To Be Or Not To be …

Right, now I have the car that I am interested in restoring … and it is always exciting when your ‘new’ car arrives and the term new is used in the widest possible way.
I pushed it into the ‘shed’ with the help of my able bodied assistant and ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer’ … errrr, Financial Controller to the rest of you :o).

This car is new … it is new for me, and that’s all that matters. Isn’t it funny, that you have in your mind exactly where it’s going to sit (shed, yours or your friends, my Alfa ended up being pushed into a friend’s shed and it spend nearly a year there, being restored but it was only a partial restoration … I’m not sure how long I could have had it sitting in my friend shed, if it was a full restoration). Anyhow, you think you know where all the parts will be located. Well, I do anyway. You start planning in your head how you will attack the project. For me it was … where are all the parts? The seat? The door trims? The air filter housing ? I started scratching around in the front of the car and started finding all sorts of things in boxes, in buckets, lying on the floor, starter motor, alternator (or is this a generator … hmmm … later) oh … door cards, locks, handles, water pump fan, 2 fans … 3 fans?? Hmmm, chrome hinges … nice touch … bumpers, lights. What is this? Looks like an air-conditioning system … really? I’ll come back to that later. That’s when I remembered that I have to return the car trailer, before I get charged another days hire.

When I got home, that’s when the questions started … is the car that I have here as close to the original as possible? Was it modified? It has what looks like a 3 speed auto fitted. That’s not original! Do I want the car to be original? Do I want to get it back to original? I think so! Maybe! Definite maybe! Yes! A V8 in there would be nice … 253? 308? … 350 Chev.

To be or not to be … is the HR to be returned to ‘original’? How difficult will it be? Will I ever find out what it was originally fitted with … 161?, 186? Auto? Manual? Could I have hooked an X2? ( … really wishful thinking!!!)
Does it matter? How hard will it be to get back to ORIGINAL. How much, more or less, might that be? Then, the conversations that I had with friends after I picked up the HR … started … and that’s when I discovered that there are 3 lines of thought.

1. Mine … it would be fantastic to get the car back to as if it had just rolled off the production floor … albeit 45 years late!!!
2. Restore the car as you would any other and get it looking like it has been looked after, like most cars, for 45 years.
3. Bring the car up to scratch with my own (read: many of my friends suggested) touches. Turn it into a sleeper. Standard on the outside with a SBC under the bonnet!!!!

My head is starting to hurt, let me put her away, I have plenty of time to think about it … :o)

The way I see it … 1966 was a good year and nothing says Australia in 1966 like the Holden HR and being country, it had to be a ute.

How did this all begin?
Well, it was 2010 and my little ones were starting to be self sufficient. I have always had a thing for older cars and how cars worked and went together. Over the last 20 years I have revived a FIAT 131, Mitsubishi Galant, Datsun 200B (I know, I know), Holden Gemini (2wice), a Holden WB, Hillman Imp, Mazda 323, Holden VB Commodore, (I think that’s all … in order) and an Alfa Romeo GTV, which I still have, 16 years after an engine rebuild and some severe rust removal (it’s an Alfa so what was I expecting?). After a 10 year hiatus (getting married to an absolutely wonderful woman, building a house, having two fantastic kids) I could finally get back to doing something I loved and is almost therapeutic.
“I know”, I said to myself, “I’ve always liked the shape and sound of the mid 70’s FIAT 124 Sport”. I grew up in Zambia, and in the 70’s there were thousands of Peugeot 404’s and 504’s and FIAT 124’s, 127’s and 132’s. So I went looking … in the usual places, Quokka, EBay and Gumtree. I was about to set a time to look at one, when I stopped and really thought about what I wanted. I already had an Italian mistress (my wife calls her that), this one I’d really like it to be me … well, about me … my time … well, what represented my time; 1966.
Now that I’ve settled in Australia, it had to be Australian and it had to be 1966. We currently live on a small semi-rural property, so I wanted it to reflect rural Australia.
The candidates were really, Ford and Holden … the finalists, XP/XR and HD/HR. In the end the ‘Lion’ got it because it seemed more ‘Australian’. It’s actual content may not have been, but Ford sounds more American than Australian. After a few months of searching and meeting and greeting on Sunday mornings/afternoons (some people wanted stupid money for their incomplete ‘rotten’ HR’s), this is what I settled on.





Oh, this section should really be called ‘How NOT to buy a classic’.

A few will be thinking “… that HR looks like it’s rotten. After looking for months, that’s all you found?!”
Well, yes, and no. Yes, it looks rotten, but it’s only in all the usual places, bottom of doors, bottom of guards, 1/4 panels and tailgate. Floor is good and she’s straight, so no chassis straightening needed!
Panels, I have learned to do (I was taught by a couple of friends, that I have now lost touch with) :o( but chassis work would have been a bit harder.

I picked her up from a guy named ‘Charlie’ … but none of that has anything to do with ‘how NOT to buy a classic’.
Charlie had had the same idea I had a couple of years earlier . . . strip her down (after driving it around for a while) and get this ‘lioness’ back to her former glory.

Nice idea … only he’d stripped it down, almost completely, before his situation meant he couldn’t do it anytime soon.

While everything was there … technically, only the doors, and wheels were where they should be (well, the engine and box too). Everything else wasn’t.

Glass, lights (front and rear), bumpers, exhaust, wiring, brakes, some wheel bolts, tailgate, heater box, locks, ignition, gauges, seats, wipers, pedals, roof lining, speakers, radio, … I think you get the picture. So, I have my work cut out for me. For first timers, this is how NOT to buy a classic, because you have to work out where everything is supposed to go … a nightmare!!!

Why, “Long Live the King?” … the [Holden] Lion is the King of the Beasts … this one looks very close to death.

In 1968 the HR “died” to most, “The King is Dead!”. To many others, he still has a lot of living to do … “Long Live the King!”