Email Tony

Sydney NSW Australia

Tony and his family's Car Affairs

I decided to write this account of the cars I've owned since I was sixteen and in the family but not including numerous Ford company cars over a 12 year period.

1970 THE MINI #1                            

When I grew up in the sixties in Adelaide I could only dream of owning a luxury car like a Buick. I was an apprentice Fitter & Turner on $15 a week and drove a 1964 850 Mini my mother handed down to me. I lovingly restored and hotted it up to Cooper standard in the first few years, doing anything I possibly could myself to stretch my money further and kept it for over six years. It went from British Racing Green and White roof, to Lime Green, to a bit of extra Yellow after a small bingle and finally to a Renault Green.
Mini's handled really well and went hard too but you can't beat the sound of a thumping V8 can you? An older guy called Kevin Johns (I was about 17) where I worked had chopped and channeled an EK Holden and dropped a Studebaker V8 in it and I was enthrawlled by the look and sound of this car. A few years earlier when I was selling newspapers on a corner, a chopped and channelled Ford Customline came flying round a corner lighting up the tyres and making a beautiful hot V8 sound and I knew it was time.

1972 THE CUSTOM V8 ZEPHYR

 
Car that inspired me->

My Dad had owned a 57 Ford Zephyr and I always liked the shape of it so I started looking for a car to chop up. I found one without a motor for $10 and started the job of chopping 6" out of the profile and 10" through the back doors and roof. I bought a whole Customline front end with the engine sitting in it for some ridiculous money and grafted the whole thing on to the Zephyr front end. I remember the guy just got his oxy torch out blew right through the chassis rails, exhaust, wiring and cables while we waited with a trailer.
He must have needed the money badly when I think back, to do that to a running car. It took on the shape of a T-Bird and I got it to the pre-paint and upholstering stage after bolting in later model seats and Aunger mags and then the  bureaucrats decided to change the laws for street legal cars, "the profile of the car could not be changed". After 12 months of work, that was the end of that project! It meant it would only ever be a show car and not drivable on the road so I totally lost interest in it. With nowhere to store it pressure to get it out of my Uncles yard, I sold it to a keen younger kid for $300, till his mother told him either the car goes or he goes with it so I got it back.
In the end I swapped it for a quality tension wrench with the guy that owned the chopped EK. I don't know what he ever did with it and I'll probably never find out.

1978 THE V8 TORANA

It didn't really bother me that much because I had met a great girl around that time who kept me amused and we got married in 1976, she got the Mini and in 1978 I bought a V8 LH Torana SL which had a 4.2 litre motor and that kept me happy for a while, then I didn't really worry about cars for the next 10 years because I worked for a photographic company who gave me a new company car to drive every few years and with building houses and having kids didn't really have the money. We sold the Torana in 1981 to build a house in fact. Oh well, other priorities take over don't they!

1989 THE TRIUMPH TR6

Pics Coming Soon

In 1989 I started my own direct marketing business and suddenly I didn't have a company car and could buy anything I could afford so I started looking around for an Austin Healey but found them to be out of my range. I wanted a gutzy rag top sports car and found out about a couple of guys who were restoring a Triumph TR6 they had imported from California. They were doing a great job and I neither had the space or time to do a restoration on anything so we negotiated a price and 12 months later, when it was finished I drove it away and enjoyed it for about 6 years.    Tried it as a daily driver for 3 months and really got sick of it because it was in the summer months and whoever thinks old English sports cars or any soft-top is great for Summer is sadly mistaken. Best time to drive these cars is Autumn or Spring or even in Winter with the heater on and the side windows up but NOT Summer.

1991 THE BMW #1

In about 1991, I also bought my first BMW (a daily driver with air) 1985 323i which was a very nice, tight, performance car. I was very impressed with the quality and engineering of these cars, compared with local makes.

1996 THE BMW #2

In 1996 got rid of the TR6 and the 323i and just bought a nice WHITE 325i 4 door manual BMW (sun roof made up for the soft top).

