1958: A Jaguar Circling in the Night

Only twice have the highest crowns of Australian open-wheel, sports and touring cars been up for grabs in the same meeting. The first occasion was the Albert Park double-header that coincided with the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, which we've already been over. The other was here in 1958, over the Labour Day long weekend at Mount Panorama. Here were held the Australian Grand Prix (for open-wheelers), the Australian Tourist Trophy (for sports cars), and if there was no Australian Touring Car Championship on offer as well, that's only because no such thing yet existed. That didn't prevent the weekend's supporting touring car races becoming the most important of the entire decade, as the future arrived with all the subtlety of a glove slap to the face.

Humpy Heaven
The Repco Hi-Power head was a bit like one of those Warhammer "start collecting" boxes – on its own it looked like affordable fun, but it was a gateway drug to a wider world of much greater expense. If you were handy with a spanner (and had rivals to beat...), the sky really was the limit when it came to modifying your family car for racing, especially in the absence of any Australia-wide rules. And at the peak of the outlaw era, the late 1950s, the two biggest names in the business were John French and Leo Geoghegan.

A Queenslander by birth, French started out as a bicycle mechanic but switched tracks and became a travelling salesman for an agricultural company instead, selling milking machines to dairy farmers. In 1957 the company gave him an FJ Holden to use as a work vehicle, and French got into the habit of finishing his sales trip on Thursdays, then doing a quick engine swap to install a tuned Grey for racing on weekends. His two-tone green FJ, which was soon known up and down the east coast, featured a high-flow twelve-port Repco head with triple Weber carburettors (rumoured to be running on high-octane methanol-based fuel) and a Jaguar 4-speed gearbox complete with floor shifter. At one point French even sliced off the top of the bonnet, cutting clean from the base of the windscreen to the top of the grille and welding in a flat steel sheet instead. This created a sloping wedge shape which was either intended to aid air penetration, or would just allow him to see where he was going!

No one ever really thought about aerodynamics in the '50s and '60s – they hadn't even invented wings back then. The FJ, of course, had a real humpy bonnet. Either Frenchie was too short and couldn't see over it, or he was trying to make the car go faster, but he cut the top right off the bonnet – from the windscreen to the radiator – to make it dead flat. Did he really know what he was doing? I don't know. But I'm sure that it would have given him so much front downforce – it would have been an oversteering pig! – Dick Johnson, AMC: Muscle Racers Vol.2

Pig or not, French would take this car to Queensland, Victorian and NSW state titles before the decade was out.

His only real rival was Leo Geoghegan, son of Tom Geoghegan and his dearly beloved Edna (née Low). Tom started as a taxi driver but upgraded to proprietor of Geoghegan's Sporty Cars, Sydney's premier dealer in British sports machinery. While still a teenager, in 1954, his son Leo had been invited to take over his Holden at Gnoo Blas, and without any previous experience the lad had immediately managed a pair of 2nd places (beaten only by Ken Jones' Riley). Realising the boy had talent, Tom began re-orienting his operation around Leo, fronting him regularly in a highly-modified Holden 48-215 painted in Geoghegan team black. Leo's tweaked Holden also featured a 4-speed gearbox (this one from an MG), and a unique Repco head cast from lightweight aluminium, allowing the highly-tuned six to produce a claimed 125 kW. Most visibly, this car also featured bulging aerodynamic aids on either side of the grille, and dome-like headlight covers to improve air penetration. Going into the Labour Day weekend that October Leo had every reason to be confident – he'd already won the Veedol Cup for touring cars at April's Easter meeting, and that was after winning the NSW Sedan Car Championship at the Mountain in 1956. He recalled in a Vintage Racecar interview with Patrick Quinn:

I drove at Bathurst for the first time in 1956 in the Holden. Bathurst was marvellous, all that I expected and more. I loved it! Loved the challenge. To cut a long story short, it was a handicap race and we started at the back but managed to win the event with Bob Holden not far behind in a Peugeot.

The meeting also counted Jack Myers in his yellow Waggott-engined FJ, Bob Holden in a black FE, Lou Kingsley in his Repco-headed yellow FE, Bill Slattery in another FJ, and Des West in a 48-215. Non-Holden runners included crowd-pleaser Barry Gurdon in an Austin A95, Frank Dent in a grey & white Austin A30 (capable of 101mph, if you could believe it), and way down the back you might even find a Morris Minor convertible piloted by a kid named Kevin Bartlett. The meeting was also notable for featuring the first Western Australian to race at the Mountain, Syd Negus, father of Wayne and later to be elected a WA Senator. His presence was remarkable given the sheer distance over an Eyre Highway that was just a graded dirt track at the time.

But when they took the start early on the afternoon of Sunday, 5 October, none of them realised they were about to be shown up.

Jaaag
In the 1950s, Jaguar was on a roll. The company had hit the decade running with their Le Mans-winning XK120 coupé; they'd taken over a brilliant new factory in Browns Lane, Coventry; and the excellent XK six-cylinder engine had proved a revelation, its advanced double overhead-cam layout properly high-tech at a time when most cars still relied on valve-in-head engines. The previous generation of Jags with their Standard-designed 1.5 and 2.5-litre engines weren't missed, but their demise did leave the company focused on the top end of the market, competing with stately Humbers, the bulbous Standard Vanguard and the heavy Rover P4 – a market that would be the first to suffer in the event of a recession. It was felt they needed a smaller, more bread-and-butter car to broaden their customer base and give them some financial security. To achieve it, they began work on Project Utah.

Early development prototype (Source: AR Online)

A sign that this was a genuine attempt at a more humble machine came, paradoxically, when the crew designed their first modern steel monocoque chassis. Hitherto all Jaguars had featured separate bodies mounted on ladder-frame chassis, the sort of thing Holden had been doing way back in the 1930s. It might raise eyebrows to realise Holden had been ahead of them on this one, but it must be remembered Holden was a mass-market brand, whereas Jags were low-volume and exclusive. A unitary body would make Utah lighter and stronger than anything Browns Lane had built before (at least until rust started eating the box sections...), but it would take a lot of sales to amortise the expensive tooling required. In the event they farmed this job out to their partners at the Pressed Steel Company of Great Britain Ltd, based at Cowley, who were already stamping panels for them. Pressed Steel worked out the details with Jaguar's chief body engineer Bill Thornton, and his assistant Cyril Crouch, but warned they would need 10,000 sales a year for a unitary body to make sense. Even so, the unitary body did its job well: despite being almost as long as the Mk.VII limousine, Utah arrived with a kerb weight of only 1,270kg, compared to 1,750 for its big brother.

As per tradition, styling was done by company head William Lyons, working of an evening in his garden at Wappenbury Hall. A lovely Queen Anne Revival-style mansion half an hour south of Coventry, this setting explained much about why classic Jags looked the way they did – and the work was usually done under the wide eyes of local boys, who climbed the walls to get a glimpse of the latest prototypes while Lyons worked. The shape Lyons arrived on looked, not coincidentally, like a sedan interpretation of the XK120, with full, rounded curves that, however beautiful, were more than cosmetic – they were a clever way of adding strength to the panels without adding any extra weight. The narrow front grille was in line with the marque's previous offerings, even if it would prove inadequate in warmer climates, while the many headlights clustering on the front were a necessary work-around when they were all made by Lucas. And of course, the close proximity to Browns Lane also allowed the prototype to be brought to the estate for the final approvals process – no model was finished until it had been looked over and given the nod by Greta, Mrs William Lyons.

Wappenbury Hall in more modern times, hosting the E-Type Reunion (Source: Secret-Cassics)

The choice of engine created headaches for the design team. It was clear power would have to come from some version of the proven XK straight-six, with its twin overhead cam layout and aluminium head. Early on, technical director William Heynes had started working on a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder version of the XK, but as the final design took shape it was realised such an engine would take the car too far downmarket. Jaguar was first and foremost a sports car company, and a 2.0-litre powerplant simply wouldn't give the performance their buyers expected. Instead, Heynes went back to the six and de-stroked it, producing an experimental 2.5-litre six instead. After the usual development faff, the final production version used a shorter block to produce a lively 2,483cc inline-six, fed by Solex carburettors in place of the usual SUs. This gave Utah a claimed 84 kW at 5,750rpm, and 190 Nm of torque at 2,000rpm. This was mated to a Moss 4-speed manual gearbox, with Laycock de Normanville overdrive available as an optional extra.

