OUTER CRUST

DALE GRIDLEY WEDGED 426 CUBES OF MODERN MOPAR INTO AN UNSUSPECTING SURVIVOR AP5

- JACK HOULIHAN

THOUGH he insists he's not a Mopar nut, Dale Gridley admits he has a soft spot for the AP range of Valiants. "Not that I care, but I copped a lot of flak from the purists with my AP6 ute [SM, Apr '21] for the single-turbo LS," he laughs. "They love this one because it's got a Hemi!"

Dale is a mechanical fitter by day, and his work regularly sees him cruising around country Queensland. This AP5 sedan cropped up while he was in Chinchilla, having been parked up in an open shed since 1986. "It was missing the grille in the photos, and I didn't pay much attention to the bonnet and guards, so I first thought it was an AP6," he says. "When I found out it was an AP5, I didn't really want it as much!" An agreed price of $3000 swayed Dale back toward buying the Val, which proved to be dry as hell for an unrestored, 60-year-old survivor.

"It's never had a hard hit, the inner guards are perfectly straight, and what you see is the original paint from 1963," Dale says. He gave the body a quick dust-off before hitting it with a coat of Penetrol to seal in the flavour, and that's about as far as the external bodywork goes. "I was on the piss one day and thought I'd do one guard; that turned into doing the whole car," he says. "I didn't want it to get any worse, but I didn't want to change the look. It does bring the colour up a bit, but it's still flat. I want to enter it in Top Paint at every car show I can, just to watch the  judges' faces!"