In May 2002 I had the 325i tweeked a bit by adding Hiop tuned length ss extractors, straight through Remus sports muffler, Hiop strut brace, Bilstein shocks all round and Eibach lowered springs. It's improved the handling tremendously and the performance improvement just with the exhaust mods is quite noticible. Will have a performance chip update and a K&N air filter in the next few months, which should be good for an extra 15Kw or so. Work on this car performed by Matthew Kane of BimmerTech Sydney

2002 THE MINI #2 (40 Years Old)

This was also about the time my son Dallas, was learning to drive and he started to share my wife's Commodore and I knew we needed another car for the family, otherwise there was going to be trouble. I started looking at little Jap cars and they didn't turn me on and then I started to think about my old Mini and the fun I had when I was about his age. It took a while and then we found a nice straight white 1962 850 Mini which had all Cooper S running gear, except the gearbox. It was reasonable to drive but there was a lot to be done to get it going and looking really nice and I wasn't on a lousy $15 per week any more so...
We did the full bare metal respray to brilliant yellow (not British racing green) and 731 cam, balance, rebore, S Gearbox, LCB extractors, 45m weber, lowered (raised again).

2000 DALLAS' 1969 BUICK RIVIERA (See his web site)
     It's now 2000 and Dallas was about to share the Mini with his sister Stacey, who was learning to drive. I could see trouble on the horizon again and suggested he should start seriously looking for his own car. He wanted something different, something big, something strong and he started buying Unique Cars magazine. We'd look and talk about the pros and cons of various cars and then I spotted a 1969 Buick Riviera advertised which reminded me of a car my Auntie in Canada once had which we saw in Xmas family photos sent to us, an Oldsmobile Toronado.
I also remember driving next to one in Sydney one day which I thought looked awesome, like a giant Monaro in some ways. Dallas had never seen one in his short life but liked the look of it and not being as popular as Chevys or Mustangs meant the price was more attractive and very unusual, which is what we both liked. We decided to make a day of it and with my wife included drove down to Nowra (3 hours south of Sydney) to take a look. Dallas was pretty wrapped in it and test drove it, talked to the guy at length about what he'd done to it and decided to buy it.
The price was very reasonable and it was dual fuel which I thought was pretty good to save money. Specs: Paint - Metallic, Audi Green with Black Interior Engine: 430 V8 motor and Turbo 400 gearbox, power steering, power seat, power windows, air conditioning and rally wheels. I helped Dallas do a bit of stuff on it and work out what essential repairs were required to make it reliable and you soon learn that it takes more money than you first think to get these 30+ year old tanks looking and going how you want. One area that these full size vehicles do not disappoint is the "Head-Turnability", would have to be 9 on a scale of 10 from young kids to old folk their eyes follow as you rumble past.

2001 MY 1966 BUICK RIVIERA (See full story and pics)

Well I fell in love with these big monsters of cars and after visiting the Wintersun Festival on the Gold Coast (a Nostalgic Hot Rods and Rock n Roll Festival) wanted to get behind the wheel of my own large American Car. I went back and looked in the very same Unique Cars magazine and found a 66 Riviera which I had never before seen in the flesh, advertised in Queensland. I started searching for information and pictures on the Internet and quickly grew to love the shape of this model. The 66 is the first of the shape and 69 is the last but the front fenders and hood of the 66 are something else. There's angles going everywhere to give it a really interesting reflections. A friend of mine Rick who has had American Fords for years lives in Queensland. He checked it out for me and he was happy. It was a sound car with no rust so Rick's word was good enough for me.
I negotiated a great price and decided not to go up and waste the money on an air fare but just have it shipped down. The transport company charged me double the going rate when I told them it was about 6m long. When it arrived on the truck it looked beautiful, the paint was good, the upholstery was good (bit bright) but tinting the windows has helped. The guy started it up to drive it off the truck and it sounded beautiful. I took delivery of it in July 2001 and it hadn't been driven for about 18 months so consequently it needed a bit of attention to mechanicals. Cosmetically I've had the bonnet resprayed after removing the centre chrome strip and the front springs reset 3cm lower and the Billet wheels and fat tyres put on and drop pipes behind the rear wheels. There was a box in the boot with old magazines and lots of receipts for repairs and parts from the US, plus the name and phone number or the original owners who actually restored the car in the mid nineties, this retired Queensland couple completely restored the car at a total cost of A$30,000. I't's extremely reliable now and we drove to Wintersun Festival 2002 on the June long weekend. (see pics) There weren't too many Buicks there and mine was the only 66 Riviera and that's the nice thing about Buicks. They've got a heap of luxury appointments, a ton of grunt, good looks and they're rare as the proverbial rocking horse shit. Now you can't say that about Mustangs or Chevs can you?

