FJ Holden's

[hotrodaccountant1929]

I have always loved the early holden customs of the '60's; and I reckon this was one of the best...

[spoggie]

Ditto. I saw a pair cruisin' slow, one red, one blue, like this, in Warnambool, 1970-1. That rear end styling was oft- copied. I do not have the skills/ tools to do similar work to my FJ.
Dig the ZX's & Chromed wide 5's. Better to go easy on the loud pedal. Hard to beleive how we used to drive these cars .

[FCCOOL]

As has been said elsewhere, I think November 27th 2013 will become a Historic day for the ASRF as it's the day we FINALLY got rid of the devisive and unproductive descrimination against chassis deficient customs. I am proud to have been involved in drafting the wording for the new class and playing a role in the long campaign for this change.

Despite your pride, your prejudice is also showing in this statement.

The vehicles in question are not "Chassis deficient" or in any other way "deficient" they simply have the chassis integrated into the body structure to make them lighter and in many cases stronger!

Thus, the correct non prejudicial term remains 'unibody', or 'monocoque' construction and it seems tho the rules have changed, there's still a ways to go before everybody accepts them as equals.

equals?
Australia called for a car big enough to cart a family of 6 without sacrificing both performance or fuel economy, it also had to be tough enough for our conditions. monocoque technology was the weapon that GM used to build a superior car, not a equal car!

[FCCOOL]

Great!!!!!!........now I should be able to get my 1940 Dodge Hotrod into the Holden Nationals................DAMN........back into the corner I go.............andyd

there already is a hotrod display at the nsw all holden day, not sure about the others.

[324dor]

[quote="Andyd"]Great!!!!!!........now I should be able to get my 1940 Dodge Hotrod into the Holden Nationals................DAMN........back into the corner I go.............andyd[/quote]

Quote FCCOOL.there already is a hotrod display at the nsw all holden day, not sure about the others.[/quote]

Back to your corner Andy old mate.

Ken.

[GlenC]

Speaking from experience... let's see how my memory is holding out...

There were 2 quite distinct 'camps' in the mid 60's when I left high school and bought my first car, a $20 1941 Willys sedan.

There were the 'hot rodders' and the 'Holden guys' and the 2 got on quite well, even formed 'rod and custom' clubs, but the 2 different sorts of vehicles didn't mix that well. When the ASRF was first formed, (1967?) a member of the new federation came to a meeting of our newly formed club, The Phantoms' in Campsie and basically read us the rules...

Holdens were out of the equation, they had a bad reputation as 'revhead' cars driven by pimply teenagers with a skinful of booze, and associating them with 'real' hotrods in any way could end up with the rods being banned from the street. So Holdens of any type were banned from being part of the new Streetrod Federation. As the hotrod boys all tended to be older, even then, I can see where they were coming from. The rod boys all tended to be 'rockers' while a lot of the Holden boys were 'surfies' etc. A real generational thing, and I know, because I was right in the middle of it, turning 17 in 1965.

OK, so most of my car mates had Holdens, FJ's mostly, a couple of smart FC's, and a few of the 'new' EH's, but NO FB-EK's at all. They were heavy, they were ugly, they definitely weren't at all cool. The FJ's ranged from mild to radical custom, the FC's were stock, heavily lowered with side pipes etc. and the EH's were stock bodied but heavily modified under the bonnet. One of the Phantom cars was the first EH at Castlereagh with a 186 block in it, it came out of a Sydney HR taxi that was totalled with about 200 miles on the clock. We also put a 260 SBF in an FJ, and a brand new 327 Chev 'crate' motor from Holden 's brand new HK production run in an EH, now that thing WENT!

The club also had hotrods, but mostly under construction. We also ran a D/A altered Fiat topolino coupe at Castlereagh with a red hot grey motor in it, we all went drag racing in those days, and the best of our cars were the Holdens...

Now if I could just convince my ex to part with our slide collection from that era... It's only been 37 years since we split...

Cheers, Glen.

[spoggie]

That sounds a lot like Adelaide, though I'm perhaps a wee bit young (punk rock). Yep, FB-EK-EJ were the nerdy Holdens, the lemons.. the wankers I hung around would buy 'em for $10 & thrash 'em, leave 'em burnin' at the kerb.

[Carps]

Pretty close to my recollection of life in the sixties however I was still only a school kid.

