what do u think about the LJ Torana

[SlickHolden]

A little LJ with a HFV6 would be a nice mix. Short rack steering would be a welcome addition resulting in a pretty impressive Rally (tarmac) car with fairly good balance. I thought an LS anything would be a bit heavy in the nose of a little torry (LJ anyway)

I know a guy that wants to stick a alloytech 190 into his VN.

[thekrakin_7]

holdens suck

[Rockefella]

holdens suck

The door is to your right. Feel free to leave.

[SlickHolden]

The door is to your right. Feel free to leave.

hahahahaha

[nota]

A little LJ with a HFV6 would be a nice mix. Short rack steering would be a welcome addition resulting in a pretty impressive Rally (tarmac) car with fairly good balance. I thought an LS anything would be a bit heavy in the nose of a little torry (LJ anyway)

As many would know, the LJ Torana was slated to get Holden's 308cid V8 as a factory fitment in the stilborn 1972 Torana XU-2 model, which in fact received production approval from Holden before it was canned at literally the last minute

Here's what the XU-2's designer Harry Firth of HDT fame had to say in AMC magazine Issue # 9, about excess weight via the inclusion of the all-iron 308, which is presumably a fair bit heavier than the all-alloy LS2

(unfortunately no scanner so you guys miss out on the great pics and I'll have to type out the bastard .. gasp!)

Harry Firth:
"..the XU-2 [HDT-built LC, 1st proto] was fired up & first driven on the road on Christmas Day, 1971 after six weeks of work. Immediately the car felt much better than the six-cylinder version, especially in terms of the weight over the front axle, because the V8 engine was shorter and mounted lower and further back than the six. The front to rear weight distribution ratio was much better than the XU-1 and overall the car only weighed 50 lbs (22 kg) more than the six-cylinder car"

nb: XU-2 vehicle weight approx 2480lbs (1122kg)

_________________


Ian Tate on performance (quoted from AMC mag)
(HDT's chief mechanic, who built the original proto and in 1972 had use of one of the three Holden-built LJ-V8 prototypes .. a pink one! .. for use as a road car)

"I thought I'd better have a go while I had it, because we all knew this was a bit of history being made at the time. That thing was a serious weapon. It didn't have any vices as a road car. It was just sensational. The engine in the pink car was a 308 with about 250hp (186kw). It would idle so smoothly at the lights you could barely hear the thing running and you just accelerated away, in top gear most places. It was so light

"I never got to test that pink car on the strip but I built a V8 LJ Torana to exactly the same specifications for a young guy who used to compete at the street drags out at Calder and he used to do 12.9s - 13 secs every run on street tyres [nb: 6" x 13" wheels]. He was only ever beaten to 100mph (160km/h) by one car which was a '56 Chev with a supercharged big block in it"

_______________

AMC # 9: Interview with Perkins
"Six times Bathurst winner Larry Perkins is one of many Aussie racing greats who cut his teeth at HDT under Harry Firth. Before jetting off to Europe to start his rapid climb to Formula One, the 22 year old was heavily involved in the XU-1 V8 program which included some memorable long haul testing.

Larry Perkins:
"I drove the very first Holden V8 Torana in the world. I was working for Harry Firth as a mechanic in 1972 and we had the job of jamming this V8 in one, which we did. I asked Harry if I could drive it home when we got it finished. I said 'come on Harry, I've done all the hard work' so he let me drive it home. I remember doing some enormously stupid speed up the street I was living in so yeah, I know all about that car

LP, re high-speed road testing in the race proto between racetracks, Melbourne-Bathurst & Melbourne-Adelaide:
"I don't remember the Bathurst trip in much detail, although I do remember holding it flat for a long way out near West Wyalong. I also remember doing the same on the way to Adelaide between Nhill (Vic) and Bordertown (SA). I ran it absolutely flat out for a long stretch and it was going like buggery

"It had plenty of mumbo. That was back in the days of miles per hour and I can remember I kept looking down (at the speed readout) and thinking geez, this thing's doing more than 150mph! Harry left that side of the development (high-speed road testing) of the car up to me so I had to draw up my own boundaries and I extended them right to the edge. It was no trouble winding her right out and it felt fantastic. I'll never forget it

"It was such a small car and such a light car. That's why it could easily achieve such high speeds. There was nothing to it in terms of frontal area."

