"Happy Fathers Day, Dad": Portland '86

Fathers Day raises a number of important questions for me each year – starting with, "Where does the apostrophe go?" All options look equally wrong, it's maddening. That one usually takes up so much of my time that I never manage to move on to the second: what is the greatest gift a father can give?

This year however, with a month's warning I was able to hold an informal Facebook poll to see what others thought. Answers varied from "time" (rather good), to "life itself" (ha). My real purpose however was just to see if anyone else was thinking along the lines I was, and of course the answer to that was, "No, of course not, what a stupid question." Because you know what I think a father's greatest gift to his offspring is?

A target.

We don't talk about it much, but even in your pipe-dream 1950s nuclear family, fathers and sons have a complicated relationship. Right from day one they're competing for attention from the mother, which is only made more tense by the fact the eldest son is typically a mother's favourite (daddy tends to gravitate to the youngest daughter... which sounds dirtier than I meant it to, but oh well). Then there's the basic contest for dominance that will occur between any two creatures with a lick of testosterone, complicated by the fact that one of them taught the other everything he knows, and (ideally, at least) they both love each other as well. A father will be overcome with that kind of pride completely bereft of ego to see his offspring is growing great enough to actually cause him trouble, but at the same time he'll double down to stay ahead. It's a pas-de-deux of of love, duty, mutual admiration and ambition, and like a Tool song it spirals out forever. Even someone well practiced at playing Tetris with emotions would have a hard time getting to the bottom of it, and in our society, most men aren't.

Which makes me wonder if the racetrack might be one of the healthier places to take this stuff – out there the rules are clear and the stopwatch doesn't lie, so measuring yourself against your own flesh and blood is simple. It's either "Congratulations" or "Keep practicing": there's no room, or need, for bitterness.

Which brings me to the Andrettis.

Nonno Mario

Mario Andretti is a true American success story. His love affair with racing began when he and his twin brother Aldo witnessed the great Alberto Ascari hustle his Ferrari at the grand old lady Monza. But then his family had boarded a steamer to the U.S., and the dream of racing at Monza and becoming World Champion one day seemingly faded... until they arrived in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and heard the familiar roar of racing engines. It turned out they had auto racing in America too, and Mario threw himself into it with gusto, starting with stock cars and steadily rising up the ranks of USAC midget, sprint and finally championship cars. He might have learned his craft on the dirt ovals, not the open roads of Italy like his hero Ascari, but it didn't matter: Mario won on the smaller ovals, taking the USAC National Championship in his first full season in 1965 – then on the bigger ones, claiming the Daytona 500 in a Holman-Moody Fairlane in 1967, then the Indianapolis 500 in a Brawner Hawk in 1969.

USAC championships for 1966 and '69 had also come, but Formula 1 remained unfinished business. When the chance came to switch to the European series full-time, he jumped at it, crossing the Atlantic with American team Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing – a tie-up between 1963 Indy 500 winner Parnelli Jones, and his business partner Vel Miletich. Unfortunately, it wasn't the longest-lasting F1 team in history: finding the costs a lot higher than USAC and the prize money much stingier, they quit F1 in mid-season 1976 – without telling Mario.

I found out in the cockpit at the start of the race at Long Beach. The commentator said, "Mario, how does it feel to be in your last F1 race?" I said, "Do you think I'm going to kill myself or something?" He said, "Vel Miletich just announced this is his last race." Vel hadn't said anything to me.

Happily, his contract with VPJ had only been a payment schedule, so he was able to tell Miletich to wipe his backside with it and stay in Europe. Colin Chapman had just lost his star driver Ronnie Peterson, so Mario was able to fill his seat at Lotus in the knowledge Colin was busy working on something very special – the first ground effects cars. After two years of polishing the concept, Andretti struck out with the Lotus 79 and won the 1978 World Championship in style, clinching it in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where the dream had begun all those years ago.

That was it: Mario had nothing left to prove now. But of course, away from the track he'd also had a life, and in 1962 he and his wife Dee Ann had their first son, Michael.

Mimmo Michael
Michael Andretti's path to racing was very different from his father's. He cut his teeth karting, won a Formula Ford championship in 1981, then Formula Super Vee in 1982 and Formula Mondial (intended to replace Formula Atlantic) in 1983. Between breezing the junior formulae, and the serious name recognition that came with being an Andretti, it was almost inevitable that he would make the final step to IndyCar, and he made his debut with the Kraco team in 1984.

Source

By then, the Andrettis' careers were as intertwined as their home lives: Michael owed his career to his father Mario, of course, but Mario also owed his current seat to his son. The early 1980s had seen CART take in refugee teams from the defunct Formula 5000/Can-Am series, one of which was a partnership between cigar-chomping businessman Carl Haas and Hollywood royalty-slash-amateur racer Paul Newman. Haas and Newman had run competing Can-Am teams, and since the Chicago-based Haas was also the American distributor for Lola Cars Ltd (who built successful cars of all types – F1, CART, Can-Am, Formula 5000, the lot), Newman had frequently been in his office complaining about cars that were delivered late or overweight. But with Can-Am coming to an end, both needed a fresh challenge, and although potentially lucrative CART was too expensive for either to manage alone. A partnership made sense, especially since Haas had first dibs on the products of one of the world's preeminent chassis-makers. They just needed a great driver to complete the package, someone who could wow the sponsors as much as deliver on-track results.

Haas had been working on that: guess who'd own the team in which Michael won his Formula Ford title? And with Michael in the team, there'd been plenty of access to the proud father Mario, who often came to watch his son race and was finding life with Team Lotus in the 1980s wasn't the experience it had been in the 1970s.

Working with Colin was no trip to Paris, you know? He and I had some monumental arguments. We were struggling. Colin was getting bored and was looking for something totally new which never really materialised. Colin used to detest it whenever a driver volunteered some engineering suggestions. He was: "Just drive the bloody thing!" and I was: "Yeah, I’ll drive the bloody thing but I can’t drive it because you don’t know what you’re doing!" We used to really go at it.

[As an aside, this was the era when Chapman committed Lotus Cars to do detail work for the DeLorean project, which ended with John DeLorean going to prison for drug trafficking and Her Majesty's auditors going through Lotus' murky financial records with a fine-tooth comb. The stress was probably a factor in Chapman's fatal heart attack at the end of 1982.]

So thanks to his dad, Michael had a seat in a top CART team, Kraco Enterprizes; and thanks to his son, Mario also had a seat in a top CART team, Newman-Haas Racing, the longest partnership he would have with a single team. Their paths were set to collide in Portland, Oregon, on 15 June 1986.

The Budweiser/G.I. Joe's 200
In June '86 both Andrettis were riding high. Mario had won his fourth IndyCar title two years earlier (and fifteen years after the last!), while Michael had taken his breakthrough win only the week before, in a 200-miler at the Milwaukee Mile. Winning changes a person, as Alain Prost once told us: "Before you thought you could do it; now you know you can." Buoyed with confidence and beginning to that sweet spot between seasoning and aggression, Michael was out to prove Milwaukee had been no fluke. 104 laps of the 1.9-mile Portland International Raceway were all that stood between himself and glory.

His car was a March 86C, the latest evolution of the '85 March chassis which had been partly designed by his race engineer – an aero whiz kid from Britain by the name of Adrian Newey. As such it had a slight edge in downforce compared to the Lola T86/00, but as Lola's distributor (not quite their works team, but definitely their preferred customers), Newman-Haas could race no other. Engine-wise nearly all teams were using the Cosworth DFX, a turbocharged, methanol-burning 2.65-litre development of the legendary DFV. Andretti might've stayed in Europe, but VPJ had brought the DFV home to America and done the hard work of turning a 500hp F1 engine into an 800hp IndyCar engine.

One exception was our own Geoff Brabham (another second-gen driver), who was giving a very early version of the Honda Indy V8 some precious racing mileage. The others were the three Penske team cars, who ran Roger Penske's own chassis (the PC-15, which was somewhere between the March and Lola in downforce), and a new Ilmor-built engine that would one day be known as the Chevy/A.

A wet qualifying session meant pole position had gone to one of Penske's drivers, a Brazilian "rookie" by the name of Emerson Fittipaldi, driving the #20 Marlboro entry. But the moment the pace car released the field, it was clear this was Michael's race to lose – he streaked away in the #18 Kraco March and never looked back, building a gap of 3.7 seconds by lap 3, 10 seconds by lap 18, and 11 seconds by lap 27. On lap 31 he pitted, a little earlier than the other planned two-stoppers (the window opened around lap 35), but after the rest cycled through he was still in the lead, which he would hold until lap 52. He lapped the field all the way up to 10th place.

Mario didn't even rate a mention until lap 39, where he was seen in a scrap with Geoff Brabham over 6th and 7th places – no danger there, it seemed. On lap 58 Michael came up to put a lap on him, dive-bombing through the tight final corner and giving Mario's right-front tyre a love tap on the way through. That would've sent a vicious shock through the steering rack and straight into Dad's wrists, but if he had a complaint about that we never heard it. So Michael had now lapped everyone up to 7th place.

