B8/81

Here's another little potted history of a Nagari sports especially for Jim White, the current owner. I lost track of the car for a while when it spent some time over the border but I'll tell you what I know and other readers can fill in the gaps. I've had a number of Nagaris in past years and this one will always be my favourite and silly as this sounds, it gives me a warm feeling knowing it's in good hands with Jim, who, incidentally, has now owned it longer than anybody, some 15 years, and it is firmly entrenched in the family forever. After rebuilding this car he needed a challenge and picked up an ex-SA coupe that I heard had been sitting in a swamp for years in Cairns and restored it beautifully. Later he decided that 2 Nagaris might be 1 too many and sold it for enough to buy a low mileage red NSX to join B8/81 and the Evo. Anyway, enough of that, back to the beginning. The car was purchased new from Bolwell Cars on 27th Feb. 1973 by Mrs. Beverley Bonython of Bellevue Heights. Jim Shanahan, who worked for Bolwell at the time, was reflecting recently on this car and others - he drove it over to South Australia to deliver it. What he was reflecting on was the differences in power outputs from the Ford Cleveland 302s straight out of the box. The Terry Spooner/Sally Matthews/Peter Garvin B8/60 was the most powerful one he had found and this one (B8/81) was at the other end of the scale. The problems must have been sorted a year or so later when I bought it because it appeared more than adequate for my purposes. The Bolwell was a particular shade of orange as were all of Beverley's cars and she disposed of her orange MGB when this car turned up. She was very safety concious, hence the installation of the rollover bar, and always wore a crash helmet, insisting that her passenger wore one as well, on her interstate trips. It would have been the latter part of 1974 when I bought the car (maybe early 1975 - I know that Chris, my son, was 2 at the time and he was born in 1972). Beverley's husband, Jim, had an aviation company called Rossair, based at Parafield and I used to enjoy his stories about flying Mustangs in America. Apparently they have awesome horsepower and are not as precise as other planes and that sounded good to me. That's how I have liked my cars. "Brute strength and ignorance" some people call it. That feeling of teetering on the edge of controlability feels good. The Pantera was a bit like that and a Bolwell with big horsepower is good too. When I was in my late teens, after growing up on a diet of Austin 7s and Morris 8/40s, I was given a drive at Mallala in a Cadillac powered Allard. That must have been what did it. My dad was a Chev and Buick man and I followed him down that path, with a two-tone Vauxhall Vagabond in between. Anyway, talking about Mustangs as we were, I was lucky enough to have been at Parafield the day Langdon Badger started up his ex-Maralinga Mustang, that he had completely restored, for the first time. Well, you've never heard anything like it and the ground shook like there was an earthquake. It made me think that Americans must have built their planes like they built their hotrods. There's no such thing as too much horsepower. Langdon also restored a Spitfire and I'm sure they are similarly powered but on the ground they just don't seem to have that earth shattering presence. Now, when starting cars on the Macclesfield stage of the Classic Adelaide, that black Pantera, as it snakes off down the road, makes me think of that Mustang. The orange HQ Monaro has the same affect.
We were really talking about B8/81. Here's a photo of me competing in a sprint at A.I.R.

I must have had the car for a few years because today I discovered a photograph of it at the Hamilton Easter with a very pregnant wife posing on the bonnet. That dates it as 1976, the year Andrew was born. We enjoyed a number of interstate trips and the car always performed faultlessly.

B8/81 was finally passed on to Vern Leng, our local cop who was such a big man that he appeared to be twice the width of the narrow Nagari seats. Vern took it off the road to have Performance Engineering build a very rigid chassis for it. I have no idea where the old chassis went but they always go somewhere and this one was in pretty good shape. The very substantial chassis jig is still floating around Adelaide somewhere, I believe. When the car reappeared it had been repainted silver, a very tricky paint job that was a dark gunmetal grey that got lighter as you cast your eye down the body.

In about 1980-81 Vern became the owner of the blue Ikara no. B9/02 and the Nagari passed on to Robert Radman, another South Australian. I'm not sure how long Robert had the car but he sold it to Ross Carrington, in Victoria, another aviation person and a member of the Victorian club. Somewhere along the line it was repainted yet again, this time bright red. The next owner was Ron Siseley who sold it to Jim White in about 1993.

During the course of the restoration by Jim B8/81 became a dark metallic green and as you can see, it looks wonderful.
That's orange to silver to red to dark green. This is a very sketchy history but maybe Jim can add to it.