Let's go with the beginning... A million years ago, my good mate Petey and his dad bought a red GD sedan road car with a 2-litre Astron in it, as a 'do it all' club level motorsport car. The two of them used it for motorkhanas, khanacrosses, hillclimbs, lap-dashes and super-sprints for several years. Early on, they painted metallic green, and fitted a twin-Weber'd 2.6 wideblock and converted it to be a (very basic) Sports Sedan with perspex windows and all the rest. It was running a BW gearbox, and a locked BW Sigma diff.
Somewhere along the lines, Pete bought his dad's share in the car, so it was all his.
My first ever competitive drive was in this car, at Huntley Hillclimb in 1998.
Eventually, in about 1999, one of Petey's workmates gave him a pretty clean orange GC sedan. As the GD was looking pretty shabby, the decision was made to move the GD's mechanicals into the GC, and make it a Club Car (IPRA) spec. The idea was that the extra weight wouldn't make it much slower, but that it would be way more competitive as a Club Car than as a Sports Sedan.
So we did that one weekend...
Then Petey and his dad did another deal, and the car became his dad's. His dad has... let's say, some interesting ideas about how to build a race car...(more on this later). He fitted a Bond bolt-in roll cage to suit the then-new CAMS rules, and generally set it up to be only used on the tar. At this stage, it was still quite a tidy car.
Then another Pete-and-his-dad deal went down, and the car became Pete's again (they both have automotive ADD, in case you were wondering). Pete did a few more things like fitting lengthend lower control arms to get more negative camber, and started using it for khanacross and stuff again. He got it into the mid-high teens around Wakefield Park, which is really quite good for what it is, without managing to be impressive.
Then it broke a couple of axles at successive khanacrosses, and began to fall from grace. The killer was when it broke an axle on the first run of the day at a khana that he and his missus had driven three hours to get to...
So then it sat in his yard, unloved and rusting away for five or six years until he said to me "The Galant is rust-fuct. If you want it, you can have it for free without the Webers. You can have the Webers too, if you pay for them".
And that's how the Galant became mine. The plan was to steal the 2.6 and cage out of it to fit to my newly purchased GD (which is/was to become a proper rally car, built to the Club Rally Car rules) and then send it to the tip - with rust in the GC like this, you can understand why:
There was also a hole you could put your hand through below the fuel filler flap, and one A-pillar along with both C-pillars look like this:
I didn't bother taking "before" photos because it was just a wreck - this is the closest I've got, but even this is after a I pressure-washed the hell out of it. There was a lot of black gunk, leaves, and moss all over it:
Then I started having a closer look - the paint was surprisingly good, there was no structural rust apart from the pillars... Then I was talking to my mate who's in the Light Car Club of Canberra - apparently the LCCC are going to run a series of khanacrosses close to here... Hmmm...
So the decision was made to bring the GC back to life. It will never be a pretty car, but khanacrosses are kind of the 'last chance Hilton' for rusty/battered old cars, and it made sense to use the shell with the cage in it, before spending a ton of money on the GD shell...
Once I got over the "this is so dodgy" feeling, it was really quite a nice experience... This is the roof:
