Well it’s Wednesday here but hopefully still Utesday somewhere! If not I’m early for next week...
UTES!!!
These are some more of the casts from the Honey hole that I recently went bankrupt at. Of course when I saw these I knew they were coming home with me. Having owned a WB very similar to the model here I had absolutely no choice but to pull out the wallet. ** Warning: Rant initiating ** I never had the cartoonish oversized bullbar on mine, it may look bizarre and like some kind of fantasy cast with that bar but sadly they really do exist. I’m not one to generalise usually but the subculture that likes this style are a ‘special’ kind of human and seem to wear that fact as a badge of honour. The culture I’m referencing is the ‘B&S’ crowd. It started out as a country/rural culture innocently enough and was centred around the Bachelor and Spinster Ball. This is similar to a barn dance arrangement with the dances held as a means of getting the mostly isolated young folk together to meet, have a good time and...well...end up doing the horizontal folk dance and create the next generation of farmers. This was all good until some time in the late 90's when the culture spread to suburban areas, probably as the country kids moved to the burbs for work. This quickly bred a sh!t load of wanna be Cowboys that began mimicking the genuine guy and girls. Anyway it’s a bug bare of mine as the try hards tend to be extremely obnoxious in their attempts. *End of rant* (The only ones who will find that offensive are the same ones I’m talking about) :)
Kind of cool and strange at the same time.
Anyhoo...
Further info on the Holden HQ and its younger brother the WB.
These are extremely accurate and at 1:64 look better than some larger scale models of this car. The model variant depicted is the Sandman. This was a sporty version of the two trade orientated cars in the HQ range, the UTE and Panelvan. The latter is essentially a UTE with a full length roof although the roof height is taller than the sedan to accommodate “packages”, especially in the case of the Sandman Van were the load area was fitted out like a camper or more accurately a mobile hotel room. A popular nickname for these vans was ‘Shaggin Wagon’ and that wasn’t a reference to the type of ‘70s carpet usually lining the interior of the van. (Wink wink nudge nudge.)
But I digress. In a nut shell the Sandman was available with a 350 Chev SB from the factory, need I say more?
So the WB model was the last facelift of the HQ model. Unfortunately the only V8 option for this model was a 4.2L that was choked with early tree hugging technology making it a POS.
The bonus Ferguson tractor was another factor in the purchase. I’ve driven a few of these and needed a model of one. Anyone notice the error on it? I did fix it after noticing so you may pick up the subtle change in later photos.
Alright I’m done for now. Still more to come from the Honey Hole yet....
Thanks for looking.