LUXO LION

THINK MONARO AND WE THINK OF A BATHURST WINNER, BUT THE GENERAL CREATED A LUXO ONE TOO

- DAVE MORLEY

If was to tell you that this stunning HQ Monaro LS had been the subject of a full nut and bolt restoration, you'd have no real reasons to doubt me. Hell, if I woke you up from a coma and told you that we'd tumbled down a black-hole and re-emerged into 1972, seeing this car would help you make the leap.

But get this: This car has not been off the road for months while it was restored, nor has it even had the engine removed or, indeed, the engine pulled apart. The closest it's ever been to a rotisserie is when the owner, Greg Thompson, buys a charcoal chook for dinner on the way home.

Now, I should explain that Greg is a car detailer by trade. Prior to that, he was working in the high-end side of a very techy industry, so he knows a thing or two about devils and details. But even before he switched careers a handful of years ago, he had always been into the Nth-degree end of making cars look sharp.

"I'd been detailing cars for about 40 years, but I decided to go full time after Covid convinced me I wasn't going back to the real world," he tells me as we watch the sun break though the clouds and absolutely ignite the metal-flake in the LS' Chateau Mauve panels. "Now, I just go around polishing GTs, Monaros, Chargers and Toranas."

A Holden man through and through, Greg had already restored an HQ GTS four-door, complete with 308 and Trimatic box. But the urge to own a coupe was a strong one and, eventually, he found what he was looking for.

Or maybe it found him, we don't really know.

Either way, the HQ's back-story is a ripper and involves being purchased brand-new in 1972 by a lady who lived on Melbourne's fringe where the roads were still mainly gravel and winter-time mud was as much a part of living there as bushfires were in the summer.