CAN'T TOP IT

AFTER 20 YEARS OF OWNERSHIP, DAVID DEWHURST TURNS HIS VF VALIANT CONVERTIBLE INTO A TOPLESS SUPERMODEL

- BORIS VISKOVIC

WHEN David Dewhurst caught up with childhood friend Trevor Pyatt, who had lived behind the Dewhurst family in the 60s, the last thing he was expecting was to fall in love with an old Valiant. “I hadn't seen Trevor for 35 years or more and was pleasantly surprised when he called me one day out of the blue,” David recalls. “He'd ended up being a car wholesaler, and he contacted me because I'm an electrician.”

Trevor needed some work done, so David visited his workshop at Panorama in southern Adelaide. “While I was doing the work there, I noticed this blue VF Valiant tucked away over in the corner. Strangely, it had the roof cut off, and I'd never seen one quite like that before. I said to Trev, ‘What's the blue convertible you've got over there?’ He said, ‘Oh, that's not for sale; that’s my brother Barry's.’”

Not if David could help it! For him, it was love at first sight, so he told Trev that if his brother ever wanted to sell the VF, he wanted first option.

It was three or four years later that the call finally came from Trevor. “It was my birthday the next week, and I couldn't get my 43-year-old arse down there fast enough – I just couldn't help myself!” David laughs. “I took it for a drive and thought, ‘I’m gonna have this.”

The Val had apparently led a rather colourful life up until then. Apart from the roof delete, which had happened in the 80s or 90s, the car had been the centrepiece of a music video by the band Chunky Custard, and at some point, it had been shot with a .22-calibre bullet, which was only discovered when the paint was stripped off!