Be There!

It's the test of the best, the cast of the fast, it's the field that won't yield... it's the pavement at Liverpool Speedway - Be There!

Story: James Cockington

In the winter of 1974 the management of Sydney’s Liverpool Raceway made a brave decision. They felt that their small quarter-mile oval track would work a lot better if it was covered with a smooth layer of bitumen.

The speedway was paved in time for the 1974/75 summer season and caused a sensation. Speeds were dramatically faster (by about 30 percent) and a new generation of lightweight production sedans were built for this new style of racing, largely based around current Australian muscle cars. A feature race including 18 V8 sedans flying around a small oval track under lights was just about the best entertainment in town.

New stars were born overnight, including ‘motormouth’ Bruce Maxwell in his XB Falcon Coupe, Paul Ash in his mean LS Monaro and Brian Callaghan in his supercharged Torana. These muscle cars, looking like something out of Mad Max, had as much personality as their muscle drivers. It was Maxwell who once stood on the podium after a tough race holding the door panel of one of his rivals, ripped off the car after some typically spirited action and told the crowd how he’d blown his opponent’s doors off.

The racing was tough and tight, and body contact was inevitable. When teams of American drivers appeared to take on the locals promoter Mike Raymond could pack the joint with 20,000 fans. And if the touring cars were on at Oran Park that weekend, the likes of Moffat, Brock and Bond would be up in the stands with them.

The shame was how quickly this unique Australian concept died out. By the end of the decade most of those wonderful Australian-based sedans had disappeared, replaced by lightweight American kit cars that had a lot less appeal to spectators.

THE HDT SPEEDWAY SPECIAL.

There was even a HDT speedway sedan, well, sort of. When he was constructing a Torana SLR/5000 for the Liverpool pavement Australian champion Peter Crick (‘The Camden Cowboy”) was invited over to the Holden Dealer Team HQ in Melbourne to “take any spare bits he liked”. This included the five-litre fuel-injected V8 which powered Crick’s lookalike HDT Torana during its brief racing life. It was an absolute gem but Crick retired his production based car when he realised that it had no hope of beating the new breed of lightweight spaceframe kit cars.