By the middle of his second stint, however, Michael was losing ground: the man catching him Danny Sullivan in the #4 Miller Penske, who was steadily clawing the gap back – 11.7 seconds, then 11.0, 10.4, 9.6, 8.5, and on it went. Some of that, crew chief Barry Green said, was Michael turning the boost down to conserve fuel, but there was also no doubt the Penskes would gain substantially at every pit stop as they'd recently adopted the F1 innovation of tyre warmers. Sullivan and Fittipaldi (who was trying for a one-stop strategy) would be straight back on the pace on their outlap, whereas Michael would have to take some time to warm up his tyres before he could push.

So by the time he lapped his father Mario, Michael's gap back to Danny Sullivan was only 1.9 seconds. Some of that was down to traffic however, as by lap 67, after negotiating the backmarkers himself, Sullivan was back to 9.2 seconds behind. By now there were only three cars still on the lead lap – Michael, Sullivan and Fittipaldi.

On lap 70 Michael made his second stop, and something must have gone wrong, because thanks to a brilliant stop from the Penske team (and some pre-warmed tyres), Sullivan managed to leapfrog him and assume the lead. Michael tore off after him, but when he failed to find a way past on the outlap, the team radioed him to cut it out, turn the boost down from the maximum 48inHg to 45 (1.6 bar to 1.5, or if you prefer 24 psi to 22), and save some fuel. Sullivan had deprived the Andrettis of a second Indianapolis 500 two years earlier, when he'd spun trying to pass Mario but hadn't actually hit anything; recovering, he'd hooked a gear, rejoined the race, tried the same move again and made it stick, ever after earning the nickname "Spin & Win". He was looking pretty good to deprive another Andretti of the win here today, and complicating matters, Fittipaldi's one-stop strategy was beginning to look rather brilliant as he slowly but steadily reeled in them both.

But then, around lap 80, both Penske cars were abruptly eliminated, virtually within a minute of each other. Emmo's clever strategy came to nought when his Chevy V8 simply exploded, sending him back to the pits with a DNF. Then at the front Sullivan hit traffic, and Michael had his chance. He caught up through the Turn 4-5-6 complex, then pulled alongside through Turn 7. Bravely, he drove around the outside of Sullivan through the turn, but couldn’t find enough purchase to finish the pass in a single corner. Side-by-side they raced out of the complex and onto the back straight, but crucially, there was a slight kink before the straight proper. The contest between the two most aggressive drivers in the field could only end in tears: moving across to take his line, Sullivan’s left-rear overlapped with Michael’s right-front and the Penske spun dramatically out of control, whizzing across Michael’s nose and slamming sideways into the tyre wall in a cloud of dust. There’d be no spin & win today. As the car came to rest, the left-hand side of the Penske was mangled beyond recovery.

The impact had punctured Michael’s right-front tyre however, so he skated back to the pits to have a new one fitted. The team took the opportunity to fit a new left-rear as well, and check for damage, but then he was dropped and sent on his way. But the stop, on top of the slow in-lap, had taken time, and that had put the man behind him back on the lead lap – his father, Mario.

Mario had his own problems, busy holding off Al Unser Jr (yet another second-gen racer) in a Doug Shierson Lola. By lap 90 Michael was still 10 seconds ahead of his father, but he’d now turned the boost down and was having to short-shift, because after that blistering opening stint, the fight with Danny Sullivan and an extra visit to the pits for a spare, he was marginal on fuel. And this was CART, meaning although refuelling was allowed, you only got a finite amount to finish the race, and the team’s reservoir in pit lane was bone-dry. Michael’s lead was shaved from 14.4 seconds on lap 88, to 8.9 on lap 94. This was going to be close.

Five laps to go, and Michael continued to circulate.

Four to go, and there began to be serious concerns his fuel budget was in the red.

Three to go, and in pit lane wife Sandy was looking distraught.

Two to go, and Geoff Brabham was waving Mario by, happy his Honda engine was still running and not caring that he was yet another lap down.

White flag: now only 2.9 seconds ahead of dad, who was reeling him in by two seconds per lap. Lift and coast, just try to meter out those last few drops of fuel...

And then, swinging through the final turn, Michael’s DFX coughed and finally starved, the force of the turn tugging the remaining fuel away from the pickup. He still had momentum and could coast to the finish, but roaring out of the turn behind him, foot hard on the throttle, came his old man Mario. Across the line they were neck-and-neck, too close for the commentary team to call, but down on pit lane they knew the truth: Mario had got a nose ahead. The official timing revealed the gap was 0.07 seconds, or about four inches at race speeds. At the time, it was the closest finish in IndyCar history.

"Funny thing is," said Mario in the post-race interview, a wry smile creasing his leathery features, "I don't pity him at all."

Michael was gutted of course, but chin-up, he said the only things he could: "If anyone's gonna beat me I'm glad it's him. Happy Fathers Day, Dad." The Americans have to do everything their own way, so of course, 15 June 1986 was also Fathers Day.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Michael the Superstar
Michael Andretti gets a bum rap in F1 circles, remembered only as the guy who was Ayrton Senna's teammate at McLaren for all of five races back in 1993, before he quit to make room for a young and green Mika Häkkinen. But stateside he was one of the greats, taking the CART championship in 1991 on his way to 42 total race wins, making him the most successful driver of the CART era. Today he owns and operates Andretti-Green Racing, one of the power teams of modern IndyCar, and also owns a substantial share of the former Holden Racing Team, which has been renamed Walkinshaw Andretti United in his honour. The man's no slouch is what I'm saying, and didn't seem the worse for wear after the old man put him in his place.

But I still have unanswered questions. Michael was a chip off the old block, an apple that fell right next to the tree, so he and Mario spoke the same language: every one of those 42 wins was Michael telling Mario, "Look what you've done, Dad!" Even when he beat him; especially when he beat him. But what if Michael had found his calling as, I don't know, a tax accountant? How would he have spoken his father's language then? How would he have shown his dad what he'd done? I don't know, and I suspect I won't know for many moons to come.

But right now, I think starting a motoring blog helps.

Brock & Ford: The Weirdness of Group A

There used to be a saying: "All Mercedes' planning is done in Munich, and all BMW's planning is done in Stuttgart." Meaning, in the long war between Mercedes and BMW for world domination, neither side was able to introduce a new car without the other side countering with something similar, so both sides ended up building the same cars with different badges.

From the late 1980s onward, a similar thing was happening in Australia: All Holden's planning was done in Broadmeadows, and all Ford's planning was done at Fishermans Bend. The model year 1988, which had brought white Australia its bicentennial, had coincidentally also brought us Holden's next-gen VN Commodore and Ford's next-gen EA Falcon, within six months of each other. In the process their design philosophies had merged, marking the start of the era where both manufacturers were trying to sell us the exact same car.

Engineering after Aesthetics – the EA Falcon
In truth, both Ford and Holden resembled punch-drunk prize fighters at this time – battered, bloodied and ready to fall, but neither with enough strength to land that knockout blow. Holden had spent the revenue from thirty years of supremacy on the first-gen Commodore, a compact sedan that had never really recouped. With their wide-body Falcon, Ford had been handed the Australian market virtually on a plate, but then spent huge financial and engineering resources on a plan to replace the Falcon with the smaller and more efficient Telstar – a car in the same size class as the Commodore, and front-wheel drive to boot.

The horror.

When the oil crisis of 1979-'80 ended up being milder and briefer than the one back in '74, it caught everyone by surprise, voiding a decade's worth of product planning virtually overnight. Hence Holden went back to GM in Detroit to beg for a bail-out, asking for the funds to develop a second-gen Commodore to get back in the game. That reached the market in late 1988 as the new VN, which would hit the racetrack late in its lifespan and so we'll be covering it then.

Ford likewise had to go to their bosses in Detroit and make a case for a new unique-to-Australia model, kicking off the age where Broadmeadows had to go to Dearborn once a decade and, more or less, beg for the right to exist. All this explained the half-hearted facelift of the XF, a car that was never supposed to've happened at all, its only job to hold the line while Ford got the next-gen Falcon together, and it had done an amazing job all things considered. The XF's floorplan would in fact live on in the XG and XH utes, which would remain Ford's bread & butter commercial line well into the late 90's, but by 1988 there was no disguising the skeleton was straight out of a 1966 Fairlane. It was time to start again.

The replacement EA was developed in a $700 million project designated EA26 – E meaning a large-class car, A for Australia, and 26 being a sequential global project number. Its brief was to maximise what had been right with the XD-XF series while bringing the hardware into the modern era – the Falcon's ascendancy over the cramped Commodore hinted that a large car was still the way to go, as even though private buyers usually preferred the Commodore, they were a drop in the bucket compared to sales volumes to the Three T's (Taxis, Tradies and Telecom). The taxi companies especially held Ford Australia by the nose at this time, and above all they needed a car that could comfortably seat three people across the rear. The importance of towing also drove the design – in the leadup to the XD, veteran Ford designers had apparently sent troublesome juniors out to random car parks around Melbourne with instructions to count the tow bars. Ten years on it seemed the lesson had sunk in, explaining why the Falcon remained rear-wheel drive right up to the end: you needed RWD to tow, and weekends with boats, trailers and caravans were just part of the culture.

So overall it seemed Broadmeadows knew what they were doing, but with the clock ticking until the XF was completely obsolete, they were forced to bring the EA to market before it was really ready. That by itself explained how the same car could end up being so good and yet so bad.