_____________

Harry on Larry:
"Larry was pulled over by the police just outside Ballarat in Victoria where they clocked him at 130 mph having just driven from Melbourne to Adelaide [500 miles one-way?], raced the car and driven it back again. Luckily the cops were members of the Police Motor Sports Club of which I was a patron. They let him go ..

"Larry was given the task of driving it to Bathurst for the Easter meeting. This was back in the days when there was no open road speed limits and although I told him to take it easy I was well aware that he would not do as instructed. However this was a blessing in disguise as I could never have told him to take it out and hold it at 7,000 rpm in top gear on a public highway - in a car which had no compliace plate or proper registration and an illegal motor that didn't meet ADRs (Australian Design Rules)!

"However I believe he did just that wherever the road allowed him to, so for around 30 miles (50 km) he held it at top speed out near West Wyalong in NSW which was a pretty fair test. I know this for a fact because, unknown to him, I was following in at 125 mph in my 'special' GTS Monaro and he was pulling away far into the distance at what must have been 160 mph (250 km/h) plus!

"I remind you that the LC prototype's engine was just a normally assembled 308ci V8 with proposed XU-2 parts [approx 290 hp) and not balanced (other than a separate clutch check) which was driven on the road and the track for a period of nine months from February to October 1972. This included high speed road testing like Larry was doing, plus the 200 miles (320km) covered at Easter Bathurst in actual racing conditions [easily won its Sports Sedan race on road-spec tyres!] where it achieved 7,000 rpm in top gear pulling a 2.78 diff on Conrod Straight - which equates to just under 170 mph (272 km/h).

"Not being blueprinted or with anything special in the internals, I limited the drivers to 6,000 rpm at that meeting for most of the time, even though Tony Roberts exceeded 7,000 rpm in top on the 2.78 diff ratio when driving in practice!

"Frank Kilfoyle also did a rally test in the car. In rally conditions it produced 130 mph plus (210 km/h) in 3rd gear on dirt roads.

"As produced for public sale, the car would have done 0-145 mph (230 km/h) in top gear. You could start in top gear easily and it returned up to 30 mpg on strict highway cruising. We would have limited the performance of the production car (ie showroom version) with valve lifters and ignition points which bounced at around 5,000 rpm. Even so, it still did 145 mph in this trim and could do 0-100 mph (160 km/h) and stop again in around 20 seconds. It would have been a hell of a car."

[Cyco]

What a great read.

Thanks nota

[crisis]

LS1 edit
I like todays V8's they can be powerful but smooth enough for mum and wife to drive around without giving them whiplash.
Take yesterdays cars My cousins 308 was rumbling over the place.

He actually teaches engine management at TAFE. I don’t think they got that software though.

[2ndclasscitizen]

That thing would've been awesome!!!!!!

(Oh, and tons of people do 308 swaps these days, it doesn't appear that hard from what I've read, and the Ecotec is a popular swap, especially the s/c version)

[caz_375]

I guess that one of the good things to come out of the whole 'Super car' scare of the 70's was the eventual formation of HDT followed by HSV and later FPV.

Had there been no media beat-up, Holden and Ford would've continued with their own in-house programs and would've been much more susceptible to the media and it's sensationalism.

Perhaps we wouldn't have gotten the wonderful performance cars that the likes of HDT, HSV and FPV have been able to produce. Having these performance workshops seperate from the parent company provided autonomy and kept the press off the backs of Holden and Ford.

The XU2 and the Phase IV were many things.... victim of the press, a cause for our local manufacturers to take a closer look at safety, and catalyst in creating the HDT's HSV's and FPV's of this country. Quite a legacy.

[fpv_gtho]

I dare say we'd have a situation like in America where Ford or Chev offer a 400hp performance car onto the market for $40K and people complain about how expensive it is.

[2ndclasscitizen]

I guess that one of the good things to come out of the whole 'Super car' scare of the 70's was the eventual formation of HDT followed by HSV and later FPV.

Had there been no media beat-up, Holden and Ford would've continued with their own in-house programs and would've been much more susceptible to the media and it's sensationalism.

Perhaps we wouldn't have gotten the wonderful performance cars that the likes of HDT, HSV and FPV have been able to produce. Having these performance workshops seperate from the parent company provided autonomy and kept the press off the backs of Holden and Ford.

