13 replies to this topic

[wot179]

Go 22c !

[Dr Terry]

I don't know which would be more dangerous, being a race driver, or tow truck driver........ change your tyre on the side of the race track .....

It was a different era, these cars were relatively slow. The film of them going thru Griffins bend is sped up. You'll also note the complete lack of roll cages & safety fences.

The rules stipulated that any work carried out on the car for the first half of the race (even in the pits) had to be carried out by the driver using only the tools supplied in the factory tool kit in the boot. This included changing tyres anywhere on the track.

From memory, they still had tow trucks on the track during full race conditions up to around 1984 (pre-group A)

There were no deaths or even serious injuries in Bathurst Series Prod racing back then.

From memory there has been only one death during a Bathurst 500/1000 (caused by collision) in the entire history of the race (Mike Burgmann 1986). AFAIK Denny Hulme's death (1992) was due to heart attack at the wheel. The most serious injury that I can remember from the days though, was John Keran who broke his leg, hitting the Armco head-on in MacPhillamy Park in an XU-1 around 1972.

Dr Terry

[Bigfella237]

Yep, I was there in '86... the last year that Conrod Straight was actually straight... damn do-gooders

[Potta]

Watching this gave me an insight into how the car industry and the motor racing industry used to support each other for mutual benefit. If you look at Toyota as an example, they finished 2nd and 3rd in their class which would have been great for sales but also great for the country because those cars had to be made or at least assembled here to race.

It is no wonder that the car industry is leaving Australia because that mutually beneficial relationship ended long ago.

[Bigfella237]

It all comes down to the cost of labour in this country (and other western countries too), for one Aussie wage you can employ ten Koreans or Chinese, I'm not being racist, it's just the truth.

 

It's always been like that, just look at all the migrants who went straight into work in our factories, I've even heard stories of GMH and Ford signing up factory workers here in Australia straight off the boat before they even got off the docks!

 

It's just that everything is becoming more global, there's no longer an Australian Car Market because it's just too insignificant on the world scale, as with any business, the only way to specialize is to charge more for your product, but there's too many alternatives now.

 

Sure there always were imported alternatives but their prices were always artificially inflated by tariffs and the like so the Australian manufacturers could compete, if not for that then Holden and Ford would have gone the way of Chrysler Australia decades ago and we'd all be driving around in rice-burners.

[Dr Terry]

That Craig, and the sheer number of car makers that sell cars here....   when it was mainly Holden, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Mazda, Nissin, Honda, Volkswagon, Fiat, Renault, Citroen .....  Jeeezus ... that wrecks my argument....  I was gonna say something about the fact that there are more car manufactures in Australia now than there were then.....  but when you finish the list with BMW, Mercedes , Lotus, Leyland, Alfa........  well it doesn't seem to really matter about Hyundi, Kia, Cherry, and others coming here........  or does it?? ........   

I'm not quite getting your point, but many younger people don't realise how many car brands were actually built in Australia in the 60s.

 

Everyone knows about Holden, Ford, Chrysler (Mitsubishi), Nissan (Datsun) & Leyland but did you know that M/Benz, VW, Citroen, Studebaker, Rambler, Peugeot, Renault, Triumph, Chev, Pontiac, Vauxhall, Morris, Austin, MG, Wolesley, Dodge, Plymounth, De Soto, Hillman, Singer, Humber, Commer, Bedford, Standard etc. etc. were all made here.

 

Hard to believe, isn't it ? I'm sure I've missed a few.

 

Dr Terry

[Dr Terry]

PS Dr Terry, just how old are you??

Young enough to still be working, but old enough to know better.

 

Seriously though, I'm 62 next month. I've been working in the automotive game for my entire adult life & it has changed considerably.

 

I think what has changed car buying habits, is that the cars themselves are so cheap & well equipped now, relative to wages. So much so, that most families have 2 or more cars. They are usually an SUV & a small hatchback. If you have a family where the grown-up kids still live at home, there are often 4 or 5 cars to one household. I live in a dead-end street in a very middle class Sydney suburb (Ryde) & every house has a front yard which has turned into a parking lot. Australia now has the highest car ownership rate (per capita) in the world. We have over 16 million registered vehicles for a population of around 24 million & remember that's only 'registered' cars. What about all of those race cars or unfinished projects hiding away in sheds. The total number of cars in Australia must be enormous. 

 

I remember in the 50s & 60s many families got by without any car at all, & any with more than 1 car, were considered very rich.

 

If you want a real culture shock, have a read of a Wheels or Modern Motor magazine from that era. Most articles were concerned with DIY servicing & things like access to spare wheels or how difficult the jack was to use. When they did a road test they spoke about how wide the doors opened or how hard it was to get a large box into the boot. My favourite was the windscreen wiper sweep test, where they sprinkled baby powder onto the windscreen, then let the wipers sweep once to illustrate how brand A's wipers gave better vision than brand B's.

 

Today's motoring scribes are far too concerned with style & gadgets, to be concerned with the mechanics of the car itself.

 

Getting back on topic, I remember watching the early Bathurst 500s as a high school kid & the interest from everybody in the general public was much higher than it is today. Back then it was like a football grand final. The following Monday & Tuesday newspapers were full of adverts & stories of every facet of the race was spoken about in detail. We still had heros, like the Geoghegans, Bruce McPhee, Bob Jane & Bo Seton etc. but the cars were more important than the drivers.

 

Dr Terry

[Dr Terry]

Driving habits have changed a bit too. My dad was a tradie & usually had a ute or panel van & in our family were 5 kids.

 

When we went out, 1 kid sat between mum & dad on the front (bench) seat & the other 4 sat in the back. If we had a van, that meant on a mattress in the back. If it was a ute, we sat 4 abreast, just behind the rear window, with our heads protruding out of the tonneau cover. Which was a bit ordinary on cold or rainy days.

 

Can you imagine doing that today, it's not even legal, is it ? 

 

Dr Terry