The battle for first impressions was a victory, as the styling immediately won hearts. The studio had access to global Ford offerings for inspiration, so the resulting shape looked a little like an enlarged Ford Scorpio, complying with the trend toward European styling complete with a fashionable "letterbox" radiator grille. Also in line with the times, it was the first Falcon to spend any time at all in a windtunnel, which even in a country with a maximum 110km/h speed limit could only have helped matters – Ford would rather you didn't ask about the XF's coefficient of drag, or Cd, but independent measurements had revealed numbers as bad as 0.50. The EA hit the market at just 0.38, delivering fuel economy figures around 10 litres per 100km and theoretical top speeds north of 200km/h. Bingo.

Unfortunately, the looks were where the EA peaked, as it all went downhill once you actually climbed behind the wheel. It might not've been styled like a bargain-bin special but it definitely felt like one, with ill-fitting panels, a cheap plasticky interior, and heavy plastic bumpers that seemed prone to abandon ship at a moment's notice. There were constant computer glitches, poor paint quality, iffy handling and a general feeling of being thrown together at five to five on a Friday by a crew who'd already been handed their retrenchment papers. The difference between the best and worst of the EAs was staggering.

Which was a shame, because if you'd got one that had been put together with care, then you had one of the best cars in the world for price. The front end was all-new and actually pretty good, with new rack & pinion steering and SLALS (short and long arm long spindle) suspension arrangement – basically an el cheapo alternative to double wishbones. In a few years this system would be the bugbear of early V8 Supercars as, with their MacPherson strut front ends, the Holden teams would be unable to match the bite and turn-in of the Falcons, but on a road car that was really neither here nor there. What mattered was that many hit the road without having been aligned properly, leading to distressingly short front tyre life and an early return to the dealership for adjustment. And although a welcome improvement over the XF's recirculating ball setup, the new rack & pinion steering was only as good as what the Commodore had had for a decade, so all it really represented was Ford belatedly catching up.

Soft lighting make this interior look nicer than it is: what you're actually looking at is acres of grey plastic, with all the squeaks and rattles that give it away as budget transport for the masses.

The rear was similarly disappointing, with no IRS, and an LSD only as a $350 option. Otherwise you got the same old coil-sprung live axle as the XF, carried over from the previous model to save costs. This meant it also inherited the XF's rear-end nervousness, as the familiar transverse Watt's linkage still had its centre pivot mounted to the diff housing, leaving the car with a roll centre set far too high. The resulting roll-steer ranged from spooky to dangerous – the wonderfully progressive, slow-motion oversteer of the XD must've seemed like an awfully long time ago.

With that in mind the gutless standard engine could almost be viewed as a blessing – starting with 90 kW at 4,000rpm (and 235 Nm at 3,250), there just wasn't enough power to get you into real trouble. There were three engines to be had, all variants on the long-serving Falcon straight-six: the basic 3.2-litre, a bigger 3.9-litre, and the 3.9 with multi-point injection, or MPI. Units without MPI generally had throttle-body injection (TBI) instead, controlled by Ford's corporate EEC-4 engine management system, and all had single overhead camshafts in place of the old pushrods. They were smoother than their OHV predecessors, but the 3.2's lacklustre torque forced the driver to flog it to make anything happen, which led to fuel economy worse than the optional 3.9 anyway (and thus leading the 3.2 into a quiet retirement in December '88). So the 3.9, which was optional on the base-model GL and standard on anything higher, became the real mainstream engine with figures of 120 kW at 4,250rpm and 311 Nm at 3,250 – better, but hardly world-beating. In 1988 it was all still fairly agricultural, but at least the raw configuration was now in place, and that would allow Ford and their partners to start tweaking it in the years ahead.

Unfortunately, even the 3.9 was let down by the transmission to which it was mated. The 5-speed manual, a Borg Warner T50D with synchros on all five cogs, was actually pretty good, but it was an optional extra. As standard Ford had wanted to use Borg Warner's upcoming ML85LE electronic 4-speed auto, but had known as early as a year before launch that this unit wouldn't be ready in time. To head them off at the pass, a few months out Ford had invited the journalists for a pep talk from no-one less than their star quality control officer, Sir Jackie Stewart. Stewart used his considerable communication skills to dazzle the room into believing in the upcoming Falcon as much as he did, talking long and loud about how perfectly the engine had been matched to the standby Borg Warner M51 – a 3-speeder that was outdated in both concept and execution. Despite Sir Jackie's bluster it was immediately obvious it was garbage – despite being the model all the taxi companies and other fleets would buy, at launch none of the journalists were allowed to drive it. It turned out the unit was noisy and thirsty and its final drive ratio was far too short, leaving the car to run out of revs at around 170km/h. In the end, buyers had to wait until 1990 before they could get the auto the car had actually been built for, and although it would eventually mature into a world-class gearbox, teething problems would often see them lose drive somewhere in the first 100,000km. To their credit, Ford would often cover the repairs on a goodwill basis, even on cars that were technically out of warranty.

Prices started just above $20,000 for a basic GL with a 3.2 and 3-speed auto, roughly $44,500 in 2018 dollars, or about the same as the performance models of the late Noughties – Australian cars were relatively expensive during this period. An automatic Falcon S with the 3.9 – the lowest spec a private buyer would seriously consider – was $22,139, or just over $49,000 in 2018, with air con an extra $1,478 and a rather attractive set of Snoflake alloys $580 (a must-have, as the plastic wheel covers weren't fooling anyone). The real trick was to opt for MPI and a 5-speed manual, as only then did you get a better car than the equivalent VN. With 139 kW and 338 Nm, MPI cars could cover the 400m in 16 seconds or thereabouts, and go on to a true top speed of 216km/h – figures that rivalled a V8-engined VL Group A just 12 months earlier. Not since the GT had gone extinct had anyone seen a Falcon produce numbers like these.

Why they got the secret love child of Kimi Räikkönen and Jack Dee to advertise it is anyone's guess.

Famously, Wheels magazine took both an EA Falcon GL and the rival VN Commodore Executive – both basic as basic could be – on a tri-state road trip totalling 21,000km in just one week. Starting from Sydney and heading south through the Snowies, then through Victoria, to South Australia and back to Sydney again, the cars were flogged along empty roads, outback dust, gravel, snow, sand, tiny towns, and the obligatory water crossing shots. Wheels' mission was to "Break the bastards!" and notoriously, they did: between them, there were loose bonnet latches, shedding interior trim, weakened shocks, ineffective handbrake cables, punctured fuel tanks, electrical infidelity, dangling bumpers and terrible dust sealing. The quality issues that would soon be a big problem for both manufacturers were laid bare for all to see. But, it has to be said, both cars made it back to Sydney alive. Wheels writer Michael Stahl remembered, "Over so many long days at the wheel, my respect for the Falcon's lazy, loping stability was set, over everything from harsh shale to wet, buttery clay. Not just big cars, but big hearts." Mike McCarthy agreed: "What this greatest epic mostly reinforced, surely, was the belief that no other stock-standard cars would take such massive battering over such gruelling distance. Made in, and for Australia, they done good."

Reprinted by Wheels in 2016.

Nevertheless, it was pretty clear that both Broadmeadows and the Bend needed to take their cars back to the factory and finish the damn things off. So bad was the situation that several aftermarket tuning companies sprung up to do the job on their behalf, as a matter of fact... and the most famous of them was none other than Holden's former golden boy, Peter Brock.

Do Not Adjust Your Screen – Brock in a Sierra
Yes, we've mentioned it before, but witnesses at the scene could still report blizzard conditions in Hell – Peter Brock really was racing a Ford. His main sponsor was Mobil, who'd been with him for several years and would remain with him to the end of his career, and they weren't satisfied with mere class racing. They demanded (and stumped up the cash) for Brock to put the BMW aside and jump into a frontrunning car once again. In 1989 there was only one candidate for the job – the former Holden star had to go buy himself a Ford Sierra RS500. The die-hard fans who'd been with him since the Torana days threw up their hands in horror, but Peter himself had no hang-ups whatsoever. "He quite enjoyed the nuisance of it," said Peter's unofficial business manager Alan Gow. "He thought it would be quite funny to show Holden that, 'Well, you can't shoot me down. Here I am!' He didn’t have any nightmares about swapping over to a Ford product at all."

As soon as Mobil promised the money, Brock, Gow and team manager Graeme "Mort" Brown were on a plane to Europe to do a deal with someone. "When we made the decision to go for a Sierra we had a few options," said Gow. "We were either going to buy a couple of Eggenberger Sierras in Germany or a couple of Andy Rouse-built cars from the U.K., because they were the hot cars to have at that stage. We landed in England and looked at Andy's cars. They were such a good deal, because we knew what price Eggenberger was asking, and he [Andy] offered us such a good deal that we made the decision right then and there to buy the cars. Peter then was no longer interested in going to Eggenberger or anywhere else. He'd made a decision and wanted to go back and paint his house. He changed his ticket, went back the next day, and left Mort and I to go to Eggenberger and go through the charade of having a look at their cars. That was typical of the way he handled any business."

Spanner-man George Smith had a similar recollection of how the decision was made.

