RACE WINNER

STUNG BY FORD'S WIN IN 1967 GMH WANTED A CAR TO COMPETE AT BATHURST. THEY CREATED ONE THAT DID JUST THAT AND MORE

- MARK HIGGINS

NOT ONLY WAS the Monaro racing off showroom floors, it was also racing to victory in Australia’s biggest race, the Hardie Ferodo 500 where Bruce McPhee and co-driver Barry Mulholland won and gave Holden its first Bathurst win.

Before the 500 nine Monaro GTS 327s lined up at Sandown Park, Victoria in September for the 3-Hour Datsun Trophy race, the Bathurst curtain raiser.

Two Victorian rally aces Bob Watson and Tony Roberts, both new to circuit racing and on provisional race licences teamed up and won.

It was the pairs’ third ever circuit race and three weeks later, armed with full competition licences they headed to Bathurst for the Hardie Ferodo 500, as one of eight starters in a GTS 327 Monaro and finished third.

We caught up with Bob to ask him about those times.

Bob Watson began working at Holden in 1958 undertaking an engineering cadetship and by 1968 had moved into the experimental area working on chassis development, initially on the Holden HR suspension and disc brakes then onto the HK program. “Fairly early on Holden decided they

wanted to run a car at Bathurst,” Bob said “So senior managers John Bagshaw and Peter Lewis-Williams went to Detroit and sourced a powertrain, the 327 engine and Saginaw gearbox and it went from there.

“John Finlayson was the senior guy and he and I did all the ride and handling work on the Monaro. We’d go to Holden’s Proving Ground at Lang Lang every day, put our helmets on and played racing drivers (laughs). John was very knowledgeable on shock absorbers and that sort of stuff. We had a 289 Falcon GT to benchmark ourselves on, and soon realised we had a better car.”