MX2

What a great little car the MX2 is going to be. Not due out until 2012 but all the forums and salons feature it. I read where the styling is influenced by

last year's Furai concept car so I went looking for that and WOW!

B8/43

This was a coupe I had for a fair while, selling it only because a much later one came up, which I'll also tell you about , probably later in the week. I was going to make this a "where is it now" post but I know the answers because I've checked. The car was built in 1973, the colour was Vermillion Fire, with black trim and black dash and was fitted with the familiar 302 V8. Extras when I bought it included twin exhaust, a front air dam, an Airporte glass sunroof and the nose piece had the two extra holes on either side of the opening into which I inserted spotlights at one stage. The dodgy bit was the tubular sleeves over the broken bits of the original wishbones.

I don't know if he was the original owner but Philip Williams of Bairnsdale (100 miles the other side of Melbourne) sold the car to a Morwell car dealer (K.W. Motors) in March 1981 for $9000 with a slightly noisy third gear. In May of that year, Donald Till of Strathalbyn SA paid the dealer $10,000 for it. "Strath" is a fair way South of Adelaide and is actually where our Macclesfield stage in the Classic Adelaide finishes. It was Don who I bought the car from. It wasn't long before the front spoiler had to go. It and spoon drains just didn't see eye to eye.

When the other car came up I wasn't able to sell B8/43 straight away so we had two coupes for a while which put a bit of a strain on finances and relationships but we're a resilient bunch. Eventually John Arcus, in WA bought it. I have a feeling John lives in Indonesia now. Anyway, John had a big prang in it and that was that. Greg Wigger, who has another Nagari coupe bought the wreck. That was ages ago. I have heard that nothing further has happened but I have also heard that Greg intends to rebuild both Nagaris as a retirement project, one day when he retires obviously.

Bloody bushfires!

Since the Victorian bushfires I've been wondering how the Bolwell population fared, knowing there was reasonable representation in that area going back to the very original Mark 7 building days. Early Bolwells seemed to strike a chord with people working in the brown coal and electricity generation industry for some reason. I didn't hear any negative reports and began to relax a bit but then this morning I read Rick's report in the latest Slipstream. Both Frank Rushton and John Szabo lost their Mark 7s and the sheds they were in , and John lost his whole house. That's terrible news. Both these guys built their Bolwells in the very early days of the Mark 7 and retained them ever since. How must they feel? A bit like Tony Opie, as you know he lost his trusty Mark 7 and a Mark 5 in a South Australian bushfire a season or two earlier.
Below is the Rushton Mark 7 as I remember it, competing at Calder in the Six-hour as part of one of the Bolwell Club teams.

And here is John's Mark 7, same team, same time. Behind is John and the legendary mid-engined, 289 powered Transit van.Here is the same car at an Easter event at Mt. Gambier, complete with the board rack which was bolted through the roof.

I am very sad to have heard this news.

Where is it now?.....No.10

These photos were taken quite a few years back in a back yard in Broken Hill, so long ago that I can't really recall who was responsible for them - probably Colin who has a very uncanny knack of sussing out these rather remote gems. The car is a very early Mark 7 with the early tail treatment and early dash, ribbed floor and certainly pre the stamping of chassis numbers.

Not only would it be good to find out what has happened to it but also to ascertain its previous history. I must catch up with some of my old Broken Hill friends because, not only is there this car, there's also the Mark 5 that disappeared into Broken Hill that we have been discussing not all that long ago.

The recession hasn't hit Abu Dhabi yet.

These 3 photos turned up in my emails yesterday with the comment "No wonder oil is so expensive." The car is "a Mercedes Benz owned by an Abu Dhabi oil billionaire festures the newly developed V10 quad turbo with 1,600 horsepower and 2800nm of torque, 0-100km/h in less than 2 secs, 1/4 mile in 6.89 secs running on biofuel.
That's not stainless steel, it's white gold.

"IN" joke number 1

WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR FROM THIS MAN?

