Lost Race Cars

[Go Slideways]

Ok, I'm on a roll here, so I'll keep going. In the early 1970s, when Jim Richards still lived in New Zealand and was taking just about any drive offered to him, he did quite a bit of speedway and rallying. Those helping his career along were Jim Carney and Jerry Clayton. Clayton would later supply the 302 Boss Mustang he and Murray Bunn would build into the Sidchrome Mustang, but prior to that, had a speedway saloon built from an HQ Holden Monaro, which, at the time, would have been a near new car. From what I can tell, the Monaro sported a couple of different paint schemes, including one for Sidchrome Tools, as pictured.



Richards raced the Monaro out of Waikaraka Park, though I don't know how much travelling he would have done with the car to other tracks.

It would eventually be sold to Palmerston North racer Bill Dorn, who did just about everything in speedway, including Stockcars and Modifieds. All Dorns race cars were painted up like large American flags, and the Monaro was the same. He raced the car during the 70s, when it was sold to another Palmy racer. It was eventually retired, but I'm quite certain, later re-appeared as a Streetstock, painted black, when Streetstock racing was introduced to Palmerston North speedway in the late '80s/early '90s.



Most Streetstocks end up getting crushed, as they're eventually no good for anything else. Was this the case with the old Jim Richards Sidchrome Monaro?

I'm pretty sure that the Monaro was originally raced by Ian Easton before Jim Richards, but I'll check. I do know that Jac Jac was the first one to put stars on it, and during the election period he ran the "Vote National" slogan because it was fairly easy for farmers to tell the tax man that Monaro's and associated costs were in fact tractors lol.

This photo is from Ian Easton's personal collection.




I think that the car was originally a tarmac race car from brand new but was crashed while driving it from Levin circuit to Auckland at Tokoroa, and then converted to a speedway car.