Holden's Lost HO Slayer

The ‘supercar scare’ killed off the phase IV, but also a thumping V8 torana designed to dominate the mountain. This is its story

- Cameron Kirby

MIDNIGHT, APRIL 1972. The Great Western Freeway between Adelaide and Melbourne is still, subdued by the heavy blanket of night. A pair of headlights streak across Victoria’s vast western plains, disrupting the peace and tearing into the darkness like a serrated knife through linen sheets.

It’s a yellow LJ Torana, rego KSN 116, with a fresh-faced 21-year-old at the helm, pushing his galloping metal steed to near terminal velocity in a show of youthful bravado. Thin rimmed glasses help him peer into the inky blackness before him as the speedo needle swings around the dial – 100mph, 110mph, 120mph. It’s a relentless climb accompanied by a 308ci V8 bellowing in top gear – a guttural war cry sung to only the empty fields that stand as solitary witness to this high-speed display of automotive grandeur.

Now, some of you might be thinking, the LJ Torana was never sold with a 308 V8, right? Correct, but this wasn’t any regular LJ, it was the test mule for a secret Holden project intent on defeating Ford’s all-conquering XY GTHO Phase III Falcons – and this is its story.

It wasn’t just any 21-year-old achieving the speeds, either – 130mph, 140mph, and still climbing – but a youthful Larry Perkins (long before his F1 foray, and a decade before he’d claim outright victory at the Bathurst 1000) who was working as a mechanic for the Holden Dealer Team (HDT).

He chances a final glance at the speedo. The needle now indicating 150mph (just over 240km/h), and the V8 is now sounding like a relentless heavy-metal riff, the tempo ever increasing as revs build toward a 5500rpm redline.