Photo 169 and 176 are very familiar and memory envoking, The Corvette is how Tony Roberts and myself got to know each other. Tony arrived down my driveway in Bucklands Beach driving the ugliest custom corvette I had ever seen . He wanted to find out how to make it go fast and handle for under a 100 dollars. Mate, I said you don't have the money to do what I want to do to it, so we joined forces and have been scheming together ever since. The cars construction actually began with a bit of friendly banter with Alan Cattle , who helped me occasionally with my fibre glass 308 GTB Ferrari. I was in his shop one day and he and several other fine persons were working on fitting some huge brakes on Stu McCondachs 308. I stupidly asked how much they were worth and to my horror was advised that they were close on $40K. To which I replied I could build a Corvette for that , that would blow its doors off. Alan years later confided in me that he agreed with me but couldn't at the time. And so the Corvette became a reality. Built on a shoestring Tony even sold his birthday present barbeque to buy the Holley carb we needed. The car was a winner from the word go. The first American sportscar to break into the TACCOC scene. We beat the Porkers up on a regular basis. Every race was filmed from almost the same spot in the stands that the photo was taken. We studied the tapes to find our strengths and weaknesses and worked only on minor mods. 10K per year budget resulted in 2 T&C Championships 42 wins from 56 or so starts only a couple of dnf's. Owen and Bill threw a fortune at their Lighting Direct program and still we kept in front. Only when racing Ray put the big turbos on did we realise the end was near The Corvette started out doing 1.14's and we developed it to down to 1.05 dead just with gear ratio changes aero and other minor work. Didn't touch the engine for 3 seasons.
Of course Tonys a bloody good driver as well ...that helped. My wife called it the FRC.