CAT CLAWS BACK

THE RE-EMERGENCE OF THE LEGENDARY ALLEY CAT SANDMAN AT MOTOREX 2025 SET YOUNG TONGUES WAGGING AND OLD MINDS SHAGGING!

- SIMON MAJOR

WHILE the heyday of the modified panel van scene in Australia is now nearly 50 years' past, there's one build from that wildly creative time that even non-vanners know: Alley Cat. Street machiners will remember it as 'the Sandman with a V12 Jag', while for those more fluent with velvet trim and wild murals, Alley Cat is undoubtedly the most iconic panel van of all time.

In 1975, a 19-year-old John Strachan (Snap Shots, SM, Jan '15) plonked down his hard-earned for an HJ Sandman painted GM-H Claret, and it was soon hotted up and making waves in the burgeoning van scene. The 308 scored a tunnel ram, while a set of Ansen hotwire mags and interior updates kept it competitive, with the body eventually treated to a fibreglass 'Meteor' nosecone and ever-evolving Frank Lee murals.

"Being different was the name of the game back then, and that's what spawned the radical custom vans of the 1980s," John says today. "I knew I had to step things up to stay competitive. I was buying Jaguar parts off a bloke for the Jag diff conversion and spied the V12 engine sitting in a crate - it was a light-bulb moment, and the rest is history."

With the revamped, Jag V12 incarnation of Alley Cat, John reached the summit he'd been striving for; the HJ won Australia's Top Van at the 1983 Van Nationals, and with that, John's work was done. He traded the Cat for a black A9X soon after, and it then pretty much went underground.