One of the cons of an all-steel body was road shock and internal echoes, like a van, which were completely unacceptable for the sort of customer Jaguar had in mind. Heynes dealt with it by mounting the double-wishbone front suspension on its own a separate subframe, with lots of rubber between it and the passengers to cushion the blows. The rear used a simplified version of the D-Type's live axle, with inverted leaves and a Panhard rod likewise packed with plenty of rubber. One of its oddest features was that the rear track was 114mm narrower than the front, a fact which was the focus of many a myth in later years (that it caused understeer, that it was better for high-speed stability, etc), when it was probably just because axle supplier Salisbury didn't have anything of the appropriate width!

This is a '59, but it matches the brochure pretty closely. (Source: Waimak Classics)

The interior was the blend of leather and polished walnut the buyers expected (although the combination of real wood, real leather and rusting box sections would make them big money to restore in later days), with most of the switches and gauges cleverly mounted in the centre, making it easier to build in left-hand drive. The first two prototypes were turning test laps by September 1954, with the first "dress rehearsal" production model completed on 7 January 1955.

The finished product was unveiled to the public at the Earl's Court Motor Show on 19 October 1955. Its official name was the Jaguar 2.4 Litre, but after the release of its successor in 1959, it retroactively became the Jaguar Mk.1. It was available in two variants, the cheaper Standard or the more expensive Special Equipment, which came fitted with a heater, tacho, windscreen washers, twin fog lights, a cigarette lighter, a folding centre armrest for the rear passengers, and extra switches to operate the rear interior lighting. Given it only cost £29 more, most buyers had no problem handing over the full £1,298 for the Special Equipment.

The big day at Earls Court (Source: AR Online)

Only 32 cars were manufactured in 1955, however, and most of those were retained by the factory for development and PR duties, so it wasn't until mid-1956 that the press were granted a 2.4 to review. The Motor was given a Special Equipment model with overdrive (registration SWK-803), and found it certainly hit the performance targets Lyons had set, with a top speed of 101.5mph (163 km/h), a 0-60 time of 14.4 seconds, and fuel economy of 24.4mpg (9.6 litres per 100km). They noted approvingly, "Whatever the aesthetic appeal of the body shape, it also is extremely effective in reducing noise, so that passengers can and do converse normally at 100mph even with the window open."

Autocar tested a similar model (rego SWK-986), and came to a similar conclusion:

Mechanical smoothness is matched by the silence of the engine. When accelerating on test runs at full throttle from a standing start, whipping into each higher gear in turn as the rev counter needle touches the red band, high speeds are reached without the slightest mechanical fuss and, although the engine note can be heard, it has a sweet and subdued note… The immunity of the occupants from noise initiated by road surfaces is quite astonishingly good.

Going For Broke
However, there was a problem. 1956, the first full year of production, saw only 8,029 units leave the assembly line, which was less than the 10,000 they needed. Complaints from American dealers made clear that the problem was a lack of power – the wide boulevards and endless interstate highways of the U.S. made a mockery of tiny British engines. In a bid to boost power, the company got to work on a trio of optional tuning kits, which would've lifted the brake to 89, 98 and 112 kW respectively – but it was quickly clear they wouldn't be enough. If they wanted to move metal Stateside, they'd just have to bite the bullet and fit the full-sized engine from the Mk.VIII instead.

Fitting a 3.4 into the space intended for a 2.4 was not the work of a moment, however. On the most basic level, it didn't fit – since it retained the older, taller block, the 3.4 sat too high to properly close the bonnet. Getting it to fit required cooking up a new inlet manifold, a different air filter and a lower sump so it could be packaged beneath the existing Mk.1 bonnet. The larger engine also required a larger radiator, and getting sufficient airflow over it required a correspondingly larger grille opening, which forced a minor redesign of the front end (these modifications eventually became standard to streamline production). The 3.4 was also heavier than the 2.4, which required the front suspension be strengthened with stiffer springs, while the rear axle also had to be strengthened to stand up to the increased torque. An extra bid to please the Americans was an optional automatic gearbox: Jaguar's choice fell on the Borg Warner DG, an American design being made in the U.K. at their factory in Letchworth, Herfordshire. At first it was only available on export models, though given its poor quality nobody complained much.

The 3.4-litre Jaguar Mk.1 launched in the U.S. – initially it wasn't available domestically – on 26 February 1957, its twin SU HD6 carburettors giving it 157 kW at 5,500rpm, and 293 Nm of torque at 3,000rpm. Because it was designed to lug around a much larger car, the engine was managed to be lively while offering torque across the rev range, enhancing the driving experience no end. Motor were the first to get their hands on one in April 1957, an export model in left-hand drive with an automatic gearbox. Even with the slushbox, 0-60 was covered in only 11.2 seconds and the top speed had risen to 119.8mph (193 km/h), although fuel consumption had crept up to 19.2mpg (12.2 litres per 100km). The test car cost £1,864, or about $73,000 in 2024, including tax of £622 ($24,000). Their rivals at Autocar didn't get one until June 1958, but by this time it was a manual with overdrive. At last the Mk.1's full potential was unleashed: top speed 120mph, 0-60 in a mere 9.1 seconds, and 0-100 done and dusted in 26 seconds; on the downside, fuel consumption was now up to 16mpg (14.7 litres per 100km). Jaguar's executive sedan was barely more than a second behind the contemporary XK150 sports coupé with the same engine!

That said, Motor was quite critical of the Mk.1's brakes, finding drums all-round were no longer adequate for a car with so much power. Their words provoked heated discussion at the factory, but it was for the good in the end, as it convinced Jaguar to draw on their Le Mans experience and fast-track the introduction of Dunlop disc brakes, added to the options list about the same time as the 3.4 became available in Britain. Discs wouldn't become standard until January 1959, but few indeed were the buyers who left that box unticked.

Jaguar had found their calling almost without realising it, stumbling onto the sports executive sedan market that had until now been dominated by Daimler and Riley. Orders from the U.S. poured in, which must have pleased Her Majesty's government mightily, as Britain was still trying to export its way out of colossal war debts and needed all the U.S. dollars it could scrounge to buy the oil it needed to keep the economy afloat. In all, Jaguar produced 8,520 Mk.1's in 1957, with another 11,605 following in 1958. For his services to the nation, William Lyons was made a Knight Bachelor in the 1956 New Year's Honours list, and Jaguar diversified away from the luxury car market in the nick of time – the feared economic downturn had arrived with the Suez Crisis that October.

Cheetah Jags
Given its pedigree, it surprised no-one when the Jaguar Mk.1 turned out to be rather hand on a track. The engine required no introduction, it was already a Le Mans winner five times over, but the rest of the design wasn't too shabby either. Because Jaguar had been nervous about the technology, the unitary body had been overbuilt and the car turned out much stiffer than it really needed to be. That made for surprisingly lithe handling, especially when combined with the Dunlop disc brakes which, like the engine, had already won Le Mans. It all added up to a very capable, off-the-shelf racecar.

Sopwith steering the Jag around Snetterton (Source: Touring-ModelCars)

One of the first to exploit it was British gentleman racer Tommy Sopwith, son of the man behind the Sopwith Camel fighter plane (and, later, the Hawker Hurricane as well). It was aboard a Jaguar that Sopwith wrote his name into the history books by winning the first officially-sanctioned British Saloon Car race, held on Boxing Day 1957.

The first race I did in that car – I was spending Christmas with my parents, near Winchester. And I drove it to Brands Hatch, put the numbers on it, won the race and drove back for dinner. And you sure as hell couldn't do that today. – Tommy Sopwith, Touring Car Legends, Ep.1: Gentlemen and Players

The first British Saloon Car Championship – the forerunner to the BTCC – was held the following year, and again Sopwith was in the thick of it. Because they competed in different classes, at the end of the season both he and rival Jack Sears (driving a rally-tuned Austin Westminster) had won their class and were on equal points. The officials wanted to decide the championship with a coin toss, but both drivers revolted at the idea. Instead, they staged a special tie-breaker event at Brands Hatch, where both men raced each other in identical Riley 1.5s. The winner was decided on aggregate time over a pair of 5-lap heats, with Sears taking the title by 1.6 seconds on a soaking wet track. Sopwith later admitted he was foolish to agree to settle it in BMC-branded cars when his rival was BMC's star works driver, but at the time he gave it no consideration.

