H
olden showed no interest in helping me
with a car for the [Bathurst] 1969 race...
so I thought, bugger it, I’ll go and get
a Ford instead. That’s why I switched
to Ford and ran a GT-HO in the 1969
e. We nished second that year and should
havewon.”
That’s what Bruce McPhee, winner of the
1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500, told AMC founding
editor Mark Oastler back in 2004 for issue #17’s
forensic examination of that success, Holden’s
rst Great Race victory, in an interview ve years
before the New South Welshman’s passing.
McPhee’s ’68 win got the ball rolling on
the marque’s long history of success on the
Mountain. He was the highly-respected yet
low-pro le battler that outwitted, outplayed and
outlasted the works and works-supported teams
of Ford and Holden.He did so by playing his signature move
of driving all but one lap of the race, thereby
getting into a rhythm and developing an almost
instinctive feel for what his car could take as he
stroked it along without torturing the tyres. Prior
to the event those tyres were buffed of most of
their tread, effectively turning them into slicks for
maximum grip. These two demon tweaks merely
scratch the surface of his clever preparation.
At the end of 130 laps on October 6, 1968,
McPhee’s overlooked Wyong Motors Holden-
entered Monaro GTS 327 greeted the chequered
ag rst. It was a triumph for the privateer, one
based in regional NSW, a long way from Holden’s
(and motor racing’s) epicentre of Melbourne.
McPhee, entrenched on the Central Coast,
then a couple of hours north of the big smoke
of Sydney, was far removed from GM-H
headquarters at Fishermans Bend and the“