Family Heirloom

Mark and Frank Navacchi’s Build of This Vc Valiant Is the Culmination of Three Generations of Family Automotive History.

- Carly Dale

MARK Navacchi knows the exact origins of this fine ’66 VC Valiant. The keys were handed directly to him in 2005 by his grandfather, who bought the Val new. “Nonno gave me the keys as my graduation present. He was so proud of me for seeing school through,” Mark says.

Nonno – Danilo Zuccon – worked at the Chrysler factory in Tonsley Park, South Australia, where he was a mechanic-cum-foreman, and the sky-blue/white-roof VC was his daily driver, even sporting a tow bar and tow mirrors bolted to the front fenders.

“He’d drive the car to his holiday home in Cape Jervis towing a boat, with a trailer behind that! How he got away with it, I have no idea,” laughs Frank Navacchi, Mark’s dad and Danilo’s son-in-law. “Everyone nagged him to get a new car with power steer and air con, so in the early 2000s he bought a nice AU Fairmont Ghia. He never liked it as much as he did the VC.”

The car was completely original when Danilo presented it to his grandson, and teenage Mark set about ripping straight into the VC. “There were no dents whatsoever and a little rust in the rear lower quarters from when Nonno used to launch the boat,” he says. “At that stage I wanted to restore it in dedication to my grandfather, but it didn’t go that way.” After sending it off for a respray, the result wasn’t to Mark’s liking, so he parked it for six months to figure out what to do.