Dyno Dave casts his mind back to the early Brock days ... where it all started

My first memory of PB were 1968 or 69.  I can’t remember the date, the ugly agricultural Austin A30 that was cobbled up in his back yard.  Wide sheets of iron extended the guards over reversed wheels.  Painted a dark blue with a yellow stripe (not streak) down the centre. 

Sitting in all it’s glory at the Jim Abbotts Racing Car Show at the Melbourne Exhibition buildings, it looked rather like a purposeful British bulldog about to bite.  About as ugly too.  The little A30 which would have originally had a 803cc engine was transplanted with a Holden six of around 3000cc, and was raced by Peter with increasing success in the South East of Australia. It took this period to become noticed by the grey haired Harry Firth, who was running the Holden Dealer Team.  On of the shrewdest car builders and race drivers in motor sport, no wonder they called him “the fox”. 

Brock was offered a drive in the HDT in a variety of competition vehicles around 70 and 71 with agreeable success.  Going back a few years to 1967, before I met Pete, one of our interesting projects was the development of a HR 186s four-speed Holden sedan into what we called the ‘Performance Sprint GT’.  Lowered, mags, blacked out grille, red stripes, high-speed radials, woodrim steering wheel and most importantly, our stage II fully hand finished cylinder head.  This car gave tremendous performance and would out accelerate the new XR GT 289 Ford Falcon at 100 mph.  Naturally we got rave reviews from the media and were eventually invited to GMH, we of course hoped we would be able to sell them cylinder heads.  It’s interesting to note that this ‘concept’ car was very similar in a lot of ways to the Brock Commodores that Peter produced some 14 years later.  Commodores, although first available in 1979, were not raced until 1980 and were not permitted to use big valve heads because they were considered by CAMS to give an unfair advantage.  Our big valve heads certainly gave an advantage of over 50 horsepower on a race engine – but whether that was unfair depends upon your point of view.

In 1980 they ran with the standard size 1.750” inlet and 1.500” exhaust valves and standard castings, as opposed to our extensively machined and modified heads with 1.940” inlet and 1.600” exhaust valves.  We forged a relationship with Peter during 1981 when he commenced the first of 1000 special Brock Commodores, all fitted with Yella Terra specification heads.  During 1982, the heads were accepted and approved for use in competition.  By the end of 82 though, the writing seemed to be on the wall that the Mazda RX7s operated predominately by Allan Moffat, were going to be the cars to beat in the 83 season. 

In answer to the threat, we developed a revised combustion chamber and port configuration for the already substantially modified heads.  After intensive research and testing, we came up with our registered design ‘Brock Bathurst’ heads which we still make for the late model Blue and Black engines.  These heads became the secret weapon for the HDT in 1983, blasting the ‘Rotary Rice Burners’ to the weeds, completely devastating the RX7 brigade.

So with the motor sport heritage and background we have developed for over 32 years – and our involvement with Peter Brock and many others has taken us through some great and some absolutely rotten years.  But there is little that I would really want to change.  I guess I have the same attitude as Peter – I am in it to win – or at least give it a bloody good shot or not be in it at all.  Dave Bennett  Commodore Crazy 1993

Photo courtesy Ray Simpson