Others who stepped into Mk.1s that year included Roy Salvadori, who raced for Guildford-based dealer John Coombs (sporting iconic "BUY 1" number plates), and Mike Hawthorn, who drove for his own team. Hawthorn might seem a touch ironic at first, given he was a contracted Ferrari driver on Grand Prix weekends, but remember that he also ran a Jaguar dealership on weekdays. The Tourist Trophy Garage in Farnham, Surrey, had been founded by his father, and was also the first importer of Ferraris into Britain, but even so Mike couldn't resist the crisp handling and smooth power delivery of the Jag. Of course, Hawthorn's tuned Mk.1, nicknamed, "the Merc-eater," because, "no Kraut car could overtake or out-accelerate" it, was also the car in which he would die, only weeks after clinching the 1958 World Championship in Morocco. 

Golden Boy Mike outside the TT Garage with the his prize Jag (Source: Facebook)

Still, all these famous names generated a lot of buzz, and soon that buzz was audible even in places as remote as far-off Australia...

Peak Journalism: Caversham 6-Hours Le Mans

As the 1950s entered their latter half, open-wheel and sports cars remained the headline act at race meetings, with the common-or-garden touring cars still languishing in the support ghetto. But if touring cars were slow to be recognised as their own distinct category, this wasn't matched by the cars themselves. Grid sizes were only trending upward, and the cars themselves were getting faster by the year thanks to a growing aftermarket of go-faster parts and accessories.

Lovely image of a Caversham starting grid, probably early '60s (Source: Facebook)

Speed Dealers
The undisputed king of Holden performance was Merv Waggott. A Sydneysider by birth, in his earliest days Merv worked repairing commercial refrigerators, founding Waggott Engineering somewhere circa 1948. He made ends meet doing general engineering and machining work, until his brother Ken got into motorcycle racing and asked Merv for some performance upgrades. Almost immediately the performance side of the business took off, word-of-mouth attracting more and more weekend racers beating a path to his door. A new workshop was built in Mayvic Street, Greenacre around 1952 specifically for doing performance work, where Merv built his own manually-operated cam grinder. By the mid-1950s, the workshop was manufacturing Merv's famous Waggott heads for Ford side-valve V8s, as well as doing marine conversions, scavenge pumps and intake manifolds for Holden Grey sixes. This, in a roundabout way, led to the development of the legendary Waggott head. 

High-quality images of the Waggott engine, one of its many homes and the Mayvic St premises itself (Source: TheGreyMotor.com)

As we've noted before, a lot of the popularity of Holdens for racing was the sheer upgradeability of the Holden engine. Seeing the latent potential in the Grey, Waggott turned his workshop over wholly to the task of turning it into a race engine. The block, crankshaft and conrods remained Holden stock (albeit with capacity increased to 2,440cc), but he dumped the pushrods in favour of his own twin-cam head system, matched with custom pistons, a dry-sump lubrication system and triple twin-choke Weber carburettors. With the camshafts driven by a chain from the crank, the redline stretched up beyond 6,500rpm, where it would make anywhere from 120 to 150 kW – more than three times the output of the stock engine. Although unquestionably the most powerful Greys ever built, they were held back by their exclusivity – only nine were ever built, and today Merv's son Peter can account for about half of them (up to six, depending on which source you trust). The engine won the Australian GT Championship for Queenslander John French in his Centaur in 1962, while another went into the the WM/Cooper open-wheeler raced by Jack Myers. That one was initially fed by six Amal carbs but these were later replaced by six 1¾-inch SUs: the engine developed around 145 kW at its peak. Only one Waggott head was ever fitted to a touring car, and once again Myers was the lucky recipient, though by then he was well into his winning streak in the yellow 48-215 so it's debatable whether it really made a difference.

To unlock mass participation, therefore, would require something a bit more turnkey than a highly-exclusive, hand-crafted OHC conversion of the Holden engine. Something offered over-the-counter by a major company. Someone like Melbourne's Replacement Parts Company, better known as Repco.

You may recognise this logo from the nose of Jack Brabham's championship-winning BT19 (Source: Repco.co.nz)

Research engineer Phil Irving had discovered that the main problem with the standard Grey was its lacklustre gas flow, so in 1956 he designed a cast-iron “Hi-Power” head that would bolt straight on to the standard cylinder block. The brochure bragged it was, “A revolutionary design with hemispherical combustion chamber and a separate port for each valve,” which was Repco's way of saying it was a simple-but-effective twelve-port crossflow design with the valves set across a semi-hemi combustion chamber. The fuel-air mix came in via long, square inlet ports, was burned and then exited again via short round exhaust ports on the opposite side – an efficient straight-through airflow arrangement. The kit came with inlet manifolds, exhaust manifold plates drilled to accept 1.625-inch diameter pipes, a cast-aluminium rocker cover and all screws and gaskets needed for assembly (no word on whether it came with an Allen key). Repco claimed at least a 50 percent increase in power and that it was, “designed for the speed connoisseur”, which was certainly true: altogether the Hi-Power head took the power on an otherwise stock Holden Grey up to the 100 kW range, and Repco supplied it as a complete kit for just £167 – about $6,800 in 2024. 

Repco Hi-Power in situ, c. 1956 (Source: Primotipo)

It was Repco's head that kicked open the door to mass participation, but relatively few were ever fitted to the more refined second-gen Holdens – it's believed you could count on one hand all the FE and FC sedans that ever entered a touring car race. At the top of the list, however short, was that of Lou Kingsley. Though quite old at the time (and not always particularly fast...), Kingsley took his FE Holden around the country in the late fifties and even, on his sole trip to Perth in 1957, managed to win the WA state touring car championship at Caversham. Which if true, not only means the FE actually won some silverware, it handily brings us to the topic of Caversham and its seminal "6-Hour Le Mans" races. 

Caversham
It's almost criminal how overlooked Caversham's production car enduros are, especially when the case could be made that they acted as important connective tissue between the one-off Mount Druitt 24-Hour race and the emergence of the Armstrong 500. Lest we forget, the original Grand Prix d'Endurance was meant to be a 24-hour race for ordinary production cars, even if it tended to be won by the really expensive ones. There's probably a book to be written on the Caversham Le Mans races, if one hasn't been already – the first of a trilogy on the quirky WA scene, maybe, with book two covering the halfway-house “Street Car” category of the 1970s, and book three dedicated to the Barbagallo 300.

Caversham's layouts, the "D", the "Triangle" and the rarely-used "T" circuit. The runway was also turned into a Martinsville-style paperclip oval on at least one occasion. (Source: Speedway and Road Race History)

Caversham was your classic post-war airfield circuit, an agricultural town in the heart of Wajuk land in Western Australia (now an eastern suburb of Perth). Originally built during World War II for the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, the airfield was rapidly taken over by enthusiasts once peace broke out, both a local gliding club and, of course, the motor racing community. The airfield hosted the first post-war race meeting held in Australia, the 1946 Victory Grand Prix, and by 1956 the lease was in the hands of the Western Australian Sporting Car Club, who rapidly turned it into one of the premier circuits in the country. They even managed to attract the Australian Grand Prix for 1957, held on 4 March on the so-called “D” circuit comprising the main runway and “tricky” eastern service roads. In that meeting the recently-resurfaced track broke up in the blistering heat, the temporary pits blew down during practice (twice), and there was controversy over whether the race had been won by Stan Jones or the combination of Lex Davison and relief driver Bill Patterson. But that's a story better left to Primotipo...

