The war is over

THE TWO MEN WHO HEADED UP AUSTRALIA’S HIGH-PERFORMANCE CAR DIVISIONS REVEAL WHAT REALLY WENT ON IN THE HEYDAY BATTLES BETWEEN HSV AND TICKFORD

- ANDREW MACLEAN

NOW THAT THE war is over, let’s catch up for lunch… said no two adversaries ever! Just imagine if that were true though; if Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee regularly played poker and swilled bourbon long after the battle of Appotomax brought a close to the American

Civil War. Or if Churchill invited that little Austrian fella with the funny moustache over to 10 Downing Street for tea every Sunday. Or, more recently, if George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein smoked cigars and reminisced about the good ol’ days every September in the White House.

It would be intriguing to be part of a world if any of those situations were true, or even possible. But they weren’t, primarily because those combatants didn’t get along in the first place and, secondly, some of them were dead at the end of it all anyway.

Yet, today, overlooking the Yarra River on a baking early summer day with the birds singing from the eucalypts and glasses clinking with pre-Christmas cheer from the cafe, here I am sitting between the two opposing generals who masterminded one of the fiercest, bloodiest battles in Australian history. Or did they?

More accurately, what I want to find out is; was there even war in the first place?

Even if you’ve been a casual observer of the Australian automotive industry over the past 30-odd years, and now that the Holden is history and Ford’s fortunes come from a dual-cab ute, it’s safe to presume most punters considered Holden Special Vehicles and Tickford (which later morphed into Ford Performance Vehicles) as mortal motoring enemies. We at Wheels certainly did. Whether it was on the road, the racetrack, the showroom or the dyno, the Red v Blue rivalry was real.