LEFT: Bob paid $300 cash for what
was left of the Johnny Anderson
sprintcar in 1984. After trailering
it back from Darwin strapped to
the side of his race car, it sat in the
shed for 10 years and then took
another 20 years of sporadic work
and parts-scavenging before it was
finally unveiled in January at the 55th
Australian Sprintcar Championship
at Valvoline Raceway
A: The five photos of Anderson’s
sprintcar on Bob’s locker door helped
guide him throughout the build. “The
car is virtually the way it was when
Johnny Anderson came here,” he
says. “The lettering on the right-hand
side – ‘Anderson Special’ and ‘301
Chevy’ – I saw in one photo I’ve got.
There are never many shots of the
right-hand side of a speedway car!”
B: Bob reckons the ‘301 Chevy’
painted on the right-hand side
probably means “it was either running
a 302, or a 283 bored out to about
301ci” when Johnny Anderson bought
it here. But with that motor long
gone, Bob’s engine guru Alan Felsch
sourced a steel-block 350ci Chev from
a retired Late Model car and pushed it
out to around 366 cubes with a 3^9 / 16 in
Hank The Crank crankshaft
C: The pearlescent white and blue
metalflake paint was applied by Rod
Bowen in Blacktown. “I think Rod
pulled his hair out trying to do it
because when I picked it up he said:
‘Don’t bring the bloody thing back
again!’” The numbers and lettering
were handled by veteran race car
signwriter Dennis Phillips. “Dennis
said: ‘I haven’t done this oddball
running writing for years; I used to
hate doing it,’” Bob laughs
ABOVE & LEFT: Another legendary
midget being worked on in Bob’s
shed is the blue #3 Myron Caves Offy,
which was built in the 60s by Don
Edmunds and brought to Australia
by fellow Californian Don Meacham.
“I’m building this up basically from a
chassis,” Bob says. “The aluminium
tail is off another car I had – those
things are rare as rocking horse shit.
So eventually I’ll sand it back and no
one will ever know it had #11 on it”
Photo: Des Lawrence