Fast that’s Past – Malcolm Ramsay’s HQ 4-door


When Holden racers everywhere chose the Monaro, Malcolm Ramsay’s sponsors said “We sell Kingswoods – that’s what we’ll race!”

The introduction of the HQ model Holden came at a time when General Motors-Holdens had swung the competitive side of their image away from the bigger cars. They were racing and rallying Torana GTR XU-1s and the bigger cars were filling another role in their marketing strategies.

Of course, there was a need for them to be considered. While the Toranas could go head to head with the Falcon GT HOs at most circuits in races for unmodified cars, in the Improved Touring category there were Mustangs and Camaros to contend with.

But the HQ was quite a change from previous models in an important way. The location and springing of the rear axle was no longer the simple old leaf spring arrangement, but now it had coils and four trailing arms. And lateral location came from the angling of the shorter top arms inwards to their anchoring point beneath the rear seat.

So development would be along different lines, something to daunt the ones who wanted to upgrade to the General’s latest product.

That didn’t stop them altogether, though. Bob Jane had his Southern Motors dealership selling Holdens and was racing a Camaro. The HQ Monaro offered the 350 Chev engine and more or less everything else that a Camaro had. That being so, he set out to develop a Monaro so that it would better reflect the cars his salesmen were putting before the customers on the showroom floor.

In Adelaide there was a team that was fielding a wide range of cars. The amalgamation of City Motors and State Motors had created City-State Motors, the biggest Holden dealers in South Australia.

Malcolm Ramsay and John Walker were running Elfins and then fielded a Torana under their banner, racing all over the country and achieving more than just a modicum of success. Radio station 5AD gave additional impetus to the sponsorship package.

In 1971 Malcolm put a proposal to City-State to expand their budget to include a V8 Touring Car, offering to build a Monaro 350.

“They told me that the Monaro was only a small part of their sales, that they sold lots of Kingswoods and that’s what they wanted to race,” Ramsay recalls.

This put a whole different slant on the proposal. Instead of going the well-established route with the very well-developed 350 Chev, they were limited to the 308 Holden V8. Little else was affected, however, and they were to smile a little when they found that the 4-door body weighed in about 32kg lighter than the Monaro’s 2-door.

The people behind the car were many. Malcolm’s father, Aub, had been a speedway racer many years before and was a part of the team, but the principal ingredient was the suspension design work done by Tony Alcock.

Malcolm had got to know Tony well when he was having a car built at Elfin a year or two earlier. Tony was building the Niel Allen Elfin ME5 at the same time and they often discussed their ideas together.

Later, Malcolm had wanted Elfin to build him a monocoque racer and found Garrie Cooper reluctant. Tony had gone to Sydney with Allen’s team, and then built the first Birrana Formula Ford their, but was enticed back to Adelaide by Malcolm’s offer to have him build a monocoque F2 car and set up a production facility to market them.

City-State were funding this effort too, so Alcock and his wife returned to Adelaide and set to work, Birrana becoming a partnership between Ramsay and Alcock.

So while Birrana was becoming more firmly established, Tony drew up a tubular double wishbone front suspension and then attacked the rear suspension. Like the Bob Jane team did later, he fabricated new links to replace the original rear axle trailing arms, using spherical bearings throughout the suspension. Armstrong adjustable dampers were fitted.

At the same time, the issue of the power unit was being resolved. Repco were asked to supply one of their F5000 engines, but with the underbonnet space limitations it had to have different inlet trumpets for the fuel injection. It was the only Repco F5000 engine built with these curved trumpets.

While the engine was smaller, Repco had managed to create a very torquey power unit, so although it might have lacked some top end power compared to the 350s it was not lacking in the mid range at all.

Malcolm considers it had plenty of power. “We had 530bhp when we got it, then we gave it to Peter Molloy and it came back with 550bhp.”

The body was further lightened, as well as being seam-welded to improve rigidity. At the time, Peter Brock told me that going this route was smart because of the weight and also because the body was more rigid than the coupe with its wider doors.

With the power taken care of, the next thing was the brakes. 4-spot Girling calipers were fitted to the front end and the backing plates of the rear drums liberally drilled for ventilation.

“The Archilles heel of the car was its brakes,” Malcolm remembers, “the rear brakes never lasted.”

The rules of the time insisted on these cars retaining the original mechanical parts, though modifications could be allowed. Hence the gearbox was as supplied from GM-H.

There were many changes made, however. The boot was loaded down with a 16 gallon (72 litre) fuel tank packed in above the rear axle, a collector tank for the pump to send the fuel to the fuel injection, the dry sump tank and lines and the battery.

Inside the cabin there was an alloy roll cage made by Bond Roll Bars and attached to the floor and rear deck behind the back seat – no thought of using the cage to strengthen the car at all. The driver’s seat was from a then-new LJ Torana XU-1 and there were additional instruments to inform the driver of vital functions.

Under the rear floor ahead of the axle they fitted an oil cooler for the differential, the flow of oil being pushed along by an electric pump.

Wheels were 10” x 15” ROH mags, which required a neat bit of flaring of the mudguards both front and rear. The front guards were also modified to allow quick removal so that the crew could more readily get in to service the engine and suspension.

Though John Walker was a regular driver of the team’s XU-1, this car was to be for Malcolm to drive. He tested it at Adelaide International Raceway in January, 1972, where problems with the fuel injection pressure led to tests being abandoned.

They had proved, however, that the car was inherently ‘right’ and that only minor sorting and finishing would have it race ready. Ahead of the team lay a programme of events that included all rounds of the Australian Touring Car Championship.

But first there was the supporting races at the Sandown Park Tasman Cup meeting, two eight lappers that saw the car spin on the first lap and scatter the field. A charge back through the field ensued, enlivening proceedings after Moffat had crashed. In the second of these Malcolm ran just off the pace to fill fourth spot.

The following week at Adelaide there was a win from the back of the grid, brake problems having slowed the car in practice and threatened to force its withdrawal from an event that was obviously important in the shaking down of the car for the longer title races. The second race saw the car third with the engine off song, the shaking down was producing results.

For the third weekend in a row the car turned out at Symmons Plains for the title opener. But not in time for practice, the transporter blowing a head gasket en route! Starting from a lowly grid position, then, the car did well to finish third, a lap down on Allan Moffat and Bob Jane.

A break of a fortnight in this heavy schedule must have been most welcome. Calder’s second round saw the car sitting pretty for fourth on the grid until Rushford’s Escort pipped its time. In the race, however, it was to chase Norm Beechey’s Monaro and Pete Geoghegan’s ‘Super Falcon’ before various travails among the opposition left the HQ in second spot, again a lap down, but this time on Jane.

Acknowledging the sponsor’s need for local exposure, Malcolm won two races at the ASCC Adelaide meeting in April, setting a new Touring Car record as he went.

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