The XU2 and the Phase IV were many things.... victim of the press, a cause for our local manufacturers to take a closer look at safety, and catalyst in creating the HDT's HSV's and FPV's of this country. Quite a legacy.

Yeah, good points about HDT/HSV/FPV, but you never what could have happened if the XU-2, Phase IV and the mega-Charger (whose model name temporairly escapes me) had've been built, and the effect they may have had on racing here. There's many things that could be different in Australian motoring.

[nota]

I guess that one of the good things to come out of the whole 'Super car' scare of the 70's was the eventual formation of HDT followed by HSV and later FPV.

Err not wishing to sound overly aggressive, but .. by 1968 Holden already had HDRT (Holden Dealer Race Team) which was Holden's tactic to circumvent GM's worldwide race-ban edict. HRDT was renamed HDT when Harry Firth took it over by 1969, to great future success. HDT was financed covertly through Holden's advertising budget, as I presume was HRDT

Before Firth's switch to Holden, he ran Ford's factory race team through 1968. That outfit was called FSV (Ford Special Vehicles) which was located adjacent to the Ford factory at Broadmeadow and wound up in 1973. Btw Firth's connection with Ford racing goes back (at least) to them contracting him to design then build all Cortina GT-500s in Firth's own workshop, and race one in 1965

Had there been no media beat-up, Holden and Ford would've continued with their own in-house programs and would've been much more susceptible to the media and it's sensationalism.

Well Holden DID continue with their own in-house program and Bathurst 'Specials' via HDT right through until 1986, until HDT imploded and was replaced by HSV. Witness the Torana L34 and later A9X then Brock-HDT Commodores. Meanwhile Ford produced the famous Falcon Cobra

Had there been no media beat-up I can't see either Holden or Ford being more vulnerable, as no media beat-up means no public sensationalism

Perhaps we wouldn't have gotten the wonderful performance cars that the likes of HDT, HSV and FPV have been able to produce. Having these performance workshops seperate from the parent company provided autonomy and kept the press off the backs of Holden and Ford.

HDT & FSV were effectively owned & financed by their corporate masters. HSV and FPV also have undeniable factory connections, both financial, corporate and engineering.

The XU2 and the Phase IV were many things.... victim of the press, a cause for our local manufacturers to take a closer look at safety, and catalyst in creating the HDT's HSV's and FPV's of this country. Quite a legacy.

The resultant cars generated by Series-Production racing from HDT & FSV, and later Touring Car racing formula, gave us a more 'balls & all' type of high-performance road vehicle than the later, more sanitised HSV & FPV products, imo

[knighty]

Yeah, good points about HDT/HSV/FPV, but you never what could have happened if the XU-2, Phase IV and the mega-Charger (whose model name temporairly escapes me) had've been built, and the effect they may have had on racing here. There's many things that could be different in Australian motoring.

funnily enough, it was only the (dubbed) xu2 that diddn't come off the ranks, chryslers e55 was bolloxed up into a luxo tourer, using the 318 heads (not 2.02" j port heads) 318 cam, auto and an exhaust like a drinking straw,
the phase 4 Technically diddn't appear although an xa coupe of a different name (whose model name temporairly escapes me) with all the go fast bits of the phase 4 howeber did come off the production line,

leave it with me, i'll get the name.

[knighty]

and as for the lill torries, they are great fun, comming from a died in the wool chrysler man.
i saved this little lc gtr from being parted out on ebay, later did some research

low and behold, that little six pulled 179kw @ the wheels before having the 2" su's fitted!! i diddn't think it at all bad for a 1014kg car,

good fun.

knighty.

[2ndclasscitizen]

funnily enough, it was only the (dubbed) xu2 that diddn't come off the ranks, chryslers e55 was bolloxed up into a luxo tourer, using the 318 heads (not 2.02" j port heads) 318 cam, auto and an exhaust like a drinking straw,
the phase 4 Technically diddn't appear although an xa coupe of a different name (whose model name temporairly escapes me) with all the go fast bits of the phase 4 howeber did come off the production line,

leave it with me, i'll get the name.

IIRC the high-spec Charger was going to be a big V8 with some nice big Webers, but yeah you're right, it didn't end up being the follow up to the previous R/Ts. There were actually 4 Phase 4s made as well, that went to various places/people.