The inaugural Caversham 6-Hour Le Mans race was run on 11 April 1955, and attracted only 11 starters... meaning if they'd dropped out at a rate of one every half an hour, by the chequered flag there would've been negative one left! This race was run on the simpler “Triangle” circuit made up of the airfield runways, as the “D” layout was considered too demanding for such a long race. Run to Le Mans rules, the race was dominated by the Austin-Healey 100 of Sydney Anderson and Sid Taylor, who completed 127 laps despite frequent downpours (something which would become a feature of the event). Their only serious opposition a Jaguar XK120 which had retired just before half-distance. Was this Mrs Anderson's XK120 FHC, or even Peter Whitehead's Competition version from the Mount Druitt race? Or was it another car entirely? I haven't been able to find out. 2nd place went to one Aub Badger (great name) in a Holden FJ, albeit 8 laps down on the little British sports car.

The 1956 race was originally scheduled for 13 May, but ended up postponed until 20 May instead: either way, it produced the same result. Anderson and Taylor won it again with their Austin-Healey 100, this time with 166 laps on the board, hinting at drier conditions. In fact, the first three cars home were all Austin-Healeys, with 3rd place falling to one owned and co-driven by a Miss Shirley Deane (women racing drivers are not a new phenomenon). Remarkably, Sydney Anderson managed to extract three class wins within this one race, winning outright in the Sports Car class as a driver, and then taking the Closed Production Car under-2,500cc class win as the entrant for the Carboni siblings, who drove a Holden for his dealership, Sydney Anderson Automotives. He then repeated the feat in the Closed Production over-2,500cc class as well, entering A. Mackintosh and W. Solloway in a Chevrolet (probably a six-cylinder sedan rather than one of those sexy new Corvettes, but a man can dream). Anderson and Taylor made it a hat-trick on 3 June 1957, defying the rains to take their third win in a row in an updated Austin-Healey 100-4, this time with 147 laps. But their time in the sun was about to end, for come the 1958 event, they were finally beaten.

Twenty-three entrants were flagged away at 8:00am on 2 June, in front of a 10,000-strong crowd, a remarkable figure for such a time and place. This was the traditional Le Mans start, where the drivers started on the opposite side of the track and ran to their cars on foot, climbed aboard, started them up and only then roared off on what could be a journey of more than 600km. As per Le Mans tradition the trouble started immediately, with Northside Service Station's Dave Sullivan managing two complete revolutions when he rolled his Holden. The car's bruised appearance attracted plenty of attention when it eventually rejoined the race later in the day.

Vin Smith and Ted Hantke had it even worse, mechanical problems forcing them to change the fuel in their Austin-Healey before the race. Then came a fire in the cockpit, which mechanic Brian Cropley, in a wonderful display of fortitude, simply beat out with his bare hands. Finally their brakes seized during the race, but even after all that they were 7th outright and only 16 laps behind the leaders when they greeted the chequered flag.

But the iron man of the race was surely Dick Blythe, who drove his Austin Lancer without relief for the entire six hours. True, Aubrey Melrose drove without relief in his Austin-Healey 100-4, but he still got a few moments of smoko during pit stops. Blythe, by contrast, apparently did not stop for the whole the six-hour ordeal, not even to top up the tank. Which was certainly a strategy one could try...

The Triumph on its way to, well, triumphing (Source: Speedway and Road Race History)

In the final hour the win seemed set to go the Morgan entered in the name of the Loftus Service Station, driven by Barry Ranford and his son, Barry Jr. Late in the piece, however, the Morgan started overheating, requiring several returns to the pits to take on water. These frequent stops allowed the Triumph TR2 entered by the Performance Cars dealership, driven by Jim Harwood and Bill Downey, to stay in the game. The Ranfords' troubles gave them the opportunity they needed to make up the lost laps and nip through in the dying minutes to take the win. Both they and the Barries were on their 181st lap when the chequered flag flew, a remarkably close finish after six hours of competition where anything could happen.

A smiling Harwood and Downey after their win (Source: Speedway and Road Race History)

Despite all the colour they gave us above, the article in Visor magazine admitted: “The race was full of interest right throughout and filled with incidents which are not possible to chronicle in the limited space at our disposal.” Which is as amusing as it is frustrating – if you've been wondering why I haven't been covering the 1950s in much detail, this is why. When they tell you previous generations worked harder than you, yeah, not always true...

Golden Age: The Holden FC

Dandenong
Since beginning local manufacture in 1948, Holden had built more than 290,000 motor vehicles in Australia. And because they'd sold every one of them, there were still plenty of customers languishing on the waiting list, some of them for years at a time. The only solution was to ramp up production even more, so in 1954 the company embarked on another £7¼ million expansion programme ($320 million in 2024), which would include upgrades for Fishermans Bend, Pagewood and Woodville as well as Fortitude Valley, Birkenhead and Mosman Park. The jewel in the crown, however, would be an all-new assembly plant to be built to Melbourne's south-east, on the outskirts of what had lately been the satellite city of Dandenong.

Rare image of Dandenong under construction, c.1956.

Hitherto a dairy farming region, post-war immigration (especially from Greece and Italy) had forced Melbourne outwards in a new style of conurbation called "suburbs", and Dandenong was next in line to be absorbed by the blob. Finding a workable combination of cheap land, good transport links and abundant labour, Holden purchased a 153-acre site in March 1955 and broke ground on yet another state-of-the-art assembly plant. The plan was that Dandenong would take over vehicle assembly operations from Fishermans Bend, allowing the Bend to become a dedicated engine plant (as well as remaining head office); Woodville would remain the primary location for body panels. In theory, Dandenong would be capable of 152 bodies and 168 complete vehicles per day, meaning Holden overall would be in with a shot of completing more than 72,000 cars a year. The this would lay the foundation to work towards the ultimate goal of 100,000 per year.

The Dandenong body and assembly plant opened late in 1956, having cost nearly £4.5 million ($198 million). Sadly, there were no public-facing Art Deco buildings this time, just a huge area of sawtooth-roof warehousing punctuated by an office block for the adminisphere. From the moment it opened it was the fourth-largest GM-H plant in Australia, employing more than 3,480 people – so many that Holden was even moved to shell out for the council to build them their own train station, so their workers could commute to their new jobs. The Dandenong station opened either on 1 October or 18 November 1956, and was not accessible from the road, as the only way in or out was via the gate to the Holden factory.

Dandenong's front gate. Apparently the redgum is still there.

Holden was one of the "big three" (along with International Harvester and Heinz) who spearheaded the industrialisation of the Dandenong region. In the following ten years, more than two hundred other factories were built, attracting immigrants the world over who heard there were good jobs going (indeed, it is said Holden even had recruiters on the migrant ships to sign them up on the trip over!). Between 1948 and 1959 Dandenong's population increased from 6,000 to nearly 30,000, and the council was moved to build Doveton Housing Estate to ensure sufficient workers lived close to their places of work. Those who didn't take the train parked their Holdens in the 1,000-space car park out the front of the factory – and by 1958, many of those Holdens were the mid-life update to the ultra-successful FE, the FC.

Distracted by the Shiny
The mid-life update of the Holden FE saw GM-H take an already great car and add chrome – an oversimplification, maybe, but not by much. When the new Holden FC launched on 6 May 1958, the only thing anyone could talk about was the shiny new radiator grille. This was a styling update, and Holden made no apologies for it.

For a humble set of wheels in 1958, you could do worse than an FC Standard. Much worse (source).

Naturally, some journalists wondered whether Holden might've taken it too far for the ultra-conservative Australian market. All that extra chrome could've represented a real risk, but as usual they'd got it spot on. We were getting used to seeing the latest Chevrolets, Pontiacs and, yes, Ford Customlines rolling around local roads, so the ground was already prepared. The front bumper had been doubled with a moustache-like piece that merged into the lower part of the radiator grille, which contained the parking lights and, on Specials, the indicators as well. Being flat and long rather than round, the frontal light treatment created the impression of a stronger, wider car, even though not a single panel had been changed from the FE. It was evidence of how well Holden's aesthetic design and visual language department – better known as Alf Payze – knew his business. 

The interior didn't reinvent the wheel, it just took the lessons of the last decade and applied them (source).

