And now for something completely different....

I'm rather partial to utes. How about this one. It's a Chev ute and it's a 2006 model. I reckon it looks great. It belongs to a couple in the Chevrolet Club of NSW. They bought it in America and drove around over there in it. Now it's over here and being converted to RHD. What a beauty, running boards and all.

Spycam

First photos ladies and gentleman. The next model Clemente.

More details as they come to hand.

Datsun powered Mark 7.

After yesterday's post about the 4-cylinder Bolwell, a couple more photos of the same car have arrived. One was taken by Henry Stork and one by Peter Garvin, both of whom attended the 1989 Easter at Perth. By this time it was turbocharged and Peter thought it was owned by Ray Julian's brother.

Hillman Hunter 770 dash

Here's the Hillman Hunter dash in the TR4 Mark 7. See comment in previous post. Looks classy don't you think?

The 4-cylinder Mark 7.

We've had a 4-cylinder Nagari which was pretty unusual but I reckon a 4-cylinder Mark 7 is just as unusual. Here's one. Datsun powered of course. We all know about how quick Datsun 1600s and Datsun 2000s were, so this was a pretty reasonable choice really. It was the car that Rob Wilson's younger brother built. Bolwells were a big part of life in the Wilson family and included the Mark 5, the Mark 7 and the Nagari. This photo goes back to when the car was being built. It was completed and later both Wilson brothers moved to Western Australia. I presume it is still over there somewhere.

The Ron Hossack Mark 7.

With Darren Hossack in town for the Sports Sedan Championship round at Mallala this weekend I'm prompted to show you some photos of the Mark 7 his dad, Ron, built. Actually Darren is going to be very busy as he's contesting the Superkart races as well as the Sports Sedan races, he's the current National Champion in both categories. In Sports Sedans, he's driving the John Gourlay Audi A4 and no it's not the old SuperBolwell chassis. This car is a new one built in 2007 - 6-litre Chev and Hewland transaxle. There's a couple of Saabs there this weekend and one of them is equipped with a Ford 9" diff which sounds more like the remnants of an old chassis, but even the Dean Randle Saab Aero was built by him and is not a collection of old bits. Actually Sports Sedans are becoming pretty big-deal again these days, with lots of powerful cars, mainly Chev powered, but there's the odd V12 as well. I see Charlie Senese is running the Honda Prelude that was built in SA by Elfin Sports Cars. The association has an excellent website and I've put it in the link list. They have a great forum with lots of activity and I enjoyed seeing the references to Trump Engineering, Brian Randall's rotary powered Karmann Ghia, MacCormack's Charger and Jag etc. etc.

Anyway, it is Ron's Mark 7 that we're talking about here. Ron is an engineer and it shows. He has been, and possibly still is, involved in the construction of the Gourlay Sports Sedans. I have heard that he built his Bolwell on a tight budget, "investing mostly in his own labour." The wheels - steel rims and hubcaps.Note the body mods and how well executed they were. The exterior door handles were push buttons on the C pillar, to reduce weight in the doors. The interior releases were on the console (very TVR as Pete Garvin says). The window glass actually fully drops into the door cavity, the flat glass travels in an arc away from the door frame on its journey into the door. I can't explain it but it is a thing of beauty to witness I'm told.

Ron also did his own upholstery.

Interestingly, both the Mark 7s flanking the car are now convertibles and have been sold interstate. The yellow one (previously purple with pearl steering wheel - featured in Custom Rodder No.4) is Colin Moffitt's old one and is now in SA and undergoing a major rebuild in Wynn Vale and the red one is Allan Cox's old car and now lives in NSW.

Weismann GT

What about this Weismann. They're made in Germany. They are either V8 or V10 powered and come only in 6-speed manual form. There are coupes and roadsters. There must be a few around . There are quite a few different ones in Google photos and they are also cropping up on Exotic Spotter. The European GT championship races have one for a safety car and another one for a lead car.

A couple of nice Ikaras.

Just thought I'd share these before I stick them in my Ikara album. They're from the Henry Stork collection. The yellow one is at Calder. Must be the previous owner. It's still got all of its nose. The black one was at the McLaren Vale Easter event.

