A run with the Gawler Club

Today was come and try day at Collingrove Hillclimb. The Gawler Car Club organised a run to the hill. We met at the Gawler TAFE car park and were all given a map and running sheet and we travelled to Collingrove via Sandy Creek, Cockatoo Valley, Williamstown, Springton and Eden Valley, over some very nice roads and through some really good countryside. The club boasts a wide variety of cars and motorbikes and there was quite an array of them today including this Kestrel clubman. Don't be fooled by the Lotus badges, this is the very first of a number of Kestrels built by Greg Mobbs and still appears to be exactly as it was made in about 1974, even down to the Globe wheels. If the owner was thinking about historic rego I'd put my hand up to vouch for it, as would Smeetsy, I reckon (he once owned it as he has with most interesting sports cars in South Australia). It's even got the same old Weber sticking out of the right hand side of the bonnet.

I bet you all thought the Commodore came out in 1979. Well, this is a 1949 Commodore, a Hudson in fact. We travelled behind it for much of the way and it has a reasonable turn of speed. From behind, it looks just like a Mark 10 Jag but by the time Jaguar came out with the Mark 10, Hudson were well and truly finished with the shape.

The little Zeta was there again, it goes to everything. The unoccupied seats came out for the parade run up the hill, they get serious, some of these people. Or maybe it needed all the weight loss it could get. When we were young, Josie Gale had one down in Kingston and one of its features was the ability to whip the seats out in a flash. There's a lady in Blackwood who uses a similar Zeta regularly so they're still around.

This one has a speeding fine proudly displayed in the back window.

I'm fairly keen on the old Model A Ford. I wish I still had some photos of my old A Model mud plugger with the overhead valve conversion. Anyway, the lady that owns this one has done some pretty heavy duty trips around the country which probably accounts for the mesh grille over the radiator and the 1932 wheels which would make life easier.