But like the Holden FJ before it, the FC was more than just a pretty face, focusing on small quality-of-life improvements that added up to a big difference. In the cockpit, the full FE horn ring had been cut down to half a ring to make the instruments more visible, and the gauges had been given black hoods with matching black panels behind the switch gear to cut down on distracting glare (the black steering column was a running FE change – formerly it had been body-coloured). The seats and door trims had been given extra pleats, and there was a new vertical-bar radio speaker grille. The driving position had been made slightly better and it was a nicer car to drive all-round, with sharper steering (3.2 turns lock-to-lock rather than 3.8), better gear linkages, and a more responsive engine.

Although the bumpf didn't mention a power increase, subsequent road tests revealed the standby 132ci Grey straight-six had been given lifted to 54 kW at 4,000rpm, while torque peaked at the same 149 Nm at 1,200rpm. That meant peak torque was available at just 40km/h, so mountain roads could be dealt with by a single downshift to second. The better performance was owed to another small increase in compression ratio, from 6.8 to 7:1 – still a low ratio, even in 1958, but one that allowed Holdens to continue using low-quality fuel. A new camshaft grind and stronger rocker supports supported this increase with smoother breathing, reduced valve bounce and less frequent tappet adjustment. 

The "station sedan", as the wagon was still known, was the ride of choice for suburban dads (source).

Unfortunately, kerb weights had grown from 1,080 to 1,094kg for the Special, and only some of it was because of the extra chrome. Work had begun on toughening-up the flimsy, rust-prone FE almost as soon as it had gone on sale, and most of the mechanical upgrades on the FC had been running changes to the FE first. Combined with smaller but wider 13-inch wheels, that meant the FC could no longer be considered a performance car like the FJ had been. Acceleration was adequate and nothing more, as the engine still didn't like revving and Holden had (wisely) matched the gear ratios to the sorts of driving their customers actually did. That meant the same car that could lurch from 0 to 50km/h in just 4 seconds would take 19.8 to reach 100km/h – but the surge from 40 to 65km/h when you pulled out to overtake lasted just 5.6 seconds.

The standing quarter was 21.6 seconds, and the top speed was 136km/h, but those sorts of figures interested the Holden buyer not a jot. It was close enough to its market rivals not to matter, especially when most of those cost more and started falling apart the moment you introduced them to a corrugated road. The drum brakes would hardly pull your face off, and they were prone to overheating if abused, but that was normal for the era and it was the same for everyone on the road. If you resisted the urge to thrash it, fuel economy figures around 10 litres per 100km were possible, giving it a range of 400km between trips to Golden Fleece.

The price was virtually the same as the outgoing FE, with a Standard sedan for £1,110 ($43,400 in 2024) and the ritzy Special going for £1,142 ($44,500). And let's be honest, the Special was the one you wanted: not only did it come with indicators, side flashes and that lovely radiator grille, the chrome side pieces even made two-tone paintwork possible, hiding the seam between the two visits to the spray booth. Like the FE before it, there were some seriously lovely colour combinations to be had, such as Royal Marine over Skyline Blue, or Hialeagh Green over Cape Ivory.

Promo image of the ute. Note the body-coloured grille and headlight surrounds.

At the other end of the scale, the commercial range initially featured grilles, headlight surrounds and taillight surrounds in body colour to differentiate them from the passenger cars, but quickly switched to the same chrome units as all other FC models. This time the panel van was based on the utility rather than the station wagon, its 1.9 cubic metres of load volume meaning few loads were refused. In a rare misstep however, the extra weight of the FE's body-strengthening programme actually saw payload ratings decrease, with the ute dropping to 388kg and the panel van to just 378. It didn't end up mattering much though, as most tradies paid no heed to such trivialties and carried on overloading their ute or panel van to frankly dangerous levels.

An export FC in Fiji.

And of course, this being the 1950s, when Holden could do no wrong, the FC was an immediate sales success. It hit the market just as the first generation of Holdens (which had served their owners for nigh on a decade now) came up for replacement, and trading them in for FCs just made sense. With Dandenong now online, Holden hit their target of 100,000 vehicles in 1958, with a final total of 191,724 FCs produced between May 1958 and January 1960. An FC became the 500,000th Holden built and the 10,000th to be exported, with the model supplied to more than fifteen countries including South Africa (just embarking into an exciting new era called "apartheid"), Thailand, Hong Kong, Fiji (still British colonies at this point so technically not countries), and Singapore (which was about to be granted full self-governance by Britain and so yes, technically now a country). At the start of the decade Holden had held a solid 20 percent of the new car market: by the end, at the peak of the FC's tenure, that had risen to an incredible 50.3 percent. The nearest competitor was being outsold four to one, and Holden salesmen boasted they had the easiest job in the world.

Half-millionth Holden breaks the ribbon. Colour images of the day reveal it was bright red.

What made it truly impressive was that the FC's success came at a time when the competition was finally starting to get it all in one sock. Where the 48-215 had benefitted from being the best in a field of one, the FC launched into a six-cylinder family sedan market that was not only getting crowded, in some cases it was becoming a difficult choice. In their June '58 edition, Motor Manual ran a head-to-head between the Holden FC, Ford's Mk.II Zephyr, the Morris Marshall ( a local, Morris-branded version of the Austin A95 Westminster), and the Holden's own GM stablemate, the Vauxhall PA Velox. All were assembled on Australian shores and were far better than anything the FJ had faced, but all had their little foibles that could veto a purchase. 

It might've been quite good as a British Austin, but as a local Morris it was, like all British cars of this period, rather out of its depth (source).

After extensive road-testing, Motor Manual concluded that the Marshall offered the best handling, and its huge fuel tank gave it excellent touring range, but there was too much road shock coming up through the steering wheel once you hit the dirt. There was also a fair bit of sticker shock involved, as it retailed for an eye-watering £1,459 ($57,000 in 2024). 

Yes, I know the badge says "Cresta", it's close enough. It's hard to find images of the '58 when the '60 was so much more attractive (source).

The Velox (assembled by GM-H themselves and sold as an up-market alternative to a Holden) was probably the best car overall, offering a similar ownership experience to the Holden, but with a better engine, better interior, and generally just better overall. However, "similar to the Holden" wasn't good enough when the asking price was £1,437 ($56,000) – even if it wasn't as pricy as a Marshall, it was still £232 more than the Holden.

As we know, the Mk.II was the first Zephyr able to justify its extra cost. No wonder Ford made it the linchpin of their expansion plans for coming decade.

Surprisingly, it was the Zephyr that came closest to unseating the Holden, featuring the most powerful engine in the test (64 kW), but with a question mark over its fuel economy and concerns that its MacPherson strut front suspension didn't do enough to isolate the body from the rough stuff. And at £1,362 (just over $53,000), it still cost £157 more than the Holden. Overall, while the British cars were better whenever you had a sealed highway under you, none were as comfortable as the Holden when the going got tough. What's more, the FC's extra boot space and sensible placement of the spare tyre (where you could retrieve it without emptying out the entire boot first) gave it an edge over the others even before you sat down with your bank manager to talk finance. Wheels magazine wisely summed it up as: "A worthy continuance of the combination of features which made the previous model so popular. The designers have steered an excellent course through the paths of compromise. Holden has far fewer faults than many cars with higher price tags and imposing overseas origins."

But as Uncle Henry taught us, "You will come to see a man learns nothing from winning." Holden had worked hard to get where they were, but after ten years there was a definite "born to rule" mentality setting in, that would come back to haunt them once their rivals started releasing seriously competitive machinery. Holden might've been banking plenty of cash reserves, but the hard lessons – the kind you can only get from losing – were all going to their rivals, especially the other two Detroit giants at Norlane and Mile End South.

1957: To The Stars

A quiet end to 1957 came with the launch of a metal beach ball with aerials, better known as Sputnik 1. Quiet, yet profoundly disquieting: the simple, incessant beeping of its radio signal broadcast to the world that the Soviet Union now had the ability to drop a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth.

Source: Colorado State University

Sputnik had been prompted by a U.S. announcement that they would soon launch a satellite of their own. The Soviets aimed to undercut the Americans by beating them to it, which is the main reason Sputnik 1 was such a simple device. They'd originally planned a much larger satellite incorporating scientific instruments measuring the solar wind, magnetic fields and cosmic rays, but the tight deadline meant they had to drop it for a very basic, proof-of-concept launch. The original device eventually flew as Sputnik 3, leaving Sputnik 1 to be... well, this video describes it best.