More Maclurkin/Edwards

Ranald didn't run the sports for long at all. It was new to the track when this skirmish with Charlie's Corvette occurred in October 1974. 2 months later he'd sold it to Alan in pristine condition because he was going overseas.

MacLurkin/Edwards sports again

I forgot to mention in the previous post that Ranald made this roadster from a coupe, the soft tops being in their infancy. Ross McConnell, who was working at Bolwell, remembers taking a wrecked coupe body to the tip and being followed by Ranald but can't remember any other details. Jim Shanahan also worked at Bolwell then and he remembers the body was from a Canberra car that was rebodied. That was not unusual, there were quite a few Nagaris that went to ACT, quite a few that were driven hard, quite a few wiped out and quite a few that went back to the factory for repairs or replacement. A lot of those Canberra Nagari guys hung around Reliance Rotary, a Rotor and Rally oriented workshop over there. A few good stories could come out of Reliance too one day, but I'm off the subject again. No-one's sure where the chassis came from but some of the "insiders" have thought it could have been possible that "Bolwell or Linley may have supplied an extra chassis for cash"! Gary Allen lives near Ranald, maybe he's heard a bit about the history of this beaut car.
Anyway, as you can see from the following two little snippets, Ranald sold the car to Alan in the very first part of 1974.

Peter Garvin has provided these two following ads in Auto Action where Alan was offering the car for sale in 1978 but he must have thought better of it because he was still keenly racing it 3 years later.

Finally, here's an article from the motoring section of The Age where Chris De Fraga took the car for a spin at Calder in 1978.

The Alan Edwards Nagari, where is it now?

Alan Edwards came on to the Nagari racing scene pretty early in the piece. Not as early as Ranald or Peter Warren or Steve Webb perhaps, but pretty early nevertheless. His car was, like John's, previously owned by Ranald. I remember Ranald's son (not Ranald the 2nd) saying somewhere (might have been at the Mk.10 launch) that his dad noticed a Nagari body on a trailer on its way to the tip and he followed it and acquired it and subsequently turned it into a racecar. I wonder if this is the one. I'm fairly sure that the car was built from bits, i.e. no factory history. (Please pick me up on this, Rohan, if I'm wrong.) Anyway, it was a beauty and always seemed to perform quite well. I seem to recall Alan with a Datsun 2000 as well prior to the Bolwell. This photo below was taken at Calder in its early days in its red white and blue livery.And this one is of Alan leading Barry Main and John Gourlay at AIR on the approach to the reverse camber.

The following three photos show a couple of later colour schemes.

I must say I have Alan to thank for supplying me with one of those Nagari front spoilers from which we took a mould which turned out to be rather useful over the years. Most of the Nagari race cars have ended up becoming road cars in some way or other. I have never heard that this happened with Alan's racer. He may still have it for all I know.

Gourlay Nagari No.2

The second car was new from the ground up on a brand new space frame chassis. This is it below in its black, red and yellow Lillydale panels livery. For a while it was purple and yellow with sponsorship from Goodies Speed Shop. Almost as soon as it was finished, ProdSports as a National championship ended.The car had a brief life as a Super Sports but that wasn't the intention when it was built. By about 1984,85 I think it all got a bit too hard. These 4 photos of the car were at a Victorian club show and tell in 1984 when Ric Kemp managed to borrow it and turned up with it on a trailer.

John Bowe got to drive Bernie Van Elsen's Veskanda. I would love to have seen him line up in Bernie's Bolwell after the K & A treatment against John (Gourlay) in the black SuperBolwell. Anyway, the body was removed and the car became the Mike Imrie Saab Sports Sedan. Later, Keith Rilstone rolled his Nagari at Collingrove and bought John's body as a replacement. After cutting off the flares, they changed their mind and pieced the old body back together. The unused body is still in SA and has a new owner who has another chassis and is building it into a road car. Peter Garvin has already mentioned previously that Darren Hossack drove the Saab for John and he is the son of Ron Hossack and I mention it again because later I would like to show you the fantastic Mark 7 that Ron built. What a tight little web of intrigue!