Yes, there certainly aren't many about. I'm trying to get a production figure, but it's really like finding a needle in a haystack. I know they were built in batches of 5, and my SL/T was in the first batch of the Mk 2 version. Photographs I was shown at a car show in Rockhampton showed my car being built at NGM and the prototype Mk 2 air cleaner and cast alloy ducting being test fitted.
I have zero authentcating data on the genuineness of the car (absolutely nothing came with the car), and except for a very faded photocopy of a letter from David Inall from 1978 that I received after making enquiries when I first saw the original October 1978 Modern Motor article, I received nothing else from NGM. I've just sent an email off to Honeywell Australia (they absorbed Normalair-Garrett Manufacturing on the late 90s), to see if they can offer any information. To be honest, I'm not expecting anything from them, but it's worth a try.
Practically every article on the net on the SL/T model either uses text or pictures "borrowed" from the information that I sent to DunsenZ at the Oatley Torana Club back in May 2002 or from the
web page that I constructed at about the same time. That web page has been out there for almost 10 years ... initially on my iprimus web space, then it moved to my internode web space, and finally it shifted to my own domain in about 2004 (where it's been ever since). Every time I go looking for details, I end up looking at my own text or pictures on someone else's site ... often with a copyright notice ostensibly claiming ownership of the text and pictures.
I have very few pictures of the SL/T ... a few black and whites that I took back in August 1979, and amongst the thousands of 35mm slides that reside in about half a dozen crates (that still haven't seen the light of day since I packed them up in 2008 and shipped them off to Canada), I have a few more. I think I have one showing the speedometer somewhere north of 200 km/hr, but I can't be sure, and the picture would have been taken over 3 decades ago, and I haven't seen photographs from that set for almost that long, so my mind may be playing tricks on me.
There are a couple of digital pictures on
a face book album that I took to document some repairs to the turbo installation that I was doing back in 2006. The engine bay looks pretty grotty in those pictures. A few months later, my digital camera was left in Canada with my wife when I came home to prepare my house for sale and pack things up, so there were no more pictures except for the one my sister took a few days before I was due to immigrate to Canada. When I was buying used parts back in 2007 or 2007 for a planned restoration, and arrived to pick them up in the SL/T, the ex-Torana owner went crazy and probably took 30-40 shots of my car. I never saw a single of those images, and I don't think I could find him again to see if I can get copies.
The car was still being used as a daily driver up until I deregistered it. My plan was to eventually return to Australia and do a full restoration on the SL/T, but I don't think that's going to happen (my project car over here is a 1989 Jaguar XJ-S V12), so I guess I'll probably be putting the Torana up for sale in the near future.
The body work is straight (never been in a collision) although it does have the odd parking lot ding and scrape (including a small ding in the leading edge of the bonnet caused by a falling sofa ... don't ask). The paint is original, but it does have a couple of bits of minor surface rust. The bonnet will need repainting, as the area over the turbo is a mass of crazed paint from the heat. My biggest regret is having an "over the roof" AutoSun sliding glass sunroof fitted in the early 80s, but after talking to a few car collectors/restorers, the fact that it's a period correct modification shouldn't be too much of a issue. Internally, it'll need new carpets and the seats will need to be recovered, and just before I put the car in storge, the heater core started leaking, so it's been bypassed.
It currently sits on a set of extremely rare 13x6 Globe RallyMasters (like the globe SprintMasters they fitted to the LJ XU-1s, but with 1/2 inch more offset and a rough cast finish on the spokes) that have been painted black with high temp enamel (so it'll come off relatively easily), and there's a set of 4 of the 13x6 Torana factory alloys and things like spare tail lights etc, packed with the car.
During the rebuild of the engine back in 1988 the block (it's still the original block) and the head (aftermarlet Yella Terra LX3300 head that I had reworked with better springs and a set of studded roller rockers) were painted gloss black, so I planned to haul it out and paint it "rocket red" again, and have hardened valve seats fitted so it would run on premium unleaded without needing a shot of upper cylinder lube at every fill-up. The gearbox was rebuilt with a new layshaft gear set and first gear at the same time as the engine rebuild and the differential is still the original "small" Salsbury. I'm willing to bet that the clutch is stuck to the flywheel. The special PBR clutch set that took me years to find doesn't like high humidity, and after just a month or so of not being driven, I'd always have to spend the first day or two driving it clutchless until the plate unstuck.