The way I understand it unfolding was due to tension between racers and traditional hot rodders.

The drag racing cars were getting faster and more modern equipment was being used and as drag racing grew at an increasingly rapid pace. The hot rods kinda got pushed into the background as they hadn't kept pace with the sport they had spawned and I guess that really bugged a few of those guys.

Eventually there was a split and the hot rodders drew up their rules in a way to ensure the newer cars were excluded. Of course American cars were cool no matter how old or new, so the rules were written in such a way as to exclude only the Australian cars. If you wanted to participate in hot rodding with a late model unibody Yank, the rules were conveniently overlooked. In fact if you had a neat Holden or anything else, most of the members didn't care one way or the other and even when the first Street Rod Nationals came around, there were a whole bunch of early Holdens present and nobody really cared one way or the other. It wasn't until the Nat's got to Albury that the organisers got finicky and told the Holden owners to bugger off. At most of the indoor shows there would have been Holdens and Hot Rods in close to equal numbers plus a bunch of race cars, because many hot rodders were also racing, but with more competitive machines and their hot rods had been relegated back to street duty. I always figured that Customs were written into the rules in ther way they were because without them, most of the indoor shows would not have had enough entrants or cars of enough interest to the wider population to draw a decent crowd.

The Holdens to have in my day were FX, FJ, FE and FC, For the reasons stated above FBs and EKs were a non event, althoug there were a couple of nice ones on the scene and of course they were accepted or not as the case may be. Interstingly, even among the Holden crowd, the Humpies were somewhat orphaned as they were more the shape of hot rods or Noddy Cars thasn cool later models street machines.

I recall Daryl Wither's car was something of an enigma, being an EK yet it used to scoop the show pools because it was so well built and incredibly detailed. Because of cars like this the rules were changed and the only way it coul be accepted as a custom was to undergo some major modification, which Daryl did and the car continued on it's winning way.

As for Hot Rods at other events, I recall more than once at MG car club T register (the T register guys are to the MG movement, like the hard core gotta have a chassis, Pre 48 folks in hot rodding) early morning runs where some of us participated driving our FJ Holdens or Hot Rods (I think even Old Col may have joined in for one or two). Likewise, I recall hot rods participating at their Annual Concours D'Elegance and Gymkahnas. Hot Rods were always welcome at The original Street Machine Nationals and when we drafted the rules for VThe Street Machine Association in the late '70s, we went to great poains to NOT exclude hot rods, in fact they were treated as equals with the Street Machines, the 'rules' simply defined which was which, pretty much by way of production date, we didn't use the word chassis, because we didn't consider it important. In the overall scheme of things, a car was a car, no more, no less, simple as that.

[gasser dave]

Hi Carp's. You mentioned Daryl withers ek. Last I heard it was buried deep in a shed, it would be good if someone could convince him to uncover it.

[customfc]

The Wither's EK was at the All Holden Day this year.

Regards
Alex

[spoggie]

Holy Tutenkhamen! Cheers all round..

FJ's were starting to thin out by the mid-seventies as suburban daily drivers/ hacks for the common people . You still saw the FC & later models clogging car parks though.

[gasser dave]

Thanks Alex. It still looks good today. Cheers Dave

[pvcerod]

Wish I still had it

[King Willy]

Cheers customfc, I remember reading about the Withers car in Hot Holdens and Customs. Newsprint paper was never really good at getting the pictures across, now seeing it in colour, WOW!!.
Also, I may be mistaken as it has been a while but I think the Kris Bates Humpy was inside a cover on one of those mags, a glossy B&W picture.

Cheers
Andrew

[nomadawhat]

I recall Daryl Wither's car was something of an enigma, being an EK yet it used to scoop the show pools because it was so well built and incredibly detailed. Because of cars like this the rules were changed and the only way it coul be accepted as a custom was to undergo some major modification, which Daryl did and the car continued on it's winning way.

I seem to recall Norm Darwin's Monaro was a big part of the classification changes. He modified a HT into a HG (or vice versa) and made mild custom, and then the rule book was changed to give more points towards changes needing body modifications, rather than bolting on parts from another that just happen to fit - and Norm worked at Holden at the time.
And on the subject of Wither's EK, I saw it cruising in Cranbourne yesterday.

Cheers, Des