BOUNCE BACK

MEGUIAR'S MOTOREX COMES ROARING BACK TO MELBOURNE SHOWGROUNDS

- SIMON TELFORD, JACK HOULIHAN & KIAN HEAGNEY

THREE years is a long time between drinks for an event that punters and entrants are used to having annually, but that has been the COVID-battered reality for the crew behind Meguiar's MotorEx. But nothing was going to stop the 2022 edition of Australia's biggest indoor car show from going ahead in style, even if old mate Omicron kept more than a few people at home.

The pre-show portents were good. For mine, the biggest excitement was the prospect of seeing Dean Prodger's restoration of the iconic 'The Grot' HK Monaro, which was raced in the 70s by the late John Taverna and Phil Facciolo.

The Lismore floods got oh-so-close to spoiling Dean's party. I've lived in the area a long time and the floods have never come close to my workshop, he said. I thought this year would be the same, but when the floods started to exceed all the records, I moved some cars around so I could get The Grot onto the hoist as far up as it would go. Even so, the water just about reached the car and totally flooded the shop. After that, I almost gave up on bringing the car to MotorEx, but my wife pushed me to keep going, and I'm really glad she did.

Both John Taverna Jr and Phil Facciolo came to check out the car and get some photos; that was awesome!

Besides Dean's car, there were plenty of pre-show rumours about what we might see when the covers were lifted off no less than 24 new builds as part of the MotorEx Inauguration.

The fact that Paul Tinning's twin-turbo, Viper V10-powered XP Falcon was amongst them was an open secret, as the car had been in the build since 2016 at Paul's Darwin-based business, The Resto Shop, and well-documented on the car's Facebook page. The whole theme of the build was audacious and ambitious, but if there were any doubts about how cohesive the finished product would be, they were erased when the covers came off.