Sunday, May 13, 2012

B8/85

When I look at this photograph on the front page of the March Slipstream I keep thinking what a credit it is to present owner Greg Merritt and Alan Harmer before him and Brett Lewis before that as well as prior owners Tony Opie, Allan Hanns, Bob Wilson (yes, Gary, the same Rob Wilson who raced your car) and Colin McAskill. The original owner, Mrs. Marshall, was very proud of her gold coupe. Unfortunately her youngest son, 16 and unlicenced, took the car for a high speed spin one night, sliding sideways at 240 kph into a pole, hitting it in a standard Nagari's most vulnerable spot.
Colin bought the wreck and after a brief interlude in Melbourne, it arrived in Adelaide accompanied by sufficient bits of the rolled Canon car to piece the body back together. The car was progressively rebuilt during that Colin, Bob, Allan and Tony part of its life. This was also the car that broke the chains and jumped off the rollers at Darlington Auto Tune and left the building through the back wall.

3 comments:

Paul Ewins said...

Usually when a fatality occurs the car is not repairable and is written off. With a Bolly you can repair (well, replace would be more accurate) almost anything so there would be a few cars getting around that have had serious accidents. I wonder how many other cars are out there that have already claimed a life.

Graeme said...

I remember reading about this crash at the time. A number of people felt that the speedo needle jammed at 240km/hr proved nothing with regard to the speed of the car. The actual speed was thought to have been substantially lower. Having driven the Double Bay bends numerous times in a Cooper S, I'm inclined to agree.
Regardless, a very tragic event.

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