But what it was mattered less than where it was I.e. low-Earth orbit. As XKCD taught us, getting to space is relatively easy: the tricky part is staying there. Hitler's V2 rockets officially became the first works of our hands to reach space, peaking at a maximum 206km altitude if launched vertically, but these never carried enough fuel to boost their explosive payload into orbit. To do that, you needed to accelerate the vehicle to just shy of 8 kilometres per second, which wasn't a feasible goal for a Nazi mad-science project powered by haircare products. To do that required the unfathomable resources of a superpower with a chip on their shoulder.

Sputnik captivated the public like no satellite ever would again. Parties were thrown where everyone would go outside and lie down on the grass, hoping to spot it as it whizzed overhead. Ham radio enthusiasts worked feverishly to cobble together short-wave sets in the hope of hearing its famous beeping signal. Sadly, the window to do that was quite short, as the batteries ran out on 22 October 1957 – just 18 days after it had been launched.

But to those with young eyes, it was still visible in the sky if the orbit lined up right. Kurt Gottlieb, a design engineer at the Mount Stromlo observatory, told The Canberra Times it was, "a little brighter than the faintest star in the southern Cross." A certain Kym, 74, from Palmerston near Darwin, commented this to YouTube:

I saw Sputnik pass overhead, just south of Adelaide Australia on 4th October 1957. I was seven and with my uncle Dave at Christie's Beach. He had a pair of binoculars. Sputnik passed overhead from north-west to south-east, just after 8 p.m. local time – shortly after sunset. The evening sunlight was reflected by Sputnik's polished sphere, enough for it to be seen with binoculars or a telescope as a small light. I've been a Space Race kid ever since – and still have Dave's binoculars.

By the end of October, a Dr Przybyleski was able to comment that Sputnik's orbit was getting just over 4 seconds faster each day. A racing driver would commit bloody-handed murder to achieve something like that, but for Sputnik that could only mean its orbit was decaying – by pure geometry, a lower orbit is a faster one. Dr Przybyleski said it had lost 80km of altitude since its launch, and this indeed was the reason the Soviets had made it a sphere, so they could use its orbital decay to learn about the upper atmosphere. Sure enough, some time on 4 January 1958, Sputnik 1 finally fell back to Earth and burned up on re-entry, an event that took place somewhere near California. An Encino man claimed to find something glowing in his backyard that turned out to be the charred remains of a rubber hose, but whether it was actually part of Sputnik has never been determined.

Today the sky is so cluttered with orbital bits and bobs it's become the premise of a Sandra Bullock film, so it's sobering to consider that in 1957 no-one had ever seen a man-made object orbit the Earth before. I've heard tales of uncontacted peoples whose first experience of the outside world was noticing the satellites above and wondering what the hell they were, but I can't find them now so I can't comment on how true they are. What I can say is that some people will still set an alarm for a Starlink launch, and the real enthusiasts will still look for Iridium flares, but overall we've become a bit inured to it. So take a moment, once in a while, to cast your mind back to the days when everything was mechanical, and imagine what it must've been like to look up and see a new star gliding across the sky at warp speed – to see something that human eyes had never seen before.

Country Roads: The 1957 Coonabarabran Speed Trials

The traditional complaint about American cars is that they're only fast in a straight line.

Well, what if that's all you're looking for?

(Source: Primotipo)

How Leonard got his Pennies
Defeat at Albert Park didn't dim Len Lukey's star in the slightest. The Melbourne-born businessman might've come to racing relatively late – aged 32, having already established Lukey Mufflers at 1142 Nepean Highway in Highett, Victoria – but many a slow start has been made up with some slick gear changes and opportunism. The sheer attitude with which Lukey attacked the racing scene made it clear this was not a man who let opportunities slip by.

Leonard Frank Lukey began his motor racing career in a 1953 Anniversary Mainline ute, which also happened to serve as his runabout on workdays. The ute was probably a better choice for racing anyway, given it was lighter than the sedan, but it came with the perennial utility handling defect – no weight over the rear wheels. Rocking up in 1954 for the inaugural meeting at the new Altona circuit (a swampy, snake-infested road ringing Cherry Lake, south-west of Melbourne), Lukey's inexperience gave him away when he bombed into the Esses at unabated speed and spun... right in front of Stan Jones' expensive new Maybach 2 Grand Prix car.

It's unclear whether the father of the famously combative Alan Jones had a few short words with Lukey, but either way CAMS (the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport, motor racing's governing body), voted to ban utilities from touring car racing shortly after, arguing that they were "inappropriate". Undeterred, Lukey switched to a navy-blue '55 Customline sedan (rego GJL-432), on the theory that neutral handling and V8 power covereth a multitude of sins. If nothing else, the lazy, pig-iron burble of its Ford Y-block would make a thrilling counter-note to the snarl of Holden sixes.

Lukey rounding the hairpin in the Melford Motors Trophy, a 5-lap sprint at Fishermans Bend, 12 February 1956. A lap or so later, while trying to run down Hurst's Delahaye, he ran out of brakes and speared off the track, rejoining chastened but undamaged. Also in the race was Jack Myers, his cream 48-215 sporting a green roof. Screengrab from the Ken Rankine footage linked below.

To make it into a racecar, Lukey turned to another motor industry insider with a taste for racing – Harry Firth. At this stage Harry was known more for his work with small British sports cars (apparently, he built twelve MG Specials during this period... plus a Triumph!), but Lukey knew his talents would apply just as well to a big American saloon. Most of his time was spent tidying up the minor mistakes inherent to a mass-produced vehicle: ensuring the internal clearances right, raising the compression ratio, and getting the oil surge under control. The suspension was stiffened with heavy-duty springs and Armstrong shock absorbers, and he also ported the cylinder heads for better flow and crafted a special high-performance valvetrain. The final touch was a set of Lukey's own high-flow exhaust extractors, which were especially designed to work with a huge pair of two-barrel carburettors adapted from a Ford truck. Harry claimed around 186 kW at 6,000rpm from his tweaked Y-block, which was good for a top speed above 190km/h with the right diff and gear ratios.

The only thing he couldn't do was reduce the Customline's immense weight, which left its cast-iron drum brakes overworked and prone to severe heat fade after just a few laps. Firth replaced them with new drums of his own design (cast locally, with integral fins to aid cooling), and fitted special Ferodo high-temp brake linings that only worked when hot, but braking zones remained the car's biggest weakness.

Still, Lukey started breaking records as soon as he gave the car its debut, at the Templestowe hill climb in Melbourne's outer east on Sunday, 3 July 1955. From there, he quickly set class records at Rob Roy and Hepburn Springs as well, then set the fastest time for a sedan over the quarter-mile (171.5 km/h) at the South Pacific Road Racing Championships meeting at Gnoo Blas, 30 January 1956. He also handily beat Jack Myers, an early iteration of the Holden-vs-Ford rivalry that also happened to play to the eternal bitterness between Melbourne and Sydney.

Lukey soon graduated to a front-engined Cooper-Bristol for Gold Star open-wheel racing, but he still used the Customline to contest the supporting touring car races (as the Cooper's tow car, he had to bring it along anyway!). He saw plenty of success, too, at least until the opening meeting of the new Phillip Island circuit on 15 December 1956. Here Lukey had one of his little mishaps, which this time had big consequences: the car rolled at the Southern Loop, and Lukey himself was lucky to crawl out from behind the wheel alive.

The car would need an extensive stay at the panelbeater's, so Lukey removed its Firth-fettled race engine, souped-up brakes and suspension and installed them in a new Olympia Blue 1956 model, which also became the Cooper's new tow car. Lukey simply picked up where he'd left off, contesting (and not infrequently, winning) his class in hill climbs and the touring car support races at any meeting where he was racing the Cooper-Bristol.

Then, in September 1957, he took it to the most unlikely place imaginable – a nondescript stretch of road cutting through the scrub between the towns of Coonabarabran and Baradine, in rural NSW.

