Not long after I got my license, I was discussing cars with my boyfriend at the time. He was into older cars and had built all of his own cars from parts rather than just buying them complete. I was complaining that I was too broke to ever be able to afford a car of my own, so he suggested that I should buy a car and fix it up. He had a bit of a look around and came across a shell of a car that was sitting in some guy’s backyard. On first inspection, it looked like a total heap of crap – 70’s body shape, metallic poo-brown paint, spots of rust everywhere. But it was cheap and it had a motor that ran, so after a bit of indecision, I forked out a whopping $150 and bought it.
For a while we did nothing with it, and to be honest, I wasn’t entirely convinced that I liked it. The body shape and styling didn’t appeal to me much, and it was hard to get motivated to work on something that I was uninspired by.
Then one day I was flipping through Unique Cars magazine and I saw a photo of my model car as it was in its racing hey-day.
I fell in love.
To me, that’s when my Torry was first born. The car I had purchased was an LX Torana, a piece of Australian Muscle Car history. They were bold and muscular looking, with a torque-ey V8 engine, and they were famous for their prowess at Bathurst in the 60’s and 70’s.
I took that car from being a rusty metallic brown piece of junk and built it piece by piece into an awesome red & black muscle car. I did everything from the bodywork to installing the transmission. I built the engine from the ground up myself and I have to say that it was my favourite part of the entire job. Taking all those tiny pieces of metal and assembling them carefully to create a big, throbbing V8 motor. The total rebuild meant it was reliable, although like every old car it had its idiosyncrasies.
There was no air conditioning, and when the motor got warmed up, there was no way to stem the flow of hot air through the vents – which made for some leg burning rides home in 40 degree summer heat. On those days I had to use my AWD100 air conditioning – All windows down, 100km/h.
It didn’t have power steering and the turning circle was absolutely abysmal –a tonne and a half of metal is a difficult thing to manoeuvre in a tight space, and there were many days when I had to do a 400 point turn to get out of an odd spot.
It had a foot pedal instead of a hand brake that required you to twist and pull a lever while easing up the pedal. Not many people could get the hang of it, although I had it down pat.
But despite these things, I loved it. It had personality, it was comfortable and I met more new people through driving it that anything else I’ve ever done before. I loved it because every single inch of it was the way it was because I had built it that way with my own two hands.
It was more like an old friend than a vehicle, and every dent it gained from some stranger opening their door into it, every stone chip and mark broke my heart a little.
I drove my Torry every day for nearly 7 years. It cost me an absolute fortune in fuel and the insurance was insanely expensive but I couldn’t bear to part with it.
About a year ago, someone ran into it while it was parked in the street, and after the difficulty I had in getting it fixed properly, I knew that it was time to take it off the road for a while. It broke my heart to do it, but I put it away in the garage and got myself a cheap little run-around car. I felt guilty for nearly 3 full months, and every day when I parked my car in the garage, I would look over at the Torry and sigh a little.
She’s still there today, waiting for a day when I have the time and the money to rebuild her again as a hobby car. Even after being without her for over a year now, I still can’t bear the thought of selling her. She will always be the car that was built by my own two hands from the ground up; the car with more personality than anything I could ever buy from a dealership; my first and only real car.
This entry is part of my ‘A-Z of Me’ Series. 26 Days of alphabetically ordered random crap about me and my life. You can read the rest here.
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