz for the British. If you wanted a free trip to Australia 200 plus years ago you could simply walk down to any corner store in London and take a loaf of bread without paying, eat it as quickly as possible and have a nap. When you woke up you were on the way too the lucky country, sure it wasn’t a nice journey and on arrival there was no McDonald’s. After a while things got better here and we even managed to build some pretty nice horseless carriages. This is one of them.
Oh, and McDonald’s is now found here in plague proportion, not that there’s anything wrong with that...
The reason I mentioned the convict angle is we Aussies have never stopped stealing stuff. This car is based on the Vauxhall Viva, a horrid little piece of machinery from Britain. It was sent here because it was found guilty of stealing the hopes and dreams of many English car buyers. Not long after arriving in the late ‘60s it went a bit ‘Hulk Smash’ and grew some ball bearings. GM really was at the forefront of Genetic Modification way way before it was cool and made the car a V8 killer on the race track. GMHolden reworked the Viva quite a bit and the end result was a crazy little vehicle that replaced the bigger 350 cui Chev powered HT GTS Monaro. It was given the name ‘Torana’, apparently this is a word that means ‘to fly’ in the local aboriginal language.
Below is a YouTube video some nice GTR footage from last years Targa Tasmania. Beautiful scenery and video, no people sounds, just the engine noise. It almost sounds like a V8 but this car has got a sweet sounding Holden 202 cui inline 6. My 202 never sounded as good as this one. It sounds like it’s got a super charger but it’s just straight cut timing gears that generate the wonderful noise. The standard LC GTR had a 186 cui 6 cylinder but this has the larger 202 cui engine from the later LJ series of Torana.
Info from the wiki;
“In August 1970 the first genuine performance Torana, the GTR XU-1, was developed by Holden along with Harry Firth of the Holden Dealer Team for competition in popular Series Production racing series in Australia as well as in off-road rallying. However, the main purpose of the Torana GTR XU-1 was to keep Holden competitive against the big and powerful Ford Falcon GT-HO V8s in the Hardie-Ferodo 500 (Bathurst) endurance race that is considered[by whom?] to be the jewel in the crown of Australian motorsport.
The LC Torana GTR XU-1 was equipped with a 160 brake horsepower 186 in³ (3-litre) six-cylinder engine, fitted with three Zenith-Stromberg CD-150 carburettors, cast iron headers, a performance cylinder head and camshaft and an Opel four-speed manual gearbox. This car featured a rear spoiler, guard flutes, wider steel rims, full instrumentation and front disc brakes as standard. The Torana GTR XU-1 proved to be a strong performer both on the road and track due to its favourable power/weight ratio. It soon gained huge popularity in Australia, being an ideal race car in many forms of motor sport, especially Series Production touring car racing and rallying. It successfully replaced the V8 Monaro GTS 350 as Holden’s frontline track race car in 1970, winning many touring car and rally events, but for the famed Bathurst 500-mile (800 km) race which Ford won in 1970 and 1971 with its XW Phase Two and XY Phase Three Falcon GT-HOs respectively.”
Link to the full page; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_To…
Ok, my grandmother had a Torana in this model and colour. Not a GTR but a two door 6 cylinder that looked very much like this, even in stock form it was a powerful car in its time. She had it until sometime early this century. It’s long gone now sadly, I just hope it’s still tearing up the roads somewhere on the island.
These photos were a bit rushed and are the best I can do for now, I’ll do a post with this and some of its cousins at a later date.
Steering wheel fail, I’m not that concerned as I’ll never drive it anyway...
Check out the names for the paint colours, mine is ‘Plum Dinger’! Guess you had to be there... it was a strange time back then...
VROOOOMM!