History
I purchased this car new in December 1987, and 290,000km’s later she’s still with me.
Memories
I bought this car new in 1987, at the then princely sum of $24,792.00. At 22 years of age at the time and with interest rates at an insane 18% I really was signing my life away, but what a car to sign your life away on. Working in Brisbane, but having family in Adelaide meant this car was in for a lot of km’s and by the time it was 5 years old we’d clocked up 145,000km’s together. Unlimited speed runs taking the long way to Brisbane from Adelaide via Tennant Creek was a highlight, though the road to Mt Isa back then certainly was not. I’m also sure the Warwick Highway Patrol still has this car on it’s Top 10 Most Wanted list, so much so that I completely avoid the town to this day. In countless trips back and forth, yet more to Sydney and back, and even the odd trip to Cooktown (before the road was paved) it has never let me down badly enough to need a tow. Worst was probably the high beam fuse frying itself one night coming into Gilgandra. I’m sure the driver of the car I followed without lights for 50km still has nightmares. It’s had it’s silly modifications over the years but luckily I seem to have worked out early on that there was always someone faster so I always favoured reliability. She was repainted in 1991 as the factory paint was looking pretty ordinary even at that early stage, but it was well worth doing as that same paint still scrubs up pretty well today. How it didn’t kill me, and how I didn’t kill it is still a mystery but 30 years of ownership, and 290,000km’s, later she’s now on South Australian Historic registration and gets a cushy little run every couple of months. We even managed to make it back to a show at the original Holden dealership for our 30th anniversary. There haven’t been many constants in the last 30 years, but this car is one of them and it really feels like coming home every time I sit in her.
