He used it until 12/3/1964 when he traded it with our local Ford dealer on a 100E Anglia (bit of a stepdown!). The next series of owners, most of whom can be tracked down today, were Tony Hetherington (of local Eden Hills), Peter Tietzel ( who named his garage LASOS MOTORS after the vehicle and fitted a most unique and totally useless twin pipe exhaust system with the muffler box sitting on the rear parcel shelf inches from the driver - since removed). Peter Smeets, who seems to have owned most of the historic racing cars in Adelaide at some stage, then bought the car and rebuilt it, using it in Historic Racing until passing it on to John Hoskin, where once again it was used for HR until John Price bought it and never used it. Myles Lockett bought the car from John on 31/3/1987 and used it mainly for road work (which he reports was great fun) and a few hillclimbs at Collingrove. Myles then moved to Sydney, taking the car with him and I know it made an appearance at Amaroo and at Eastern Creek in his hands. I recall him advertising it for urgent sale a number of years ago and from there I have no idea where it went. It had a Holden grey motor with triple SUs, MGTC gearbox, Skoda rear end and a tubular chassis with large backbone. Like the Bolwell Mark 4, both the front and rear bodywork can be removed for easy access.Has everybody seen the article written by Trevor Fay about the world's greatest barn find that puts the legendary Portugese one to shame? I noticed a list of vehicles on an American website and it includes a Lasos. I wasn't even aware that this was a "discovery" because the owner of the 297 vehicles is in the same car club that I am in.
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Tony Hetherington was a mate of mine [best man, all that sort of thing] and he bought the Lasos from the Ford dealer. The car itself used a complete Skoda chassis: a tubular backbone with a front fork frame and a couple of outriggers. The diff was bolted to the back of the tube, and used a pair of swinging arms mounted on the diff housing. The rear spring was a transverse leaf attached by shackles at the outer end. For the Lasos, the front forks were extended to accommodate the grey Holden motor & TC gearbox, and the tubular backbone was shortened substantially. Look at a Lotus Elan chassis & you'll get the idea of the layout. Front suspension was a lower transverse leaf spring with upper wishbone that activated the Skoda lever shockabsorbers. A Morris Minor rack provided steering, but it was offset to clear the RH fork of the frame, so it always had a bump steer problem. Front & rear leaf springs were the original Skoda springs with a substantial number of leaves removed to reduce the rate, and reset to get a suitable ride height.
For Tony's 21 birthday he was given a set of Cinturatos on a set of my spare Skoda wheels that were cut down & re-rimmed to 13 inch.
The Skoda front shockers were single acting, and while Tony was working over summer vacation at SA Brewing he made a set of mounts to relocate the upper inner pivot using the layout concocted from Racing & Sports Car Chassis Design, the design bible of the day. We're talking 1965 here.... Triumph TR3 front shockabsorbers completed the front end rebuild. Tony spent hours filing the front wishbones, a lovely bit of the forger's art, and polishing them before they were chromed. Looked lovely when it was finished.
Lasos had no doors, and so to race as a sports car a couple of doors were fabricated. The side exhaust was a work of art: sand filled tube bent with an oxy torch and a substantial side mounted muffler with 2 in / 2 out pipes. Looked great, but bloody dangerous as I learned when I touched the muffler [during alighting] with my leg. I have the scar today, 50 years later.
Tony raced Lasos at Mallalla, and won a handicap race, only to have the win taken because he lapped under the bogey time for the car based on his practice time when we were having a terrible time with dirty fuel. The TC gearbox was well known for jumping out of gear, and Lasos had this in spades, so had to be held in gear through the corners. This limited the driver's ability to control the beast.... We all cheered ourselves stupid at the time, of course.
Lasos fell into disuse as the gang of us married & had more important matters for what little funds any of us had, and sat at Eden Hills for many years. I nearly bought it from Tony, who was by then based in Canberra, but didn't, to my occasional regret.
With its 13 inch wheels, Lasos was really undergeared, and so had amazing acceleration. Nothing on the road could touch it: E-types were a favourite fare, and it wasn't until years later our mutual mate Rob Butcher's Bolwell went faster...
After Myles sold the Lasos the new owner pulled it apart and fitted cortina running gear and holden front end to make it a more reliable hill climb racer,i believe it was never finished off.
By John Hosking, former owner - May 2024
It was love at first sight when I first saw the LASOS in Peter Smeets' garage sometime in the late 70s and bought it on the spot. I'd previously done some historic racing in a Triumph TR3A and had the bug well and truly at that stage. Not only did the LASOS look great, in my (untutored) opinion at least I felt the engine/chassis/body design and execution were terrific. It was very nicely crafted, the attractive dash layout incorporating Jag instruments and impressive aircraft style rows of toggle switches, one of which one could use to disable the brake lights to bamboozle one's racing competitors! As a bonus, mine was road registered as a "Holden Tourer" so for a while it became my daily driver - and yes, because of its insanely low gearing was lightning off the mark, able to hose off even some of the early Japanese multi cylinder bikes of the day. Its forte was hillclimbing and at one stage I briefly held a class record at Collingrove in it. With dreams of becoming a HR class champion, I started messing around with it and thanks to a relationship with the late great Garrie Cooper of Elfin sports car fame, got him to replace the lever action shocks at the back with adjustable telescopic jobs, as well as adding an upper torsion cable joining the rear swing axles to prevent them folding under and producing chronic oversteer. After liberal layers of dove grey paint to mask the modern modifications and still get my steed past scrutineering as authentically historic, I next tackled the engine department - deciding to replace the original pretty good Holden grey motor with a full house triple SUd grey motor from local speedway ace Dean Qualman. He said it produced 190hp at the flywheel and when asked what the rev limit was, laconically replied from beneath his Elvis style quiff that "if you can get past 6-thousand quickly it doesn't really matter" - the issue being often catastrophic results from harmonic vibration emanating from the grey motor's 4 bearing crank. I remember pulling 7K in it once. Anyway, it went like a bloody rocket. Sadly I lost it going through the off-camber entry to the bowl at Adelaide International Raceway, hit a concrete wall and that was that. So, a couple of questions: (1) where is she now and (2) was LASOS really an acronym for Like a Shower of Shit? Great car.
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