Brock, Mort and Alan Gow went to Europe to see Eggenberger and just before they left Mort discovered they wanted to go and see Rouse as well. He was furious: "We don’t want to go anywhere near Rouse's." But Brock decided to go and see him first. Mort thought they were getting conned; he reckoned they would get results with Eggenberger because they were really on it, but after the meeting [with Rouse] Brock left and sent Gow and Mort to Eggenberger's. So they went and wasted a day of Eggenberger's time because the Rouse deal was done. They bought two Rouse cars; they had aluminium roll-cages in them so there was no structural stability or anything. – George Smith, AMC #97

One wonders what Moffat would've said at the idea of Rudi offering Peter a customer car and Peter only pretending to consider it!

Brock originally imported two ex-Andy Rouse Engineering Sierras for the beginning of the 1989 Australian Touring Car Championship, but it seemed Peter only wanted something to tide him over, and maybe provide some hints about how to build these things, as by mid-year a new chassis was under construction by a new Melbourne startup called Dencar. Founded by George Smith's best mate and partner in crime, Dennis Watson, the name was an amalgamation of the names of Dennis and his wife Carol, and in time it would grow to become a legend of the V8 Supercar scene, the people to whom no-one less than the Holden Racing Team outsourced much of their chassis construction. But in 1989 it was just another tiny engineering firm in the local racing scene, short on cash but long on expertise. In that sense it was a perfect fit for Team Brock, but it was yet another little irony that the name behind so many future race-winning Holdens first cut their teeth on a Ford.

Anyway, Andy Rouse of course had a reputation to maintain, having screwed over both Dick Johnson and Allan Moffat in successive years. With Peter Brock now on his customer list as well there was a chance to complete the trifecta, and he didn't disappoint. Things started badly when both cars blew up after only a few laps of the first test – Smith said they later discovered new sumps had been fitted by the work experience kid before being shipped to Australia. "The first year of the Sierras we kept on blowing up engines all year," agreed Gow. "At Wanneroo, after the Friday practice, we'd literally run out of engines, so the boys had to build an engine in the back of the transporter. We were then faced with putting it in Peter's car, brand new, without being run-in, which is never ideal. We asked the organiser if we could run around the track at night to run the car in, which is what we did. We went for hours. The Sierras didn't have any headlights of any note, so there was a rental car and the race car going around for laps and laps and laps, to run the engine in, and getting faster and faster and faster. The number of times we threw the rental car into the gravel traps, having fun trying to keep up! We'd all swap around. After a while I'd get bored in the rental car so I'd jump in and drive the Sierra while Peter drove the rental car. It became a fun park for a couple of hours in the two cars."

Fun and games aside, the '89 championship was a mixed bag for Brock, with two retirements spoiling any hope of a title run despite three solid 2nd-place finishes (at Symmons Plains, Mallala and Sandown) and even a win in the season-closer at Oran Park. Impressively, that meant it was usually a coin-toss whether he'd finish ahead of John Bowe, who was driving the second Dick Johnson car but spent most of the year finishing 3rd. Consistency told however, and with zero DNFs Bowe was able to finish ahead of Brock in the final standings, though neither were able to offer more than token resistance to Johnson, who ran away with the series to take his record-equalling fifth ATCC title.

Gr8 B8 m8 – the Brock B8
Away from the track, Peter still had an interest in tuning road cars, and that the newest Falcon was so transparently lacking in polish created a serious opportunity. He and Gow duly formed Austech Automotive Developments Ltd in Newlands Street, Coburg, and set about trying to get lightning to strike twice. "Peter wanted me to come in a a partner, and be a director of the company, and it was basically Peter and I," Alan Gow told Australian Muscle Car #82. "We still had the race team but it had a workshop near Airport West. Peter loved doing road car stuff so it made sense to have the two go hand-in-hand, being Ford and Ford."

The EA Falcon B8 – so named because it was the eighth generation of Brock projects – started as a promotion for Mobil and project car for Modern Motor. It was silver, which remained arguably the B8's finest colour. "Brock was doing one side skirt on one car, and fitting the completed rear skirt on my car at the same time," said Craig Fletcher, then-workshop manager, later a director of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation. "He said, 'It's my best car yet, and destined to be my most exclusive too.' I still remember the tagline – Body by Ford, soul by Brock."

That sounded awfully familiar, but Brock insisted he wasn't trying to re-create the glory days of HDT Special Vehicles using Ford products – it was all meant to be much more low-key this time around. That the Brock logo bore a striking resemblance to the later "T-wings" of Tickford was, all parties insisted, just a coincidence.

"We didn’t do it with any idea of getting money out of Ford," said Gow. "Peter also wanted to do it on a much smaller scale than he had with HDT. He didn't want to go down that road again. Funnily enough, the B8 badge on the side of the car was very similar to the one later used by Ford. Everyone thought it was the precursor." So the project got underway, with Brock in charge of vehicle development, Fletcher in the workshop and Gow watching the books.

The deal was, you brought in either a Falcon S or a Fairmont Ghia donor car, then handed over $12,500 (or $9,890 – the plush Ghia required fewer interior changes), and in return Austech would tweak the suspension, re-trim the interior, give the engine a massage and clothe it all in a nice little bodykit. This was no Walkinshaw monstrosity, however, as the shape that emerged was surprisingly tasteful, enhancing what the EA already was with such subtlety it could almost pass for a factory job. Comprising of front and rear spoilers, rear valance panel and sideskirts, it complimented the Falcon's lines quite nicely, avoiding the impression of slab-sided weight that spoiled so many kits. Crucially, it also avoided interfering with the tow bar – clearly this was intended as a usable daily driver, not a track-day-only garage queen.

Like the exterior, the interior treatment was a pleasing blend of subtle form that didn't sacrifice functionality. The front seats were actually standard units reworked for lateral support and upholstered in a tasteful grey cloth with red striped inserts by Paratus Industries, the company responsible for the OEM seats. Using stock frames meant that Austech had no problems with ADRs, helping to keep the price reasonable. Rear seats were trimmed to match, while finishing touches included the addition of a Ghia centre console and the ubiquitous fat-rimmed leather wheel and similarly-attired gearstick.

As usual though, it was the engine that attracted the most attention. Ford's insane quality control programme meant there was always plenty of potential left in their engines, and Austech arguably did the best job of unlocking it. A reworked cam, blueprinted ignition, recontoured airbox (Ford's own were usually optimised for quiet operation rather than flow) and engine management tweaks were welcome, but the real gravy was an all-new set of gorgeously polished six-into-two extractors, feeding into twin exhausts that terminated with a common silencer box and a single tailpipe. With all that, Austech claimed not only were emissions reduced, but power jumped 30% to an impressive 165 kW – which, if true, was more than a VL Turbo, and on par with an XR6 or even a V8-powered SS Commodore half a decade later. Top speed for the manual was a measured 202km/h, and although that was less than the standard car had posted at its launch, that had been achieved on the banked speedbowl at Ford's You Yangs Proving Ground – given the same venue, the B8 could conceivably have been faster. 0-100 was in the order of 8 seconds, and the 400m about 15.6, all good numbers for something that "wasn't a performance car"!

That claim was borne out by the suspension tune. Austech fitted new springs front and rear, specific gas shock valving, sturdier anti-roll bars, modified the top strut mounts and spring pads and tweaked the bushes.The end result wasn't what you're thinking, however. Although it would hang on well after the standard Falcon had given up and landed in the weeds, the team hadn't completely eliminated the EA's understeer, opting for a more compliant ride instead. Although stiffer than the standard car, the B8 was much less unsettled by the bumps and potholes of a normal Aussie back road, meaning in the real world it would paradoxically end up faster than a bone-shaking track car. Again, it was meant to be a pleasant thing to use every day, not a toy for weekends. Neither was there a Polarizer, or at least, “Not that I can recall,” laughed Fletcher. The Bridgestone RE71 tyres did run with suspiciously low pressures for a while, though...

We did two B8 models, a Falcon and a Fairmont [one of which Brock had as his daily drive]. There was the odd one-off and Fairlanes, but that was not the normal run-of-the-mill. We had a good number of Ford dealers who sent cars to us and some private owners. We didn't own any cars. It was very low overheads. The majority of them were silver; the second most popular was [Indigo] blue. The dealers brought them, or the owners. Peter enjoyed it, because he got to play with cars. At one point he also started playing with an aerodynamic truck. It gave him the latitude to try other things.

They were nice cars. They were a much more subtle car than what HDT were making. They were mainly concerned with a better-handling, better-riding car. It was a bit of extra performance with the straight six, with valve timing and exhausts and things. And things like front and rear bumpers and side skirts. It wasn’t over the top and the cars weren’t that expensive. We had our own wheels designed, he had his seats done by a company in Geelong, and he got Bridgestone tyres that were probably run at a low pressure for a time.

It wasn't a performance package. It wasn't meant to be a performance car. It was only marginally quicker than a standard Falcon. But it had the Peter Brock badge on it. Funnily enough, it's the sort of upgrade you expect now from the Audis of this world. – Alan Gow, AMC #82

They were helped along by a "silent partner" who was happy to chip in cash to keep the business afloat – nothing sinister, just a fan who was happy to help out (again, living Peter's charmed life came in very handy sometimes). "He was a bloke who ran weekend markets in Melbourne," Gow told AMC. "When Peter needed money, he'd go and see him and come back with a brown paper bag full of cash from the markets. His name was... let me see if I remember. Yes, it was Chipperfield."