The BP-COR Speed Trials
We've already noted how public outrage over their chicanery had forced the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to rebrand as British Petroleum. What we haven't really covered were the knock-on effects here in Australia. The local branch of the company had been Commonwealth Oil Refineries, established in 1920 in partnership with the government of Prime Minister Billy Hughes. Now we were in the golden age of Menzies, however, the Party was just itching to offload its share so they could do what Liberals always do, privatise everything. The decision brought a howl of protest from Hughes – his final ever speech to Parliament – but the decision went through and the government's share was sold back to AIOC in 1952.

But the cost of the share buyback was substantial and, coupled with the 1954 rebrand as BP, necessitated an ongoing promotional blitz, one big enough to sustain them through the change and keep their new green-and-yellow signage in the public eye. One idea floated in early 1956 was to sponsor some Australian land speed record attempts – a publicity stunt of course, but one with at least a sheen of substance. BP commissioned one Graham Hoinville (a rally navigator, CAMS administrator and, not least, one of their own employees) to scout suitable locations, and after working through a shortlist he selected a six-kilometre section of dead-straight road linking Coonabarabran and Baradine, just north of the Warrumbungle National Park.

The Coonabarabran Shire Council and NSW Police agreed to the proposal, and arrangements were made to close the road for two days. First prize for the BP-COR Speed Trial was set at £275 (nearly $11,000 in 2024), with profits from the event going towards the construction of homes for seniors in Coonabarabran. The road itself was only 5.5 metres wide (it's not much wider today) and had a pronounced crown, bounded to the east by trees and to the west by the Gwabegar branch railway line and a string of telegraph poles, with additional hazards provided by the small dirt roads accessing the farms. The main industries in this part of the world were forestry and cattle grazing, and indeed the road ran right past the gates of Tipperary Station (not to be confused with the huge one in the Northern Territory): for the day, the spot became known as the Tipperary Flying Mile. Since it had recently been resurfaced there was no central white line and, considering this important, painters were brought in to apply one by hand – all five kilometres of it!

Officials looking exactly as professional as they were. Note the car battery powering the equipment! (Source: Primotipo)

Being at its core a big advertisement, only BP-contracted drivers were selected for the event. The "Racing Cars" category included Lex Davison's Ferrari 500/625, John McMillan's Ferrari 555 Super Squalo, and Len Lukey's immaculate Cooper T23 Bristol. "Sports Cars" counted Derek Jolly's Aussie-built Decca Mk.2 Climax, and Lukey's Olympia Blue Ford Customline. At the last minute it was decided to include motorcyclists as well, and despite the short notice they managed to get Jack Forrest (of Forrest's Elbow fame) and his ex-works BMW Rennsport 500, Trevor Pound (Eric Walsh's BSA Bantam) and Jack Ahearn, with his Manx Norton 350 and a 250cc NSU Sportmax. Sidecars were represented by Frank Sinclair's 1,080cc Vincent and Bernie Mack's Norton 500.

The first day – Saturday, 28 September 1957 – was warm and dogged by strong winds, either caused by or contributing to some nearby bushfires. Ideally, all record attempts would've been held in the cool of the morning for peak engine performance, but media demands meant they had to be held later in the day. That meant the morning was free for last-minute testing, which led to tragedy. Jimmy Johnson (not to be confused with the seven-time NASCAR champion), a Leichhardt garage owner by day, decided to give his MG TC Special one last test run shortly after dawn to check whether a persistent misfire had been sorted. Johnson arrived at the Tipperary Station gates around 6:30am at maximum speed – listening carefully to his engine, but his mind perhaps not fully on the road in front of him. Since the Trials hadn't officially begun the road was still open to normal traffic, and a fuel truck – just a speck in the distance a moment earlier – unexpectedly turned right to enter the Station, just as Johnson arrived on the scene. Johnson went underneath it and was killed instantly. The truck didn't have external rear mirrors, so its driver hadn't been aware of Johnson's advent until it was too late. It was an inauspicious beginning given the event hadn't technically started yet...

Despite the loss of Johnson, the bushfires and the winds – all of which threatened to cancel the event outright – there were still 3,000 spectators in attendance, which is a substantial proportion of the district today, never mind seventy years ago. As the winds were so blustery, motorcycle attempts were postponed until the Sunday. As per Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) rules, a record attempt would consist of two runs, one in each direction, which had to be made within one hour. Each run would be timed to the hundredth of a second. Cars would make their attempt over the flying kilometre, while bikes would be measured for a flying half-mile. John Crouch and George Hutchings were the official CAMS observers.

• Class C (3,001-5,000cc): John McMillan set an early benchmark with a pair of runs averaging 152mph (244.62 km/h) in his Ferrari 555 Super Squalo. The Super Squalo was named for its bulging fuel tanks, which did indeed give it a sinister, shark-like appearance, but like any proper Italian car it refused to perform without extensive spanner work first. For reasons unknown, McMillan and his mechanic and been forced to virtually rebuild the car the morning of the trials, so 152mph was a good result given absolutely zero testing. Victorian Ted Gray did his best to beat it in the Tornado 2 Chev, but couldn't get it to run properly and resigned himself to trying again on Sunday.

McMillan's Super Squalo (front), Davison's Starlet (middle) and Gray's Tornado (rear) being wheeled up to the starting line. (Source: Primotipo)

• Class D (2,001-3,000cc): Lex Davison's mount was a champion already, chassis 005, the very Ferrari 500 "Starlet" aboard which Alberto Ascari had won his two World Championships. Since then the car had been rebuilt as a Ferrari 500/625 with a 3.0-litre Monza 750 engine, and sold into Australia for Formula Libre use, meaning Lex had Class D all to himself. In-keeping with established Dunlop practice, he deliberately used half-worn tyres for his runs to minimise losses from overly-deep treads: the result was an average of 155.99mph (249.58 km/h), breaking the Class D record of 143mph comfortably.
• Class E (1,501-2,000cc): Len Lukey set his sights on the existing record of 113mph in his beautifully-prepared Cooper-Bristol. Len and his mechanics fitted a more slender nose to improve aerodynamics, and also sealed in the sides of the cockpit. Although thereby plagued with overheating, Lukey averaged 147.46mph (235.94 km/h) on his runs, which were voted the best of the meet.
• Class G (751-1,100cc): The existing Class F record of 103.5mph would've been Johnson's target had he survived, so in his absence the meeting moved on. Class G was the challenge set before South Australia's Derek Jolly, scion of the Penfold family of Barossa Valley wine fame. His Climax-engined Decca Mk.2 Special was one of only two Australian-built cars (and the only proper sports car) taking part that day. Modified by the fitment of a head fairing, his runs netted a combined 116.75mph (186.6 km/h), setting a new record.

Jolly racing the Decca at Port Wakefield. (Source: Primotipo)

• Class H (501-750cc): Cooper Cars Ltd had made their money (and their name) building small, sturdy cars for Britain's native 500cc formula, which the FIA had recently adopted as Formula 3. The imminent rear-engine revolution was thus not the result of any deep naval-gazing on their part, but simple pragmatism: the cars were powered by motorcycle engines, which used a chain drive to get that power to the rear wheels. Putting the engine in the back just made everything much simpler. Jim Madsen's Cooper was powered by a slightly larger BMW motorcycle engine, however, so he went faster than a true F3 car, 109.97mph (174.8 km/h).
• Class I (351-500cc): Last but not least, Roy Blake climbed aboard a true Formula 3 car, a Cooper-JAP owned by Steve de Bord. "JAP" referred its 500cc motorcycle engine, built from the soon-to-be-defunct John Alfred Prestwich Industries. Despite an engine, "about half the size of a Morris Minor," Blake cut the traps at an impressive 102.47mph (164.8 km/h).

As an extra bit of excitement, Len Lukey unhitched his new Olympica Blue '56 Cusso and went to town with it, sealing up every crack with masking tape, enclosing as much of the radiator as he dared, and placing pointed cones over the headlights to eliminate these virtual parachutes. The car was so buttoned up he had to climb in and out via the window, but the result was phenomenal, stopping the timers with an opening run of 130mph (209 km/h)... aided, admittedly, by a tail wind. Even so, the average of his two runs was still better than 123.3 mph (198.4 km/h), of which the official results noted admiringly: "This is the fastest speed yet recorded in Australia by a saloon car." And observers at the time said, if BP's antiquated timing equipment hadn't been on the blink, it might've been even faster.

