I went to a fantastic event recently. The venue was the Melbourne Showgrounds and the occasion was the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Ford Australia.
Now, 100 years is a long time in any game, but for a company to have moved from an assembler, to a fully-fledged manufacturer and then to a design and engineering centre, and still be a pretty vibrant part of the community, is not a bad effort.
Yes, yes, I know; it’d be nicer if Ford was still making Falcons and Fairlanes and Territories here, but that ain’t the way the world works right now. But it’s still great to see that Ford feels it’s part of the country and things like its 100 years of sponsorship of the Geelong footy club (the longest, continuous sporting team sponsorship deal in the world, I’m told) tend to back that up.
And let’s face it, if you’re like me, you’ve maybe owned one or two – maybe even a handful of – Fords over the years. At last count I’ve owned something like four XR6 Falcons, and I still have my Mark 2 RS2000. Not to mention my father-in-law’s Model T that is A: Now in my keeping, and B: Being a 1924 model is one year older than even Ford Australia.
The actual event was part car show, part side-show, with celebrity car-nut Shane Jacobson MC-ing, and no less celebrities than Dick Johnson, a slew of Supercar drivers, former Wheels magazine editor Peter Robinson, and even Henry Ford’s great-grandson (and the current boss of Ford) Bill Ford taking to the stage to address a crowd of about 2500 packing the showground’s main grandstand.
A constant stream of cars rumbled on to the main stage throughout the event, some of them delivering celebs to the microphone. Those cars included a Model T, but not just any Model T. You may remember a few issues back, I was searching for a hub puller to remove the rear wheels from my T.
A bloke named Dave put his hand up to lend me the very tool in question, and we’ve caught up a few times since. And guess whose Model T clattered out on to the main arena to deliver Ford Oz boss Andrew Birkic to the microphone? Yep, Dave and his 1924 T Tourer. Nice work, fella! I just wish mine ran as nicely as Dave’s. ’Cos I know for sure it’ll never look as nice.
Customs House
The other event I turned up at the other day was a custom car show at Shannons HQ in Melbourne. Normally, a car show layout will be a case of first in, best dressed. But this event had a twist because while all comers were welcome, only a hand-chosen 50 or so rides made it inside the huge Shannons’ warehouse. And man, were they standouts.
It reminded me just how cool a chopped and channelled chunk of American 50s-ness could look. And being the cream of the crop, these weren’t half-finished projects or patina-clad ratters.
Nope, we’re talking gorgeous metallic paint, some serious paint/graphics detailing and equally serious body mods with everything from a frenched aerial to a roof chop-and-swap. Inside, there was plenty of bling, too, with pearl steering wheels competing with dingle-balls for cool points.
As with any car show, of course, the car park was also home to some stunning machinery and I was particularly taken with a couple of utterly ‘proper’ hot rods. Make mine a ’34 Ford Highboy with whitewalls and a flathead V8.
Then again, the other car I would have gladly taken home with me was not a hot rod or a custom at all. Instead, it was a fairly stock looking VG Valiant station wagon, complete with kid-restraints in the back and the odd dent and scratch here and there.
Oh, and a massively turbocharged Barra engine under the lid. It might have looked pretty stock, but it had the biggest camshaft I’ve heard in a long time; big enough to give the thing 1200 horsepower at the treads. And Mum was driving. I was so taken with the whole thing, I forgot to take a photo of it.
Volt from the blue
I knock around with a bunch of blokes in my area for time to time. Some are retired heart surgeons, others have delivered more babies than the Hogwarts Express. Some are retired teachers, others are or were mechanics and some are your actual engineers. They’re a great mob to hang around, and they’ve all had a few adventures throughout their lives and made it back to tell about it.
I suppose if there’s one thing we all have in common is a taste for good claret and an interest in things that move under their own power. Bikes, cars, busses, trucks, tractors; you name it, there’s a bloke in this group that collects them.
One of the things they love to do as a group is visit engineering or automotive workshops. They’re always welcome, from what I’ve seen, too, because they’re enthusiastic and are keen to meet people who are doing what they would have been doing for 50 years had they not been delivering babies, helping to invent IVF (no kidding) or teaching kids at school.
