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.