Plastered over the walls were posters, stickers, and other priceless pieces of memorabilia collected over four decades in which the factory bore silent witness to the often-brilliant success and sometimes disappointing failures of one of Australia’s most famous teams. 

Randomly stuck on the walls by drivers were crinkled competition numbers lifted from the team’s various Monaro’s, Torana’s; creased stickers from past sponsors like Holden, Castrol, Levis jeans, TAA airlines, Bridgestone tyres, and West Point Casino: oil stained posters from past BP Rallies, Caltex Trials, and race meetings at Warwick Farm and Surfers Paradise: and yellowing newspaper ads heralding victories at Sandown and Bathurst.  Hanging from the ceiling were faded HDT banners, and leaning against a hoist were a couple of large ‘thumbs-up’ cut-outs that Holden fans used to urge on their favourite drivers. 

Home to Firth motors from 1962 to 1978 and then to Ian Tate from 1978 to until last year, the factory at 35 Queens Avenue, in a light industrial enclave in the leafy Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn. was headquarters for the Ford factory race and rally team in the 1960’s, and then to the Holden Dealer Team from 1969 when firth defected from Ford to Holden to run Holden’s factory team until his retirement in 1978. 

It was in the Queens Avenue factory that the Cortina GT500 Bathurst Specials were built for Ford.  It was also where the XR Falcon GT that Firth and Fred Gibson drove to victory at Bathurst in 1967 was prepared, and where the XT Falcon GT’s that competed so successfully in the London-to-Sydney rally were readied. 

Later, after he switched allegiances from Ford to Holden, it was where the 1969 winning Bathurst-winning HT Monaro GTS350 was built for Colin Bond and Tony Roberts.  It was also where Peter Brock’s 1972 Bathurst winning LJ Torana XU-1 was built.  The success that flowed from the Hawthorn factory were numerous. 

Suffice to say that it was home to one of the most successful Australian teams of all times, but don’t expect the brightly painted walls, highly polished floors, and sparkling stainless steel benches you’d find in a modern race shop.  Queens Avenue wasn’t home to boffins and scientists who worked in the sterile environment that is home to most modern teams.  The men that worked there were practical men, who used time-honed skills and common sense to solve problems that were inevitably arise when ordinary family cars were turned into racers.

With three victories in Australia’s most prestigious long distance touring car race, on top of numerous other race and rally wins, Harry Firth was already a successful driver when he and Norman, his brother and partner moved to Queens Avenue in 1962.  Ian Tate went to work at Firth Motors in July 1963.  He’d been helping Firth at nights and weekends for a number of years, and when Firth moved to Hawthorn he offered the recently married mechanic a job.  “Harry didn’t have any formal engineering training, but he was a thinker and he could work things out,”
Tate says of his mentor.  “In those days you couldn’t buy what you needed of the shelf like you can today.”   “You had to make everything from exhaust extractors to manifolds, valves, almost everything you needed had to be made, and that was where Harry excelled. 

Firth was a tough boss to work for, Tate says.   It was Harry’s way or no way, but there was so much to be learnt from him that most mechanics chose to live with his autocratic ways.  In 1969 Firth did the unthinkable switching camps to Holden, and Queens Avenue became home to the Holden Dealer Team. 

Firth Motors continued it servicing and tuning work, with Craig Lowndes’ father Frank in charge of the workshop, while Tate ran the race team.  Tate’s first task was to prepare a single HT Monaro GTS350 for the Sandown 500, the traditional hit-out before the annual enduro at Bathurst.  Driven by Spencer Martin and Kevin Bartlett, the debut outing for Holden’s new team ended in a firey crash right under the noses of the Holden hierarchy.  Ford’s bosses, sitting nearby in the grandstand, couldn’t resist the chance to rub it in, Firth was told in no uncertain terms to have a report at Holdens the next morning.  After spending night examining the wreak, Firth presented his report as ordered.  While embarrassing at the time, it was to prove a key to the success that would follow at Mount Panorama a month later. 

“There is no doubt that we wouldn’t have won Bathurst if we hadn’t had problems at Sandown”, Tate admits.  The Sandown accident was caused by brake failure, which Firth traced to insufficient airflow around the front disc brakes of the big V8 coupe.  “Holden’s styling department had deleted the slots in the wheels, “ Tate recalls.  “We got them to switch back to the slotted wheels they’d used on the GTS327s the year before, and cut a slot in the front bumper panel just above the bumper.” 

By chance they also uncovered a problem with the piston rings in the Monaro’s Chev V8 engine, which were picking-up on the bores and causing enormous blow-by.  Armed with that knowledge, Firth and his team switched to moly rings, which fixed the problem.  But while the HDT Monaro’s rumbled on to victory, most of the Monaro’s in the race fell foul of the ring problem.  “We knew what the problem was”, says Tate, “but we weren’t telling anyone.” 

Bathurst that year also saw the debut of a rather scruffy young driver who would make the Holden dealer team one of the most revered racing teams ever in Australian motor sport.  At the time, Peter Brock was racing a rather agricultural home-built special based on a diminutive Austin A30 and powered by a six-cylinder Holden motor.  Despite appearances, Brock and his tiny racer were highly successful, and Firth took note.  “Peter looked pretty scruffy in those days,” Tate remembers.  “He had a little goatee beard and the bum out of his pants, but he was showing an enormous amount of potential and Harry asked him to join us at Bathurst. 
“He did not do anything to special that year.  I think he was feeling his way with the team, but he listened to what Harry told him and you could see even then that he was easy on the car.” 

Peter Brock's still taking instructions from the 'Old Fox'

In the years that followed, Brock and the Holden Dealer Team forged one of the potent partnerships even seen in Australian motor sport.   Not only did they become a major force on the racetrack, they were also a force in rallying and rallycross.  “Winning Bathurst 1969 and 1972 were great highlights,” Tate says, “but the greatest memories I have of those times were of the guys I worked with here.” 

The fans were inspiration, he says, turning out in vast numbers everywhere the team went, and waving flags and their “thumbs-up” cut-outs to urge their hero’s on.  “It was a great morale boost to see the fans with their big cardboard thumbs giving us the “thumbs-up”, he says.” 

Brock was dumped by the team at the end of 1974, a move which disappointed Tate.  When it became clear that Bond would also be dumped, he left Firth and formed a partnership with another ex-HDT mechanic Mathew Philip.  Working under the Tate-Philip banner, Tate built engines for most of the major Holden teams at the time; including the engine for 1976 Bathurst race winners Bob Morris and John Fitzpatrick.  He also ran Peter Janson’s race team, transforming the erratic Janson from a regular non-finisher into a consistent podium placegetter. 

Ian Tate with the XU-1 Torana he helped prepare for Peter Brock's 1973 Bathurst

Shortly before he moved out, Tate and some of his old cohorts from the ‘old’ days got together to swap stories about their time in the factory.  There with Tate were Harry Firth, Peter Brock. John Harvey, Norm Beechey, and many of the mechanic’s and helpers who combined to make HDT such a powerful force on the race track. 

On November 1, the posters, stickers and other memorabilia were taken down, and the historic old factory took on the appearance of just another workshop.  To those who know, however, 35 Queens Avenue will always be a special place where a glorious slice of Australian motor history was forged.

Article by courtesy of Unique Cars magazine.
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