2011 Open Day with John Harvey

17 October 2011 

Our final big Open Day tour for the year was sensational, booked out way in advance with a big group of enthusiasts from every state in Australia as well as a few from overseas nations including New Zealand, Singapore and even Vanuatu!  It?s this sort of devotion that makes us love putting these days on, so a big thanks to all those who made the trip to Buderim.

Dan's group takes in the history in the top part of the shed.

After we had everyone parked for the day the tour began, 4 hours of the Bowden family giving a personal guided tour of some of the greatest cars in Australian and International racing history on show. Some which had not been seen for a number of years by the public. One of these was the HDT Torana Hatchback #76 that we ?uncovered? for our special guest John Harvey, reuniting him in the afternoon with his famous machine for the first time since 1979. He drove the A9X down and into the shed and gave us a great talk on his racing career sharing some of the insightful stories associated with a few of the cars in the collection, ones you can only give when you were there making their history!

John Harvey talks to the crowd about his amazing race career, whilst in the presence of his old HDT A9X.  

 

The Legend and his machine, reunited after 32 years.

 We also brought in as a special surprise the M8E Can Am McLaren, which Chris sourced recently for a local McLaren fanatic/ frother, Duncan. To hear John talk about racing them was truly inspirational. Especially with his stories about heading to Japan and racing in the wet, where his Bob Jane sponsored M6 Repco V8 powered machine put up a huge fight against the big block M8E?s there that day.  Legendary stuff, which those who were lucky enough to have come along and hear will never forget. 

 

M8E Can Am McLaren gets brought to life at the end of the day, brilliant stuff.

Our next tour is not till March/April next year and is already filling fast, if you would like to come along and share our passion please check out how to do it on our Open Day web-page by clicking here.

 

Check out a heap more photo's from the day on our Facebook photo album here.     

Love your cars,

Dan

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