"Peter borrowed money as and when he needed it," Gow added. "The company wasn't profitable, but it didn't lose money. It was all right and washed its own face, considering any start-up is difficult to make money."

Ultimately, the window of opportunity was open only briefly. Having planned to build 250, Austech only modified 126 Falcons and 24 Fairlanes before selling out. Those production volumes were dwarfed by the factory, obviously, with 223,612 EAs leaving Broadmeadows in its three-year stint, but few today realise they were even humbled by the 1,000-odd Falcon SVOs built by former race engine builder Mick Webb. The SVO was the one you really wanted if you absolutely had to have a performance Falcon – Momo steering wheel, Recaro seats, Bilstein shocks, the brand names said it all. It was a sharper and more focused drive than the B8, but it was also a semi-official project undertaken by Webb after hiring lots of ex-HDT personnel, and aided by Ford employees (some of them quite high-level) moonlighting with the factory's blessing. Officially unofficial, the SVO was Webb's attempt to land the deal that would eventually go to Tickford. Sadly for Webb, thanks to charisma, exclusivity, the Brock name or some combination of them all, it was the B8 that would go on to become a minor collectible; the SVO, technically a better car, is all but forgotten now and I doubt it would be hugely expensive to buy one, even in mint condition. The market for all these modified Falcons was destined to dry up, however, once Tickford arrived and started building the XR6.

Not to forget the XR8 of course, which would one day highlight the real chink in the EA's armour – no V8. Without a V8 option, there was no true performance version (XR8), no super-dooper performance version with Bathurst pretensions (GT), and nothing to put under the bonnet of the big luxo-barges like the NA Fairlane and LTD limousine. I mean, a Fairmont Ghia would set you back $31,265, or just under $70,000 in 2018, but it was really hard to justify that price and claim a cut-above image when all it had for power was a common or garden six. Plenty of small business owners and Silent Generation retirees opted for a Calais instead, and Ford would eventually be forced to take notice, but too late for the EA.

I'll sign off  with one of the strangest photos in my collection, which seems to date from 10 December 1989. As with the preceeding XF, a lot of revheads might tell you the EA never raced: once again, however, Bob Jane's Thunderdome comes riding to the rescue. Here's an EA Falcon given the full Gen-4 treatment and entered in Australian NASCAR, powered by a 351ci Windsor V8.

I can't quite make out the name on the fender, but the VN Commodore alongside it (powered by a 350 Chevy small block) is being driven by Brad Jones, the King of the Dome, and already a reigning AUSCAR champion at the time. Apparently both these cars were built at Calder Park's own workshops and Jane had high hopes they'd be competitive with imported machinery from the U.S., boosting local interest in the series. Does anyone know any more? If so I'd love to hear about it. The comment box is below. Otherwise, just enjoy the free drinks you'll win from knowing even this Falcon saw limited track action.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad That's Way Smarter Than You Remember

When was the last time you dusted off your DVD of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby? Hell, when was the last time you watched any DVD instead of doing your Netflix & chillax thing, or whatever it is you kids today do? Honestly, with all your sexting and your stepping-dubs, I can't begin to keep up. Anyway, Talladega Nights is worth another watch if you haven't in a while, or worth a first watch if you haven't yet, and hadn't planned to because you cannot bring yourself to think of Will Ferrell as anything remotely funny. I get that, I don't blame you, but even so I think this movie is worth a look, because it has some hidden – really hidden – depths. Here's some of the seriously clever stuff you might have missed in Will Ferrell's middle child of a movie.

No Shit Sherlock: It's about the Bush Years
This was obvious to the critics from day one: here's a link to Michael Signer's review on DemocracyArsenal.com, written while it was still in theatres, in which he states early on:

This movie perfectly captures – and in a wonderfully transparent, entirely non-ironic sense – the ethos of the Bush Administration, and the internal, domestic struggles that inevitably color and even drive our actions toward the outer world.  In a hundred years, cultural anthropologists could watch this movie and learn something.

More transparently, he signs off with the rhetorical eye-roll: "It would all be funny, except – as noted – it's the number-one movie in America – two weeks in a row. Welcome to George Bush's America."

This was probably more obvious to U.S. viewers than it was to me circa 2006, partly because I wasn't what you'd call observant in those days, and partly because we don't get Saturday Night Live here in Australia. I didn't learn Will Ferrell had made a living lampooning Bush the Younger until the 2016 election cycle gave us the brilliant Alec Baldwin/Kate McKinnon 2nd Presidential Debate cold open. I certainly had no idea the guy from Wayne's World had so beautifully sent up Bush the Elder before that.

Ferrell's Bush impression was no more nuanced than the man himself: it wasn't one of those carefully put-together, deeply-insightful impressions that magically puts the targeted person in the room with you; that would've been wrong given the subject matter. No, Ferrell simply donned a certain haircut and started acting like an ignorant manchild, like a high school football jock who hasn't learned a thing since grade school but still thinks it's everyone else who's slow on the uptake. He didn't bother replicating the trademark Bush smirk, because he didn't have to: all he had to do was portray a person shockingly unprepared for the job of being president. With a different costume, the same character could've been a neglectful husband, or an inept plumber, or even – with a little imagination – a NASCAR driver.

Just take a moment to appreciate what a perfect "in" NASCAR was for critiquing Bush's America. It wasn't just that NASCAR was booming at the time (and conversely, CART was finally in its death throes), it's that everything you needed could be said just by giving the film a NASCAR setting. The overwhelming saturation of corporations and logos? The masturbatory displays of patriotism? The profligate waste of irreplaceable fossil fuels? The deliberate, self-imposed ignorance and insularity? The straight-up Southern takeover of American culture? It's all embedded right there in NASCAR. I mean, if you want to know how the Republicans went from the party that defeated the Confederacy to a party that basically is the Confederacy 2.0, you could either read Doug Muder's short essay detailing the whole process... or you could just watch Talladega Nights, and grasp it intuitively.

I mean, just check out Ricky Bobby's TV endorsements scene:

How efficient is that? Ridiculous over-commercialism, gun culture, sexism, unease over the rise of China and a little Mexican hate, all skewered in forty seconds flat. Less, if you focus on the ammosexual-targeted Jackhawk 9000 segment, which is set off by that awesomely cheerful punchline: "Available at WalMart!" That's a Bowling for Columbine reference if you needed telling. By 2006 WalMart was the cancer spreading across the U.S., so that was the corporation Ricky had to namedrop in place of Kmart, but still: show me another way to expose the sheer ridiculousness of American gun culture in the Noughties in eight seconds or less. Go on, I'll wait.

Even the deeply weird overlap between Evangelical Christianity and Big Business came in for some ribbing, in a scene that was either the only part of the whole movie that was funny, or the only part that wasn't, depending on who you asked:

In 2006 I was still part of the God Squad and most of my friends were deeply offended by this scene, but looking at it now, it was for the wrong reasons. The most biting part  wasn't the "dear baby Jesus..." stuff, which was just window dressing: the real salt came with my favourite line in the whole movie:

Also, due to a binding endorsement contract that stipulates I mention Powerade at each Grace, I just want to say that Powerade is delicious... 

Yeah, he immediately distracts you with some of that off-the-cuff Ferrell nonsense that makes up so much of the movie (and which I still, admittedly, still enjoy – guilty pleasures are guilty), so the joke isn't given the chance to become ponderous by landing. But the point is still there, in the text: Ricky's faith is up for sale.

Just an observation: the same people who supported Bush's presidential bid were, but a few years later, behind the controversial Hobby Lobby decision, which in 2014 exempted the arts & crafts chain from providing its employees with birth control that was otherwise mandated by law, because it conflicted with its owners' Evangelical faith. Never mind that this sincerely-held religious view is younger than both the Hobby Lobby owner (born 1941) and Will Ferrell (born 1967); apparently corporations can hold religious views now. I daresay they will continue to do so any time something impinges on a billionaire's hip pocket. Real life has overtaken parody on this one.

But still, how else could you have worked in that brilliant piece of satire without the NASCAR premise? Genius. And yet this wasn't the movie's cleverest moment, or the one that made me sit up and realise it was worth a 47th or 48th viewing.

It's Basically Copperhead Road: the Movie
Have you ever actually listened Steve Earle's lyrics? If you've only heard this song with other drunk idiots (and I was at uni in 2006 *cough*), you'll know most of the words pass unremarked, with the volume picking up markedly when they get to the familiar line, "COPPERHEAD ROOOAAD!!!"

But seriously. Give it a listen. All of it.

Like Ferrell, Earle dangles shiny things in front of us to take our eye off the ball – some drooling over Daddy's Big Black Dodge (actually a 1950 Chrysler Windsor in the video), and how he volunteered for the Army on his birthday ('cos they draft the White Trash first around there anyway). But despite its reputation, Vietnam is decidedly not what this song is about: PTSD and the Dodge are inserted between the verses that really matter, the first and last, a deliberate generational parallel comparing the Revenuers who chased grandaddy over his White Lightning with the DEA who are pursuing the singer for growing sweet stinky weed. In other words, the song was criticising the War on Drugs as nothing more than Prohibition 2.0, American legislation's greatest failure. (On that note, Rob Goodman once made the case that Sweet Home Alabama is the greatest protest song of all time; I hereby nominate Copperhead Road for silver.)

