If I was to tell you that this stunning HQ Monaro LS had been the subject of a full nut and bolt restoration, you’d have no real reasons to doubt me. Hell, if I woke you up from a coma and told you that we’d tumbled down a black-hole and re-emerged into 1972, seeing this car would help you make the leap.
But get this: This car has not been off the road for months while it was restored, nor has it even had the engine removed or, indeed, the engine pulled apart. The closest it’s ever been to a rotisserie is when the owner, Greg Thompson, buys a charcoal chook for dinner on the way home.
Now, I should explain that Greg is a car detailer by trade. Prior to that, he was working in the high-end side of a very techy industry, so he knows a thing or two about devils and details. But even before he switched careers a handful of years ago, he had always been into the Nth-degree end of making cars look sharp.
“I’d been detailing cars for about 40 years, but I decided to go full time after Covid convinced me I wasn’t going back to the real world,” he tells me as we watch the sun break though the clouds and absolutely ignite the metal-flake in the LS’ Chateau Mauve panels. “Now, I just go around polishing GTs, Monaros, Chargers and Toranas.”
A Holden man through and through, Greg had already restored an HQ GTS four-door, complete with 308 and Trimatic box. But the urge to own a coupe was a strong one and, eventually, he found what he was looking for. Or maybe it found him, we don’t really know. Either way, the HQ’s back-story is a ripper and involves being purchased brand-new in 1972 by a lady who lived on Melbourne’s fringe where the roads were still mainly gravel and winter-time mud was as much
a part of living there as bushfires were in
the summer.
But get this, the LS served as Madame’s daily transport for the next 38 years. And while she obviously loved the car (she returned it to the Holden dealership in 1975 to have power-steering fitted after three years of wrestling the brute sans power-hook) she didn’t spare it the local roads or the sometimes sticky conditions. Fact is, she drove it into the ground. Literally.
And that’s where a mate of Greg’s comes in. He spotted the LS, decided he needed to own it and promptly made the original owner an offer she couldn’t refuse. Only catch there was that Old Mate eventually worked out that he wasn’t going to do anything with the old purple two-door, and there, in his nice, dry factory, the car sat. And then, as these things often work out, about ten years ago, he sold it to Greg.
“Then the fun began,” is how Greg remembers it.
“She was pretty shitty,” is his blunt assessment of how the car looked and drove when it was finally dragged back to his garage.
“The car had had a bingle when the first owner was still dailying it, about 1989 I reckon. They replaced the entire left rear quarter and then did a blow-over coat of two-pack over the original acrylic. But they must have done a pretty good job, because all I’ve done is rubbed it back, paint-corrected it and given it a ceramic coating. Other than that, it’s the original two-pack from 1989.”
At first you think Greg must be joking, because the shut lines and the clarity of colour on the HQ are stunning. Only when you look really closely at the paint on the bigger, flatter panels can you see that it’s two-pack, but Greg reckons he’s run his paint-thicknesser over the whole car and has found no evidence of bog or other repairs.
And get this: The black roof is still sporting the original, 1972 vinyl. Yes, there are a couple of tiny nicks in the surface, but Greg reckons he can’t find the correct long-grain pattern to return the car to absolutely standard. So, for now, the original vinyl will do just nicely.
Inside is a slightly different story with Greg’s upholsterer mate managing to find the correct NOS vinyl to complete the retrim in the GM Flax the car was sold with. With the trim sorted, Greg turned his attention to getting the rest of the insides up to speed. That involved removing the steering column and rebuilding it as well as taking the dashboard back to new.
“I stripped the insides to the shell and then tackled each job. I repainted the steering column and replaced the bearings with new old stock stuff. I’m not a mechanic, but Dad was, and I learned plenty from him. Then I got the gauges redone; stripped down and had the font reprinted, but I also added the tri-gauge set-up (instead of the huge fuel gauge) that gives you fuel, temp and oil pressure. I reckon that’s pretty important with an unopened engine.”
The tri-gauge was an option on the LS (Greg showed me the brochure to prove it) so even though this car didn’t have it from new, it’s still 100 per cent ‘correct’. Same goes for the other NASCO accessories Greg has thrown at the HQ; stuff like the flip-up mesh headlight protectors, the NOS clock to fill the dash blank, and the super-bizzaro full-length weather-shields that grace the side windows and are something that I’ve never before seen in the flesh. Greg agrees on the rarity of them: “And you’ll probably never see another set,” he confirms.
Originality runs deep here, and the AM radio with its single, in-dash speaker remains, as does the original seat-belt hardware with NOS webbing, the hub-caps and trim-rings and even the spare wheel (although the original tyres are long gone).
Meantime, proof that the original owner was something of a petrol-head comes in the form of the 253 V8 and T-bar auto she specified at a time when it was entirely possible to spec a Monaro LS (the mid-range model in the coupe line-up) with a 202 six-banger and a column-shifted three-speed manual. But it’s also here that Greg’s determination to retain the car’s essence really shines through.
“It’s the original, unrestored motor. I have no idea how many miles it’s done, but it’s probably been around the clock at least one-and-a-half times. From what I can work out, it’s had one cylinder head removed at some stage a long time ago – probably to fix a valve or something – but that’s the only thing that’s ever come off the short motor. I managed to repaint the block and heads in the car, too, so the motor has never been removed.”
All the bits like the timing case, rocker covers and water pump were pulled off and repainted or hydro-blasted back to their original spec, and then Greg simply put it all back together. Anything that was replaced was done so with the absolute spot-on, no-argument, date-coded Holden-branded gear.
So what’s not original? Not much at all. Greg admits to fitting a set of Koni shocks “painted black to look like the originals. But that’s a safety thing because it was a wallowing, dangerous bag of shit with the standard shocks.” Fair enough.
But the rest is the rest, including the fuel tank, tail-shaft and the original springs were all removed, returned to brand-new and refitted.
The ducks of originality really have lined up for this grand old two-door. Yes, it was lucky enough to wind up with Greg, but even before that, it’s history was all leading up to its preservation rather than restoration.
“I reckon the mud had kind of sealed the rust out,” Greg tells me. “The suspension still had the little paper tags wrapped around the coils (which Greg has reproduced). And even though the engine was a mess, because it was owned by that first lady, nothing was missing. It even still had the engine reference tag wired to the block. And, yes, the build sheet was still under the carpet in the back seat.”
“And I did the whole thing as a rolling resto,” Greg adds. It’s never been off the road for any length of time.”
The other thing about this car is that it reminds you that not all Monaros were born as fire-breathing hot-rods. The Chateau Mauve is quite subtle, and with the dog-dish hub-caps and vinyl roof, the end result is fairly restrained. But, as Greg knows only too well, that’s how it was back then. And you can bet your bottom dollar, that’s how it will stay.