Lads in Leather
By Sunday, 29 September, the winds had mercifully abated, and the bikes finally got their chance. Jack Ahearn rode three different machines that day, his most notable runs taking the 251-350cc Solo class on his Norton Manx 350 at 125.68 mph (202 km/h), and the 175-250cc class with his NSU Sportmax at 121.25mph (195 km/h). Frank Sinclair took the big 1,200cc Sidecar class with his Vincent HRD at 124.25mph (199 km/h) with Bernie Mack's "newly-acquired" Norton making easy work of the 500cc Sidecar class at 122.22mph (196 km/h). Jimmy Guilfoyle was unlucky after clocking 124mph on his streamlined 350cc BSA Special (BSA meaning Birmingham Small Arms Co.), as gusting winds prevented him making a return run. Trevor Pound (riding Eric Walsh's 123cc BSA Bantam) was equally unlucky, clocking 103mph in one direction but unable to make a return run within the required time due to a faulty magneto.

But the ride of the day surely belonged to Jack Forrest. Born in Wellington, NSW in 1920, he was known to be a brave man who lived large, and briefly held the title of fastest man in Australia. In an effort to raise the gearing of his BMW Rennsport, Jack and his mechanic Don Bain had fitted a larger-section rear tyre. Unfortunately, on his first run along the Tipperary Flying Mile, centrifugal force swelled the tyre so much that it jammed against the swinging arm, melting the rubber, locking the rear wheel and leaving a black skid mark on the road that was still visible over a year later. With the clock ticking and no other tyres available, Baradine garage owner Vane Mills stepped up and vulcanised the spot where the tyre had worn through to the canvas. With this bodged-up rear tyre, Forrest climbed back on his bike and roared through the speed traps at 152mph, despite the BMW developing an almost uncontrollable tank-slapper. Forrest set a new outright motorcycle record of 149mph (239.8 km/h) despite the ruined rear tyre, handling woes and, oh yeah, an encounter with a flock of galahs that left visible damage on the front fairing.

Forrest after the Run: note the galah-divots. (Source: Primotipo)

Bi-State Tornado
The star of the event, however, ended up being Ted Gray and his home-brewed Tornado 2 Chev. A Wangaratta native, Gray had made some headlines in 1946 when he recorded a 73mph average speed (117 km/h) on the trip from Wangaratta to Melbourne to win a bet. In those days the Hume was a simple two-lane country road, a world away from the poor man's autobahn it is today, so Ted must've driven with some attitude to manage that time. But he was probably quite familiar with the route, as his home and motor dealership were in Wangaratta, but at least one account mentions an engineering shop in Little Bourke Street (today the heart of Melbourne's Chinatown).

The original Tornado chassis (retroactively the Tornado 1) had been built by Gray to compete in local Formula Libre events. Typical of the time, it was a real bitza – Lancia stub axles, Peugeot steering rack, even the brake mechanism from a World War II P-51 Mustang – but the centrepiece was of course its engine. A Ford Mercury V8 bored and stroked to more than 5.0 litres, with locally-cast aluminium pushrod heads to replace the side-valve originals and – a first for Australia – fuel injection. This was the responsibility of Gray's partner in crime, Lou Abrahams.

The Tornado 1 made its debut at Gnoo Blas, Orange in January 1955, but its career was cut short before the end of the year. Gray and Abrahams took it to the NSW Road Racing Championship at Mount Panorama that October, and virtually wrote it off in a monster shunt Gray was lucky to escape alive. Rather than try to rebuild the car, they decided to salvage what they could and build something better.

Abrahams got to work on the Tornado 2 while Gray was recovering from his injuries in hospital (a process that took six months). The new car was a conventional ladder-frame design that inherited the original's Peugeot steering, Lancia stub axle and Holden suspension components, the Halibrand diff, Ford engine and gearbox. The P-51 Mustang braking system however was junked in favour of conventional drums-all-round system, built by Paton's Brakes in Melbourne, later a Repco subsidiary. It was clothed in a fibreglass body painted deep blue, with a red ring around the radiator inlet.

The car returned to the track well before its driver, contesting a handful of minor events with Ford power, but late in 1957 Gray and Abrahams replaced the ageing Mercury V8 with a 283ci Chevy small-block, as seen in Chevrolet's post-1955 Corvettes. Exactly how Gray got his hands on a Corvette engine in 1957 is something I'd love to know: Primotipo says it was, "sourced using contacts of Abrahams and Jack Mayberry at Holden," which is good but frustratingly vague. GM-H offered Chevrolets, Pontiacs and Vauxhalls as prestige buys above their bread-and-butter Holdens, but even so Chevy small-blocks couldn't have been thick on the ground at that time. A clue might be the so-called "Carter Corvette", which was a similar project built a year later by Murray Carter: he originally planned to build a Formula Libre car using conventional Holden Grey power, but Melbourne car dealer Boyanton Motors was able to offer him a 283 after a customer ordered one for a power boat, then went bust. However they got their hands on it, the Chevy V8 was an obvious upgrade over the Mercury – lighter, designed for overhead valves from the beginning, and there were plenty of parts on sale in the U.S. if you were looking for more performance.

With the Speed Trials starting on 28 September, however, Gray and Abrahams were left with only a week to adapt the Chevy to the Ford gearbox, fit the fuel injection system and get the whole ensemble running. The car was actually taken off the trailer during the 1,000km tow to Coonabarabran and driven over 300km on public roads to run the engine in! By all accounts it sounded like a Formula 5000 car, which must've stood plenty of hairs on necks along both sides of the Tipperary Flying Mile. Gray fitted the Tornado with a 3:1 final drive ratio and 19-inch wheels, aiming for a speed above 160mph.

Gray and the Tornado beginning their run. (Source: Primotipo)

Sadly, magneto dramas limited the engine to 5,300rpm, well below its intended redline. To compensate, overnight the team lowered the final drive to 2.8:1, and in this spec Ted achieved 157.53mph (253.5 km/h) on the Sunday to take the outright record from Davison's Ferrari. 157mph was faster than any Australian motorist would be able to go for quite some time yet.

There's some controversy over whether the BP-COR Speed Trials counted as genuine Australian record attempts (it will surprise nobody to report there were question marks over procedures on the day), but changes to the FIA's methods in 1983 render it a moot point anyway. As a promotional campaign, however, the meeting was a roaring success, and BP were very proud of what had been achieved, noting in their official release:

As the list of results shows, each of the competitors achieved a performance of which he can be very justly proud and it is obvious that a great deal of painstaking effort and skill was lavished on the preparation of each of the machines.

Also the enthusiasm and willing co-operation of all competitors, despite certain unavoidable difficulties, contributed very largely to the outstanding success of this meeting.

Today
I was recently able to make a pilgrimage out to the Tipperary Flying Mile (this being my neck of the woods, it's not such a long way after all...). I was hoping some of it might've matched up with photos from 1957, but of course, it doesn't. Trees grow, die, and then grow again too fast, and who knows how many times the road's been resurfaced in the decades since then? But it was nice to stare back up the infinite straight and imagine brave men roaring towards me in machines they'd cobbled together themselves, with the driver (or rider) himself considered to be the crumple zone, at speeds never before witnessed in this country. It's difficult to imagine.

The entry to Tipperary Station today. It should feel spooky remembering that a man died on this spot, but in truth it's not unusual for the roads out here to feature crosses. (Own work.)

What I didn't expect was to be equally distracted by the railway line. This section of the Gwabegar line only opened in 1923, after which it was maintained by (among others) one of my great-grandfathers. A fettler by trade, he worked to keep the line humming in the dark days of the 1930s, sometimes necessarily dragging along his young daughter (who I’m sure was an unholy nightmare even at that age). She later told stories of those days her son – my father – who then passed them on to me. So it was nice to take some time and walk a little way along the rails, sidestepping the small pines (the section above Coonabarabran closed in 2005), wondering if this spike or that sleeper had been laid down by my forebear, unlikely though it is. Grandma grew up to love Waratah motorcycles, so she certainly would've taken notice of the record attempts along the road where she used to play, and I'd love to hear her thoughts about it today. Sadly, I never knew to ask her while she was alive.

(Own work.)