Now, with all that in mind, watch this:

Mind blown? Mine was. Again they deliberately keep the point from coming home by immediately cutting to an action-chase scene, then a joke about not snorting breakfast cereal, but it's still there: Reese Bobby segues smoothly from NASCAR's origins in bootlegging to the legal status of a kilo of Colombian booger sugar taped under his '69 Chevelle. Like Steve Earle before them, the movie-makers are calling bullshit on the War on Drugs. The difference is, the first time around it took the lawmakers only 13 years to comprehend their mistake and reverse the decision; this time it's taken (...checks calendar...) 46 years and counting.

A bit serious for a Will Ferrell movie, you say? Well that's not the deepest dive this film takes. You might wanna get a big lungful before this one.

Surprise, surprise: the Harshest Critiques come from Jean Girard
In the long long ago time of 2002, Bush and his Republican cronies wanted to invade the sovereign Republic of Iraq. Because they were spoilt rich kids who thought they should be able to act out whenever they wanted and still get a pat on the head afterwards, they sought the approval of the U.N. and their NATO allies for their aggressive war. France's foreign minister sensibly replied with a GFY, making it clear France would neither condone nor participate in the invasion. In a spat of childishness that would've been hilarious if it hadn't come from a high government official, then-Chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Bob Ney, had Congressional cafeterias rename French fries, "Freedom Fries."

Yes, really.

This was the start of a backdraft of anti-French sentiment in the U.S., which was rather ironic in a country that wouldn't even exist if it hadn't been for the aid of the French king, but that's another story. What matters here is that this shift in public mood echoed and crystalised in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen's character, Jean Girard.

Talladega Nights came out the same year as Borat, so Cohen was deep into his Weird Foreigner groove at this time. True to any good antagonist, Jean Girard was carefully designed to peg every nerve in a NASCAR redneck's body: he's French (see above); he's gay (not just gay, but married – the Supreme Court finding that marriage equality was already constitutional was all in the future, in 2006 the hot-button issue was the justice of Don't Ask, Don't Tell); and as an ex-Formula 1 champion, he played on the inferiority complex that NASCAR was a simple sport for simpletons, witness his winning races while sipping macchiatos and reading Camus. (This is bullshit of course – NASCAR definitely falls into the category Harder Than It Looks, and a good Cup driver could adapt to F1 a hell of a lot faster than a good F1 driver could adapt to stock cars, which test a very different and somewhat obscure skill set by European standards – but we're dealing with cultural perceptions here, not reality.)

At the time Michael Schumacher's career was winding down, so an F1 driver the commentators called "dominant" brought some definite mental associations with it; his physical appearance however recalled Fernando Alonso, who was darkly intense but in those days wasn't wise enough to hide his outbursts of pissed-offedness. I remain fairly sure the line, "And now ze Matador will dance wis ze Blind Shoemaker!" is a reference to Schumacher and Alonso's tussle over the 2006 World Championship.

Beyond those traits, however, Girard makes no goddamn sense at all, and that serves a purpose above the sort of lolrandom comedy big at the time. I'd almost call him the first Dadaist character I'd encountered in mainstream cinema, except that he has a clear motivation and remains true to it, even if it makes no real sense in itself. But as I say, making no sense is the whole point of Jean Girard – his job is to parody the good, honest, hard-working heartlander's attitude to anything foreign. In pretentious terms, he embodies the Other: not just the Other, but the threat of the Other. He's not just faster than Ricky, he's more educated and cultured as well (a macchiato is a serious coffee drinker's coffee), and a better husband to boot (does Gregory come off as a trophy boy-toy to you? In retrospect the contrast between Gregory and Carly could've been played up more, but alas, no movie is without flaw, and Ferrell had already tackled gender issues and sexism with Anchorman). Girard plays on the darkest fears of heartland America, that their most cherished beliefs about themselves and American Exceptionalism are just autofellation that would be blown away by a moment's contact with the real world. Girard indicts Bush's America just by existing.

But the most stinging Girard moment comes during the montage scene, when he's shown driving while reading some Albert Camus. But not just any Camus.

See the title? It's L'Étranger, or in Anglais, The Stranger. It works well enough as a sight gag, as The Stranger is probably the only piece of existentialist literature anyone remembers from high school English classes, even though they haven't read it (and full disclosure, neither have I). It fits with Girard's literary tastes being exquisite, and French, and finding NASCAR rather easy (though it isn't), but I think it cuts even deeper than that. Do you know what The Stranger is actually about? A Frenchman who kills an Arab.

Looking back now, the real topic of The Stranger is painfully obvious. Camus and the French had a demographic problem. They were going to have to give up some prime Mediterranean beachfront. Which is why the idiot protagonist kills an Arab on the beach and gets himself executed. Spoiler alert: that's the plot of The Stranger. French mama's boy kills Arab on beach, whiles away the time in prison waiting to be guillotined thinking about… you know, I can't even remember what he was thinking about. That's probably because, like almost all the leftist European rhetoric of the postwar years, The Stranger is totally disingenuous. It can't just come out and say, "God damn it, we like this beach! We conquered this beach! Why we gotta give up all this nice beach just because you Arabs are out-breeding us?" You look back now and it's obvious that's what Camus, a French Algerian (a now extinct tribe), was writing about. Normal tribal behavior, resorting to violence when you're losing coveted territory. But God forbid Camus should talk that way out loud back in those post-Stalingrad days when everything was moral, except the nonstop lying.

...If you're one of these deeply, instinctively dishonest writers, you must always fog up the windshield as much as possible. So Camus' hero kills an Arab because… "existentialism, man." – Gary Brecher, NSFW Corp, The Stranger Stranger

You could spin out the parallels further if you wanted to – there's probably something to be made of the French presence in Algeria vs American military bases in Saudi Arabia – but I think the connection with Arab-Western violence is enough. Girard could've been reading anything, even other Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus would've been a profound statement about the racing driver's life, that no matter how hard you work, eventually you will lose and someone else will take the championship. But this movie isn't about racing drivers, it's about a man who started a war with the entire Arab world. So no, Girard is reading The Stranger, a book about a man who killed an Arab. That Meursault went to the guillotine but Bush went back to Texas to paint godawful kiddie paintings is a contrast I'll mention but gloss over here.

Anyway, there you have it: Talladega Nights is not classic cinema, but it's worth a closer look, and there's probably a lot more to dig through if you want to take the time. Like, how Ricky, Cal and Lucius accidentally form the French flag as they leave the hospital, which has to mean something...

...but I've leave the really deep analysis to someone who knows what they're doing. For now, it's enough if I've convinced you to dust off your old DVD and give it another watch. Movies should be watched just like a racecar should be driven: mercilessly, but with a big grin on your face.

Adelaide: Holden's Parthian Shot

With the big one at Bathurst done and dusted, for Australians the motor racing year was all but over, with a month-long lull before the final dance with the F1 machinery on the streets of Adelaide. For the actual teams, however, the pace remained frenetic, with several top-tier endurance events still on the horizon to keep their sleep schedules chaotic. That of the four remaining events only one was a home race in Australia just added the cherry on top of the stress sundae, ensuring the deadlines were always close and the logistics remained punishing. And yet they did it, because these were just very special people...

Nissan Mobil 500 
It soon emerged the Wellington 500 was another casualty of the World Touring Car Championship, as moving it to so late in the year had rather sucked the soul out of it. As the Tasman curtain-raiser it had stood alone, a blue-ribbon event featuring the best of Australia, New Zealand and Europe in an all-out no-holds-barred brawl. By contrast, in October it was just another enduro competing with Bathurst, and in that context it was always going to suffer. No team was going to sacrifice Bathurst prep to focus on Wellington, not even the ones based in New Zealand. It was another domino knocked over by the WTCC, made worse by the same FISA interference that had dogged Bathurst earlier in the month.

The race doesn't seem to be on YouTube, not even a cut-down highlights reel. Weirdly however, we do have Saturday's pre-race build-up and support events. I haven't watched the full thing because it's nearly three hours long and my internet plan isn't that generous, but if you have the time and megabytes you'll see a dry-to-wet Group A practice session, a gloriously wet Sports Sedan race, a Porsche New Zealand Championship race (think oldschool Carrera Cup, with 911s, 944s, and even a single 356 Speedster!), and a celebrity race in production-spec Nissan Sentra ZXE hatchbacks.

The pretty silver Swedish Sierra that had managed to keep off the walls at Bathurst "had a conversation" with the Armco in Wellington, but it was repaired in time for the race. Dick Johnson took pole with a time of 1:29.75, which was a third of a second slower than Klaus Ludwig's pole here last year (which was probably down to tyres), but only nine-hundredths quicker than Win Percy's FAI Commodore, showing how far the Holdens had come in only twelve months.

It was another FISA rolling start, which inexperience rather took the shine off: the Pace Car was so slow most cars had to drop back to first gear to make a decent getaway. Johnson nailed the start in his Shell Sierra, beginning his first lap with a huge gap back to Win Percy's #2 FAI Commodore and Jeff Allam in the #11 HSV Commodore. Around the twisting Wellington streets however a turbo car was no match for the instant squirt of a big V8, and Percy took the lead on lap 2. Steve Soper in Andrew Miedecke's #6 Blast Dynamics Sierra got by too, but was unable to keep up with Percy. Johnson's brilliant start soon came to nought when he pitted on lap 8 with a misfire, putting himself and Bowe out of contention for the day.