Anyway, our most recent excursion was to a place not far from the MBC where classic cars are converted to electrical power in the name of keeping old dungers on the road while making them somewhat future-proof. Called Jaunt Motors, this ain’t your average workshop bolting a washing machine motor into a VW Beetle and calling it an EV.
Nope, this is genuine high-end engineering with the best of everything, a team of dedicated electrical and mechanical engineers and a price tag to match.
In the case of a Land Rover, for instance, there are whole new front and rear axle assemblies required to allow for disc brakes, an electric park-brake (’cos an EV doesn’t have a conventional Park position in its transmission) and stronger axles to overcome one of the early Landy’s biggest engineering hassles; axles made from cheese.
You can take Jaunt Motors a fully reconditioned vehicle and ask to have it converted, or turn up with a basket case and have the restoration carried out in-house before the conversion.
Like a lot of operations like this, Jaunt has figured out that some cars are just made for converting. So, there are now virtually off-the-shelf kits for early Land Rovers, Minis and VW Kombis, as well as Mokes and one-offs like the early Corvette that was there when we visited.
So how much for this level of engineering, certification and attention to detail? Well, it’s possible to spend $400,000 on a Series 1 or 2 Land Rover by the time it’s running on volts, signed off and legally on the road, so it won’t be for everybody. Bloomin’ impressive to see, however.
And what’s my personal take on converting classics to electricity? I draw a pretty simple line in the sand with this stuff. If it’s a car I love because (or partly because) of its engine, then it’s a hard no from me. But if it’s a car that I love despite its engine, then the case for conversion becomes a little clearer.
For instance, an air-cooled Porsche 911’s charm is inextricably linked to its grainy, cammy, bugger-all-flywheel, flat-six engine. So, no, no volts for me thanks. But a, say, Triumph Stag (a car looking for an engine) or a Citroen DS (a car that never got the engine it deserved)? Hmm, maybe.
Is it just me?
So April Fools Day has come and gone once more. Oh how we larfed. Not.
But I reckon the worst, most tasteless and unfunny AFD gag was one posted on social media by none other than the Victoria Police Highway Patrol funsters. The picture showed a Porsche Macan on a flat-bed and the straight-faced blurb that the car was defected and impounded because it had been illegally modified to incorporate air suspension.
The description even included the fact that the car was seized and the driver fined, even though the driver had tried to explain to the officer that the car was, in fact, built at the Porsche factory with air suspension.
Now, the gag was, of course, that the driver was 100 per cent right and the car is a factory air-bag vehicle. And apparently, posting the officer’s ‘mistake’ was supposed to be a right old thigh-slapper. Except it’s not. And the reason it’s not funny is because this is precisely the sort of ‘mistake’ that happens all the time when somebody with a modified car runs into a Highway Patrol copper on a quota-filling mission.
The Bronze gets the wrong end of the stick and suddenly, a car that is legal and fully engineered is defected off the road because the walloper didn’t know what they were talking about. I know of precisely this situation occurring multiple times. Stuff like measuring ride height from the wrong point, or decibel meters set up completely incorrectly. And they’re just the examples I know about.
When a Highway Patrol officer presumes he or she knows more about car modifications than a tertiary-qualified mechanical engineer, we all have a potential problem.
Oh, but VicPol will maintain, it was just an April Fools Day joke. Yeah? Well it ain’t funny. And it ain’t funny in the same way as Russie issuing an April 1 press release that it’s going to invade Lithuania. And that’s not funny at all. About as funny as a billionaire waving around a chainsaw as he starts sacking someone else’s workers.
Same goes for VicPol, I reckon. If they’re going to make lame dad jokes, stay away from the subject of balls-ups they’re already making on days that aren’t April 1.
If there’s any sort of funny side to this, it’s that the genius who posted the picture and blurb then had to spend the next few hours explaining to triggered people everywhere that the whole thing was just a joke.
Trust me when I say the internet lit up. Just as my old man would have after 30 years in the police force trying to push back against this sort of stupid, pointless, alienating, jodhpur-wearing waste of tax-payer money.
If this is what passes for funny at Police headquarters, I fear for the Force as an organisation. Maybe leave humour to the experts from now on, eh?