Hostile Takeover

After Crashing the Much-loved Family Hk Monaro, Eddy Jausnik Knew Its Replacement Had to Be Made of Sterner Stuff.

- Boris Viskovic

IT WOULD be fair to say that Eddy Jausnik has HK Monaro blood running through his veins. His grandma bought one in 1972 from its original owner, then passed it on to Eddy’s uncle, followed by his older brother, until he finally got his hands on it in the late 90s and spent 10 years fixing it up. Sadly, the gorgeous machine you see on these pages is not that car; it got messed up pretty bad in a traffic accident.

“It’s pretty upsetting,” Eddy says. “It started raining and I had the BFG T/A tyres on it. Everyone says how bad they are – now, after I crashed it! The back aquaplaned and I was a passenger; it put me across the median strip into two oncoming cars. The first one hit my rear left quarter, which did the most damage, and then that straightened me up for the one that hit me on the front.

“I spent a lot of time looking at getting it fixed. I had it booked in with Peter Tommasini but it was a 12-month wait; then four weeks before it was ready to go he rang me up and asked for more photos. He called me back and convinced me out of it, saying: ‘You’re going to be up at 30-plus grand just for the quarters, let alone straightening it and all the other repairs.’ So it sort of got shelved from that point. I’ve still got it in dry storage. I can’t sell it; I’ve had a lot of people ask, but it’s got too much sentimental value.”

So that’s when Eddy turned to a few internet forums and started putting the word out that he was looking for a ‘replacement’ for his irreplaceable Monaro. As it turned out, a local bloke by the name of Shane Hayward had one for sale, so Eddy went around to check it out.