The first actual retirement however was Peter Brock in the #56 Mobil BMW, who stopped with a drivetrain failure – Peter had already done his deal for a different car next year, so the ex-JPS team machinery was probably well past its warranty and not worth maintaining any more. (Intriguingly, the Adelaide broadcast would also point out that although Brocky had year left on his contract with BMW, he was already working on a special, limited-edition vehicle for Ford Australia, fuelling the rumours that he'd be driving a Sierra in 1989).

The next retirement was one of the privateer Commodores, and then it started raining Sierras: the #45 Whittaker's Peanut Slab car of Armin Hahne & Robbie Francevic blew an engine; the #8 Miedecke Sierra of Pierre Dieudonné and Miedecke himself crashed out; the #21 Swedish Bagnall/Simonsen car pitted for an extended service; and Steve Soper retired with a rear hub failure.

Then the pace car stuck its nose in, costing Paul Radisich in the #55 Bill Bryce Racing BMW half a lap. The restart, when it came, was as slow as the first one: Emanuele Pirro in the #52 Schnitzer M3 lost 2nd place to Jeff Allam, but the Italian fought hard, as with his frugal flyweight M3 he could contemplate a one-stop strategy, while Percy would need at least two: as long as he did nothing silly, the lead would almost certainly come to him eventually. This duly happened on lap 46 when Percy pitted, leaving Pirro leading by 40 seconds over Bowkett (who took over from Percy), followed by Hulme (who'd taken over from Perkins) and Andy Wallace (replacing Allam).

Peter McLeod's Yellow Pages Walky remained too pretty not to photograph, even if it barely featured in the results.

Halfway through the race, Pirro finally pitted and handed the car over to Roberto Ravaglia, without even losing the lead. Ravaglia pulled still further away from Bowkett and Hulme, and the M3 was a whole lap ahead after the second round of stops. Percy came in on lap 122 with zero oil pressure – he was out, while Radisich's co-driver Ludwig Finauer crashed into the barriers after running as high as 3rd. Tony Noske, guesting with Neil Crompton in the #57 Mobil BMW, came in to hand over to Brock, only for an official to inform him that he was not cross-entered in this second car and could not drive! Noske carried on with his stint, but half a lap later the car retired anyway with a "computer" failure.

In the closing laps it was Ravaglia leading with Larry Perkins 2nd in the HSV Commodore, Colin Bond 3rd in the Caltex Sierra, and Mark Thatcher – co-driving Trevor Crowe's #53 John Sax Racing BMW – in 4th. At the last moment he was bumped up to 3rd when Bondy was forced to make a splash-and-dash, the turbocharged Sierra's appetite for Caltex go-juice putting him slightly in the red over 500km!

So in the end it was victory for Pirro and Ravaglia, the Italians putting in an aggressive yet contained drive in the factory M3 Evo to dominate the race. It was the start of a phenomenal five-year winning streak for the M3, just one more accolade in an endless march that would cement its reputation as a performance car legend.

The M3 and the streets of Wellington, a forbidden love...

Promo Touring Car 500
The second part of the Nissan Mobil double-header was held, as was the custom, at Pukekohe the following weekend. Despite which, this year the second race was not actually sponsored by Nissan and Mobil, having taken up a deal with someone called Promo (or ProMo, accounts differ – no idea who they were).

It was a rather anemic 21-car grid at Pukekohe, with only single-car entries from HSV (Perkins/Hulme), the Mobil BMW outfit (Brock/Crompton) and Schnitzer (Ravaglia/van de Poele). Granberg and Simonsen were back in the Team Sweden Sierra, as were Colin Bond & Alan Jones in the Caltex Sierra. The BMW lineup was padded out by Bill Bryce Racing (Radisich/Finauer) and a new entry from New Zealanders Kayne Scott and John Sorensen. The rest of the grid was made up of New Zealand regulars in outdated or small-class cars; Dick Johnson Racing was a complete no-show, as was Fred Gibson's Nissan team.

But in stark contrast to the one-car dominated Wellington, Puke was a real nail-biter that saw Andrew Miedecke and Steve Soper make an incredible comeback to steal victory right at the finish. Miedecke had started from pole after setting a time of 1:02.71, and led the opening laps comfortably before he was forced to pit to repair a damaged oil cooler (no word on what caused the damage, but I'd wager he tripped over backmarker – Puke is a fast track, so closing speeds with the lower-class cars can catch you out). This unscheduled visit to the pits cost them three laps, handing the lead to Win Percy in the FAI Commodore. Percy looked set to take the victory in turn, until he broke a rear wheel hub on lap 94 and passed the lead to Schnitzer BMW of Ravaglia and new co-driver Eric van de Poele. But behind them the Blast Dynamics Sierra came zooming back through the field, making up the lost three laps to surge through to victory by just over 4 seconds! It was an impressive comeback from a car that seemed completely out of the running, and it showed how the Asia-Pacific Championship might've gone had Miedecke only had a bit more luck on his side.

Radisich M3 leads Brock M3: the fast, sweeping Pukekohe favoured the Sierras over the Bavarian pocket rockets.

InterTEC 500
The final round of both the Japanese domestic series and the Asia-Pacific championship was held at the Fuji Raceway in Japan. To his credit, Andrew Miedecke chose to chase Asia-Pacific points despite the cost of racing in far-off Japan (as a former open-wheel racer he had contacts in this part of the world – Teddy Yip of Theodore Racing, Macau F3, that sort of thing). Steve Soper had returned to Blighty, so he wrangled New Zealand biker Graeme Crosby to be his co-driver instead, and their chances were actually pretty good in a race so thin of foreign entries. Sadly however they failed to finish, DNFing for reasons unknown with just 11 of the 112 laps completed. After 12 months on the front line, with successive Bathurst, Sandowns and Wellingtons on the clock, the Rouse-sourced car was probably just worn out. Polesitters Anders Olofsson and Aguri Suzuki retired in their HR31 Skyline as well, leaving the race to another Euro-Japanese double act, Klaus Niedzwiedz and Hisashi Yokoshima winning in what was probably a customer Eggenberger Sierra.

A for effort to Miedecke, but ultimately he couldn't clinch the series in a car that was apparently running off his own wallet (this and several other photos from the race available at TouringCarRacing.net).

As for the championship, Emanuele Pirro seemed certain to clinch it for BMW until the Schnitzer car retired with a holed radiator. But as we know, the title ended up going to New Zealand's Trevor Crowe, which has fans scratching their heads to this day.

South Australia Cup 
So that just left the grand finale on the streets of Adelaide. The Australian GP support race was, compared to previous years, absolutely huge: a full 35 cars fronted up, featuring absolutely everyone of any consequence in the ATCC scene, even Sydney-based drivers who normally restricted themselves to Oran and Amaroo and didn't usually show up for interstate races like this. It seems it had finally dawned on everyone that, bugger me, that race will get our sponsors on the telly not just in Australia, but worldwide! That combined with looser purse strings thanks to the success of the event, and the chance to go all fanboy over the F1 superstars and their machines, meant we had everyone: Tony Longhurst in his Bathurst-winning B&H Sierra; Dick Johnson and John Bowe in their Shell Sierras; George Fury and Mark Skaife in a pair of Gibson Motorsport Skylines; Brocky and Gentleman Jim in their Mobil BMW M3s; Larry Perkins and Denny Hulme in the works HSV Walkinshaw Commodores, together with Allan Grice in the rival Roadways FAI Walky, just three of a swathe of V8 Holden Commodores; Phil Ward in his Mercedes 190E; Lawrie Nelson in his Capri Components Mustang; even Darrel Belsky was there to drive Joe Sommariva's BMW 635 CSi. It was stacks-on on the streets of Adelaide, and everyone was back in their individual cars with their ATCC numbers on the doors. The only real no-shows were Allan Moffat's ANZ Sierra, Mark Petch's similar Peanut Slab car, and Andrew Miedecke, who was busy contesting the Fuji round in Japan. Even without them, we still had a full 35-car grid, a huge number for such a "minor" event.

Indeed, it would've been 36, but troubles with the Caltex Sierra earmarked for Alan Jones meant he had to sit this one out. Although he doubtless would've preferred to race, he ended up spending the race locked in the commentary box with Channel Seven sports voice Darrell Eastlake.

Darrell Eastlake: I believe your teammate Colin Bond in the Caltex Sierra had a little trouble throughout the week?

Alan Jones: Yes, he built up an engine which he thought was going to give him well over 500 horsepower, and unfortunately that only lasted about half of Thursday! So then they went back to a lesser horsepower engine, which they thought if nothing else would give them reliability, [but] that’s playing up [as well]. I spoke to Colin last night and he’s having to run very low boost and very low revs, and that’s not the way to go motor racing and I really don’t know if he's going to finish this race. He's way back, but they're having a go anyway.