Specs: Paint - Ford Metallic, Everglade Green with White leather grain upholstery. SP Turbo 400 gearbox, power steering, power seat, power windows, air conditioning. Engine: 425 V8 340bhp @ 4400rpm, 465 lb-ft @ 2800rpm. Performance:0-60 in 8.6 sec, 1/4 mile in 16.4 sec @ 84 mph, not bad for a car which weighs in at over 4000 lbs.(2.1 tonne)

2002 BARBARA'S CHRYSLER PT CRUISER

And not to be outdone, my wife Barbara recently ditched the Commodore and replaced it with a Chrysler PT Cruiser which has all the old styling with modern technology for reliability. In Barbara's own words... my car story starts with a mustard Morris Minor 850 in Adelaide when I was about 18. It was a cute little car which actually had a bigger back seat than the Mini! :) I inherited Tony's Mini for a while before moving onto the beautiful V8 Torana (pictured above) because Tony then had a Ford Escort Van (Company Car) with his new job as a portrait photographer.
When needs be, one gives up something special.... we sold the Torana for a deposit on a house in Queensland and I downgraded to a 69 Purple/White Toyota Corona which I christened "The Purple People Eater". It was actually a very realiable little car that made it up to Bundaberg once with my parents at the wheel. We eventually upgraded to a Silver 74 Corona which moved with us to Sydney in 1983. Continuing on the hand-me-down syndrome, in 1988 I inherited a copper 83 Ford Fairmont Ghia automatic with electric windows and power steering. This car was very comfortable for the regular long trips to Adelaide. In 1989 when Tony left Pixifoto we purchused his then current company car, a Silver Ford Fairmont Ghia 88.
Several years later on Valentine's Day Tony presented me with a 94 Holden Commodore Acclaim, dark green in colour, complete with balloons off the arial. I really missed the electric windows though! In 2002 with the kids grown up, car needing tyres, some panel beating, air conditioning recon and rego we decided to finally downsize. I looked at a Holden Astra, (not for very long) but had a hankering for the smooth rounded shape of something retro.... the PT Cruiser. I wanted something classic like the rest of the family! Tony did some sums and ringing around and came up with a Silver Classic Edition PT Cruiser at the right price but the best we could get for the Commodore was a lousy $6000. The PT is a great car to drive, a bit gutless but zippy and really turns heads!! I love it. Her name is Silver and I have a companion, "Petunia" on my dash....a purple nodding pussy!

2004 MY 66 WILDCAT CONVERTIBLE (See full story and pics)

2006 MY 71 BUICK RIVIERA (BOATTAIL) (See full story and pics)

2015 MY C5 Z06 CORVETTE

With prices of classic cars going through the roof I thought it might be a good time to sell the Porsche. I’ve replaced it with a cheaper sports car called a Toyota 86. I have participated in one track day so far (pictured). The car performed very well but felt a little under-powered being only a 2L Subaru motor - thankfully, I have a few plans to remedy that :)
2023 The Toyota 86 had a heart transplant you might say. It’s now powered by a LS 6 litre V8 so it’s basically a Corvette in sheep’s clothing and so much fun to drive. The full project took about 4 months and is documented @tgentilcore on Instagram