The Peter Hanna Collection - Part 1

[Steve Holmes]

Kicking off here with a very early shot of the Spinner Black/Rod Coppins Camaro during the 1968/69 season, prior to its cigarette sponsorship. The grid shot shows, from left, Rod Coppins (ex Pete Geoghegan Mustang), Paul Fahey, Red Dawson on the front row, with Norm Beechey in his Nova in behind Dawson. Whats interesting about this is that Beechey appeared with a Camaro in 1968, which was his replacement for the Nova, so why was he back racing the Nova again here?

#141 is John Riley in the ex-Geoghegan/Coppins Mustang, and, finally, Leo Leonard and Jack Nazer battle during the 1975/76 season. These two rubbed panels on several occasions this season.

[GD66]

What's interesting about this is that Beechey appeared with a Camaro in 1968, which was his replacement for the Nova, so why was he back racing the Nova again here?

May have been racing the Camaro in a late-season meeting in Australia, and sent the Nova on by boat to make the race deadline easily.
But what's much more likely is that his appearance at the previous December '67 meeting in the Nova in its' black Neptune livery introduced the crowd to the spectacle of not just a tough race driver in action, but the emergence of an actual motorsport showman, with a larger-than-life persona, an energetic, happy, positive bloke who drove with glee, sliding and wrestling the previously-unseen Nova to victory at their first attempt at an International event in Bay Park's inaugural year. I would think when the time came to get Stormin' Norm Beechey back again, the Nova would have been the first-requested accessory !

[Milan Fistonic]

Spencer 'Spinner' Black was driving a Falcon GTHO, numbered 93 and sponsored by E. W. Tappenden & Sons Ltd at the April 11, 1971 meeting at Bay Park.

[Steve Holmes]

Jim Richards and the Sidchrome Mustang.