Bondy's confidence probably wasn't boosted when race day – Saturday, 12 November – dawned with the kind of burning, lung-searing heat people assume Australia puts on all the time. That was going to place firm limits on what you could get out of a turbo car, which tended to run searing temperatures on the best of days and saw a sharp reduction in power once the intercooler got too hot. Turbo runners had the unenviable choice of whether to turn the boost down and hope it all held together to the finish, or turning it up and trying to build a gap so they could turn it back down if they needed to, and then hope it all held together to the finish.

Starting from pole, Dick Johnson elected to take the second option. At the green he was beaten off the line by Longhurst, who'd actually started slightly ahead of his starting box, and down to the first chicane they stormed, the two Sierra rivals side-by-side. Thanks to pole Johnson had the inside line, and he took the lead into the first turn. The first few through the chicane were surprisingly neat and tidy, Gricey clattering over the kerbs in his FAI Walkinshaw, followed by Larry Kogge in the Hella Skyline DR30. Through the turns Johnson worked his Sierra for all it was worth, squirming for traction, with Longhurst chasing hard right behind. Onto the short Jones Straight Longhurst got right out over the kerb looking for a way through, but nothing was going to beat a Johnson Sierra in a straight line: down Brabham Straight the red car flew, peaked somewhere around 270km/h, then applied the brakes and nipped through the Dequetteville Hairpin. By the time Johnson was completing lap 1, he had already pulled out a gap of about fifteen car lengths over 2nd place – and that was now John Bowe, who'd moved past Longhurst in the meantime to take the place. End of lap 1, and the DJR teammates were 1st and 2nd.

Behind the casualties were already piling up: Ray Ellis had already retired his yellow VL, while Lusty's black-and-orange Walkinshaw suffered a non-fatal spin and rejoined, dusty but uncreased. Early on lap 2 the Oliver Corolla also pulled off with oil pouring out the side. One who seemed like he'd be joining them on the DNF list was Larry Perkins in 4th, who was driving with controlled yet overt aggression, throwing his HSV Walky at the corners and seemingly daring the Armco to stop him. He was actually keeping up with Longhurst as a result, but time would tell whether his car could stand up to this kind of treatment on such a hot day and survive the full 32 laps – that epic bodykit had cut down on cooling, after all.

By lap 5 the DJR cars were clearly taking it slightly easy, making some effort to preserve their cars, and with a solid gap back to Longhurst that was possible – but Longhurst was still fanging it through the turns, little puffs of smoke under braking, and that also made it necessary. The commentary team then took a moment to gush over their new toy, real-time telemetry streaming live from Peter Brock's BMW. This innovation from Netcomm was fairly rudimentary compared to today, showing only the speed, revs and gear changes, but it was cutting-edge for 1988 – and unlike its first outing at Bathurst '87, this one was actually working. "The only problem with that of course Darrell," joked Alan Jones, "is if you miss a gear or over-rev it, they know about it straight away."

Prophetic words, as about 20 seconds later Perkins started closing up on Tony Longhurst, even though they were on the fastest part of the Brabham Straight. Poor Tony swung it through the Dequetteville Hairpin, but didn’t have the grunt to accelerate away again: as Perkins stormed by, the yellow Sierra's engine let out a sizeable belch of white smoke and puttered pitifully around the rest of the circuit, his engine having busted a head gasket. The car had lasted 161 laps at Mount Panorama, but wouldn't see number 8 in Adelaide. "The ol' Sierras," mused Jonesy, "while they go like rockets they can also prove to be hand grenades..."

Something that was doubtless on the minds of Johnson and Bowe as well. They both had oil and water temps in front of them, and neither probably liked what they saw: by lap 9 Larry Perkins was starting to close up on Bowe, meaning he either had a problem, or was having to back off to avoid a problem. By lap 10, Perkins was past and up to 2nd place.

On lap 12 we heard rather than saw that Allan Grice was in the pits, the commentary team telling us that it looked, "fairly terminal, they're not rushing around the car too much." Roadways cars always did run hot, and it seemed combined with the searing heat in Adelaide that day, it was more than the FAI car could take. Eventually Gricey fronted up and told the cameras:

Broke fourth gear, which is a little disappointing always. In this case the temperature is very hot, [I] reduced revs, kept the revs down to have a good water temperature, looking after brakes and tyres, the car was running very well. I was certainly ready to have a charge once a few more of them have heat problems, as you can hear they're having. But going down the straight already in fourth gear and pulling, the gearbox suddenly broke fourth gear. I had a look through the box to see what was left, the only thing that was left was fifth. I don't think it would’ve been terribly good in fifth around here!

So that was Gricey over and out, and it seemed like he was about to be in good company. By lap 15 reports started coming through that Johnson's car was backfiring and sounding different than it had earlier on. With his experience of turbocharged Ford engines from 1986, Alan Jones saw good to weigh in, saying: "Well, with a turbo car it might be an exhaust, or something like that. It looks to be going approximately the same sort of speed. But with a turbo car, you can never really tell. He might've just – dare I say it? – turned the boost down."

But this wasn't Johnson turning the boost down: this was something more serious. All through lap 16, Larry Perkins was reeling the Shell Sierra in, hunting him down like a shark following a trail of blood. Finally, as they rounded the final hairpin and re-emerged onto the pit straight, Johnson abruptly slowed and Perkins powered soundly by, leaving the Shell car in a cloud of Holden dust. "No way should that happen normally," gasped Jonesy. "I'd reckon that he's got some fuel pickup problem, because he seems to be going reasonably well on the straight, but then it coughs and splutters coming out of the corners. So I think he's in some sort of trouble."

He was right, as although both Shell team cars would continue on, trying to make the finish in limp-home mode, ultimately neither would make the chequered flag. As Johnson told us many moons later:

My car was slowing because it was vaporising fuel and the pumps wouldn't pump air so the thing stopped.

And wouldn't you believe it, Bowe and I both stopped within a lap of each other and in exactly the same spot on the track. – Dick Johnson, Dick Johnson Racing: 30-Year Anniversary

So that was the Shell team cars done, char-broiled on both sides and now the walking dead. The first half of this race had belonged to the DJR Sierras, but the pendulum had swung and the second half now belonged to the HSV Commodores. By lap 17 Denny Hulme was into 2nd place, putting the factory Holdens into a 1-2 formation they'd never lose. But the race wasn't yet over.

At the start of lap 18 the HSV team hung out the boards, showing their drivers their lap times and a 9-second gap back to Johnson, and Jonesy noticed something: "Hulme just did a lap time point-two of a second quicker than Perkins, a 47.4 as opposed to a 47.6. So Denny's really going for it. It'll be interesting to see if there's any team orders when it gets down to the wire." It quickly emerged that there weren't: on lap 23, approaching the Dequetteville Hairpin, Hulme was visibly pulling out of his boss's slipstream to have a look at a pass, but on this lap he didn't quite have the edge to get it done and fell back into line. As they stormed down Brabham Straight for the twenty-fourth time, however, Denny found that edge: out of the slipstream he came, stood on the brake pedal and had the ghost of a wobble, so late had he left his braking. But not too late: Denny rotated the car smartly into the hairpin, took the advantage of the inside line, and passed Larry Perkins for the lead.

Larry didn't take that lying down. Through the following series of chicanes and 90-degree switchbacks, anybody would be forgiven for thinking the boys were racing each other, the body language of the cars aggressive, looking for a fight. "So there's no team orders," commented Jones, sounding surprised. Thinking about it though, he went on to add: "Thank God for the Holdens, they’re making a race of it."

By lap 25 the HSV pair were coming up to lap Dick Johnson, who'd been sitting pretty less than ten laps earlier. Bowe meanwhile found himself under threat from – of all people – Colin Bond, who hadn't expected to even see the finish with the engine under the bonnet today. Here he was in with a shout of a podium!

Perkins re-passed Hulme during a commercial break, and that was it for the lead changes. Perkins completed the final six laps smoothly and cleanly, pulling a nice little gap on his teammate, suggesting either Hulme had a problem of his own or Perkins had been sandbagging earlier on, putting on a show for the crowd. If so he rather overdid it, as the final lap saw Perkins slow right down to try and back into Hulme for a formation finish. But he'd left it too late, and the former World Champ was too far back. Instead, Colin Bond cleverly slowed to allow Perkins to pass him before the line, reducing his race distance to 31 laps and ensuring he wouldn't have to complete one final lap that might have broken his car once and for all. Through guile as much as skill, Bondy chalked up a solid 3rd place, sending bookies across the city broke in an instant. Nobody saw that coming. It was a final flourish for a year that was okay but could've been better for Colin Bond – he'd failed to bring home Bathurst or the ATCC, but he had won the AMSCAR series at Amaroo Park, which was always prominent on the agenda for a Sydney-based driver.

But the works Holden team had rounded out the year with a slam-dunk 1-2 finish, in front of an international audience, on a day that was an absolute gift to the marketing team – they're nice, these European cars, but if you've got a distance to cover on a forty-degree day, you've just gotta have a Holden. The crew at Perkins Engineering had broken the duck in the middle of a very lean patch for Holden, but the suits at Fishermans Bend could be forgiven for entering the Christmas shut down with a spring in their step. They'd ended the year on a high, the new-model VN Commodore was on sale, and the company was beginning to claw its way out of the financial black hole in which it had spent the bulk of the 1980s.

The future seemed bright, but no-one could've predicted what Japan did next.