B8/62 to B7/357S

In the previous post I posed the question - what happened to the original Nagari body and if you check the comments part at the bottom of the post you will see that Jim has answered that - it is mounted on a Mark 7 chassis. If I were naive I should now ask - "what was wrong with the old body?" but I didn't spend all of those years getting that accounting diploma for nothing. Anyway, the original body was married to a Mark 7 space frame chassis, the car being built by Drew Hunter and subsequently sold to John Egglestone of Echuca. It carries the very authentic looking chassis number B7/357S. I presume the "S" stands for "sports". The photo below is from the Henry Stork collection and was taken at a Show & Tell, year unknown. It's certainly a smart looking unit. In the May 2002 edition of Slipstream Victoria, John placed the following ad - For sale - Nagari convertible, space frame chassis, Leyland P76 4.4 ltr V8, Celica 5-speed, 3.08 diff, Holden front end, modified Meteor dash, 1990 restoration, $16,000. The car was bought by Gary Williamson and went to NSW.

Peter G reckons "Jim's question is very relevant, what happened to the original 7 body and chassis, for that matter I suspect a lot of chassis' were destroyed in the 80's when replaced with space frames."

Where is it now?.......No.9

This is B8/62 and was once owned by John Katona. This photo was taken by Henry at a Show & Tell after it was rebodied. It turned up briefly at the Bairnsdale Easter, still in John's hands and still with the stickers. Some time later there was a comprehensive article on the car in Unique Cars. As a result of the article, it sold via that magazine for $75,000. Everybody was amazed at that extraordinary figure. These days it's no longer amazing. I haven't heard of it since then. The other question is....whatever happened to the original body? At least I know what has happened to all the 260Z bonnet vents.

GP Dino Replica

Remember the photos Peter sent me from Seaforth in the 80s? This is the last of them. It is Sam Johnson's (JWF) Ferrari Dino Replica which is so authentic in appearance that the handmade fibreglass body is complete with fake rivets. Sam must still have it because when I was talking to him recently, I asked him what Milano stuff he still had and he said that all he had to play around with these days is the Dino replica. Ned McGovern obviously has the Milano moulds. He's the one who makes the bits to keep them on the track. Incidentally, all you Milano owners, Ned has a couple of pairs of new headlight covers if anybody needs them.

More on the yellow Mark 7

From Peter has come a follow-up to an earlier post today.
"Thought I might provide a bit more information about the car and the roofline. The roof was raised about 25mm at the B pillar. The floor was lowered 25mm under the seats. This work was done by Richard prior to my purchasing the car. The seats are 928 Porsche and were gutted and custom fitted to me by the upholsterer to be as low to the floor as possible. I really needed the room. With a helmet on my head still touches the roof.

On the basis of your before and after photos I thought I might include 2 of the interior as well as a profile shot. By the way it's the same steering wheel in both shots.

Also thanks for the help with registration as the car has passed and is now registered."

I was wondering about the rego. I'm glad that part is out of the way. Doesn't time fly. Jane and I were up in Brisbane when Richard was doing the alterations to the roofline. He's a very tall man. That was about 10 years ago now. Makes me think I'd better get cracking on my cars. They won't be much use to me in Resthaven.

Car cleaning products

Not being an Amway person, it's taken me 18 years to discover this page of their catalog. Have all of the collectors of everything Bolwell got this one? Already the car has been identified as B8/73 which is the red one at the head of these pages.

The Kordic Mark 7 V8

Following the previous post, Peter sent me this photo of his completed car. The suspension problems were sorted prior to to the Cootha Classic. However, a bearing went in the diff and wasn't able to be replaced in time. "Believe it or not the diff was the only thing I did not completely rebuild as we did the car. Murphy's law I guess. Still sorting through a lot of minor bugs though."
I think the finished car looks magnificent don't you? The revised roof line is evident but also looks good. Below is a photo of the same car taken before Peter bought it. It was taken by a Queensland dairy farmer, "Elgindale", a Flickr friend who posted it for a while in the "Australian Specials" group. "Elgindale" and I seem to share an interest in windmills, Chamberlain tractors and old International trucks among other things. He's heavily into Peugeots. He took the Bolwell photo at a field day. The Prolube sticker and the number plate leaves no doubt who the owner was at the time.

For further clues, if you need them, are evident in this little display that accompanied the car.