Issue 59

MUSCLE NEWS

Paul Gover chats to GM styling chief Mike Simcoe about the Holden Hurricane’s place in automotive design history and checks out Ford’s aggressive new FGII and 2013 Mustang. Meanwhile, AMC’s other news hounds dig up the latest heritage-flavoured racing news. Did you know HRT offered The Enforcer a job 22 years ago?

MUSCLE NEWS

This issue readers: recall their memories of Chargers, Brickies and Rusty French; farewell a pair motor racing’s characters; help solve some muscle car mysteries; and give us stick over last issue’s Ford V8 news story.

COLUMNS

AMC has added a guest column to those of regulars Paul Stubber and John Bowe. Our first guest columnist is Muscle Car Event’s Todd Martin, who undertook a 4300km trek to Toranafest in a dealer-delivered SS Turbo Hatch. Crazy stuff! Meantime, Stubber recalls a Group N tourer’s ramraid on an Albany shop and JB rewinds 10 years to his days driving the CAT Falcon.

CLASSIC SCENE

The first of four 10th birthday stories in this special edition. Paul Newby examines how the classic muscle car scene has changed over AMC’s first decade. We also revalue those ‘affordable’ $20,000 Bathurst supercars we nominated back in issue #1. Better take a Bex and lie down.

FAVOURITES

Birthday yarn number two. We ask 15 muscle car tragics to name their favourite racecars and stories from the mag – and to nominate which Aussie road car most changed the local performance car landscape.

NEW CARS

In birthday story No.3, Paul Gover examines how the performance end of the new car market evolved over AMC’s first decade. Former FPV chief David Flint has some typically forthright views.

MOTORSPORT

Our final 10th anniversary story looks at how the motorsport scene has changed since AMC first hit the newsstands. Back in early 2002 ‘Triple Eight’, for most Aussie petrolheads, was the name of a restaurant which served Beef in Black Bean Sauce and Special Fried Rice.

SPORTS SEDAN

William Dale, in his first contribution, tells the extraordinary story of Peter Fowler and Bryan Thomson’s radial Mercedes 450SLC Sports Sedan. It’s a story of perseverance, race engineering innovation, town pride, and a marketing scheme that promised the world and delivered an atlas.

MUSCLE MAN

Australia’s foremost automotive cartoonist John Stoneham shows he’s just as adept as an interviewer as he is with his crayons. Stonie caught up with his friend Win Percy, who opens up on working for Tom Walkinshaw and their first trips to Bathurst.

HELL DRIVERS

We know how much readers love James Cockington’s stories on the quirkier aspects of Australian automotive history and popular culture. So here’s a story about visiting ‘international’ showmen and women who performed a range of stunning… sorry, a
range cunning stunts.

MUSCLE SPORT

Our quickfire review of the 2011 Touring Car Masters season. It was another year of phenomenal growth for the retro muscle car series.

BARN-FIND

Everyone loves a good barn-find and this one is a ripper. This XY GT spent a quarter-century awaiting its second life. Warning: it’s not a story for those enthusiasts who believe classic GTs should be in concourse condition.

GRICE VS BOND

James Cockington asks if Amaroo Park’s 1976 ATCC round was a turning point in Aussie touring car history. A day when an on-track stoush between Colin Bond and Allan Grice was labelled “a mechanical version of World Championship Wrestling.”

MODELS

In keeping with our 10th birthday edition theme, Bruce Moxon considers the biggest ‘mini’ developments over the last decade.

OUT OF ACTION

If there was an automotive version of DOCS, former owners of some of the cars on these pages would be in serious trouble.

MIA

Last edition we wondered if the company car driven by an advertising agency executive after he created the ‘Hey Charger’ campaign still existed. Courtesy of its loving owners, we present Jack’s black Charger.