The Belly of the Beast

“I reckon there’s so much fighting and trouble over (Series Production) cars we ought to think seriously of turning to Sport Sedans,” HDT boss Harry Firth told Racing Car News editor Max Stahl in 1972.
Twelve months on and this photo appeared in the July 1973 edition of the same magazine. It’s the interior of the then just-completed Holden Dealer Team Repco V8-powered LJ Torana XU-1 sports sedan (Firth called it ‘The Beast II’) and this shot shows how wild a ride it must have been for team drivers Colin Bond and Peter Brock, chasing the big bucks on offer during sports sedan racing’s boom period.
The mid-mounted, fuel-injected Repco-Holden Formula 5000 V8 engine was supplied and maintained by Repco (for the full story of this remarkable home-grown racing engine check the latest issue of Australian MUSCLE CAR - with Fred Gibson's Road and Track Falcon ute on the cover). It punched out 490 bhp and, as Firth put it: “Repco horsepower is good-oh, because if it’s no good we just give it back.”

This car was built purely to get the job done, with scant regard for spit and polish. HDT drivers Bond and Brock both readily raced it despite its primitive engineering, agricultural presentation and minimal driver protection (let’s hope Harry at least gave them free earplugs).
With such a potent power-to-weight ratio, though, it still proved quite competitive in Peter’s and Colin’s skilled hands, which were able to largely compensate for any shortcomings in the car’s handling - of which there were many!
Bond drove The Beast II to victory at the 1973 Bathurst Easter meeting. And, as demonstrated back at the 2009 Muscle Car Masters, HDT boss Peter Champion has built a working replica of this significant ‘factory’ car.
The rough-and ready nature of the Torana's mid-engine V8 conversion shows why the wily Firth was often described as a 'bush mechanic'. It couldn't have contrasted more starkly with the beautifully presented Holden Dealer Team Sports Sedan which later replaced the Beast II, the LH Torana SL/R 5000 (also with mid-mounted Repco-Holden F5000 V8 power - more than likely the same engine that powered Beast II). That car had almost no input from Firth and was designed and built in Sydney by its driver Colin Bond and noted openwheeler chassis engineer Henry Nehrybecki.