Power Figure

Engineer warwick bryce served at the gm-h coalface for over three decades, helping to develop many of holden’s most beloved engines and associated technology

- Warwick Bryce

Retired Holden engineer Warwick Bryce masterminded plenty of GM-H’s engine tech and made its V8s go. We caught up with him to get the lowdown on his career – and the truth about those ‘cop chips’.

How did your tenure at Holden begin?

I started there in 1973 in what was called Experimental Engineering. There were body and wheels and shock absorbers and latches [departments], but my interest was in engines. I got my foot in the door, and once you’ve done that you look around and see where you can go. You follow your interest, and mine was in engines.

When did you begin on engines?

After about a year. We worked in areas known as ‘downstairs’ and ‘upstairs’. The design blokes were upstairs and they designed the parts to be tested and sent them downstairs to Experimental Engineering, where the team would decide what tests to do. I was on the six-cylinder. We had red motors then; it was the time of the HJ, and the LX Torana was also in the pipeline.

The 1970s, smog control – not a good time!

I was working on the carburettor and the ignition calibration. I was working on the first serious emissions version of the red motor [compliant for the new exhaust rules of the late 1970s]. It was already in production, but it needed a fair bit of fixing up for the HZ Holdens.

The later blue motor seemed to fix a lot of that.

Yes, next we worked on the blue motor with the 12-port head, the counterweighted crank and the two-barrel carby. I had a fair bit to do with it. I was in Design by then, and we worked with the drawing office – the draughtsmen – to design such things as the inlet manifolds and the cylinder ports and so on. I worked on the cylinder heads and manifolds mainly.

This was the dawn of the ‘high-tech’ 1980s, too.