This particular car was especially built for the Sydney Motor Show about October that year.
Ray writes: The other week I took some photos of a very special Valiant V8.
| It’s an AP6 model: that’s an Australian Production type No 6 that came out in 1965.
This particular car was especially built for the Sydney Motor Show about October that year. |
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It was unique in its colour. Not a production line colour at all, and it’s still original. The wheels have been changed and the seats redone, but otherwise the car is still just like it came from the factory.
The owner’s name is Alan Stradford.
Alan Stradford lives at Dubbo in the Australian state of New South Wales. An inland city that serves a broad farming community, there are many car enthusiasts in the area and some nice collectable cars.
His pride and joy is a 1965 Australian built Valiant V8 - quite a rare car in Australia and even more rare because of its special qualities!
This was one of 25 of these cars built especially for sale at the Sydney Motor Show that year. It is a colour that wasn’t usually part of the model colour choice and it's been treated as a special car all its life.
The odometer reads just 89,000 miles. Alan plans to run up a few more in his ownership and started on that a couple of weeks ago by driving the 400 mile round trip to the Tamworth Chrysler Nationals show for the weekend.
During that drive he began to appreciate just what a fine car this Valiant is, the ride surprising his passenger and another friend who drove part of the way. “It drives beautifully,” he told us, “it just purrs along!”
Alan only bought the car in April 2005, having been keen on it for some time. The former owner, Les Crump, had owned it for eight years, but he'd done little but have it taken back to bare metal by local paint and panel ace Kevin Nugent and renew the acrylic paint just like it was new. Les had bought it from a former employer, but he rarely drove it and Alan feels it was wasted with him.
As the car is now just forty years old, it should be showing signs of age. “We found a couple of bubbles in the vinyl roof, but when we removed the vinyl it was only surface rust. We treated it properly and put on new vinyl, and I fitted a new rubber on the rear window,” Alan said.
Is that all?
Seemingly! It looks a million dollars, it rides and goes well (though there’s a head job happening in the near future as one valve is said to be leaking), and now the seats have been retrimmed to replace splitting trim and a radiator leak repaired, there’s nothing left to do.
The 273 V8 was a 180hp model and was felt at the time to be too much for the standard drum brakes. This model was the first of the popular models sold in Australia (Holden, Falcon and Valiant) to be fitted with a V8.
But on the long straight and somewhat flat roads of Central West New South Wales the finned drums should cope, anyway.
One departure from standard is the wheels. Alan has the originals tucked away in his garage and they’ll go back when necessary.
Our thanks to Alan, who's not on the the Internet, for permission to introduce this great example of Chrysler Australia’s nicely balanced AP6 model to an International audience, and to his friend, Dave Rodder, for introducing us.
Dave’s Chrysler Royals will be on display on this site very soon - something very different!
