Crickie’s Quickie

In 1974 speedway champion Peter Crick started work on the one and only Holden Dealer Team L34 Torana speedway sedan. The car was not an official part of the HDT organisation but the project was certainly approved by HDT boss Harry Firth who, in what sounds like a revhead’s fantasy, invited Crick to bring a truck down to his West Melbourne headquarters and take any bits he wanted. This, in motorsport terms, was like being personally blessed by the Pope.

These were bits that had previously been fitted to the HDT team cars: 'all the old stuff they had sitting there in a pile’, remembers Crick casually. The inventory included a 308cid Holden V8 engine, SL/R 5000 headers, a gearbox and a complete HDT exhaust system, and various suspension components - which, as it turned out, Crick wouldn’t even use. He loaded up his truck and took it away. Crick says he wasn’t asked to pay.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite that simple, but Firth didn’t even object when the Crick car was painted in lookalike Marlboro colours, complete with HDT logo.