For the Maltese lads in the migrant hostel in Melbourne in the late 50s, cars, cars and more cars were what made their hearts sing.
Many of them worked at the Holden plant, smuggling paint home in their Thermos flasks until the boss cracked down – don’t use the paint colour on your old cars until the new model Holden flaunting that shade is on the market. A simple request and one that was respected, even by those who were not Holden people.
“My uncle taught me how to drive in a 1948 Ford Mercury, and I became a Ford dude – and I still am,” says Joe, who is now 83. “So, of course, when I wanted to buy a car to build as a race car, it had to be a Ford.”
That car was a brand-new 1972 TC Cortina, one of the early four-cylinder models. Later on, the TC was offered with the 200 and 250 cid six-cylinder engines from the Falcon range, but the engine specification wasn’t important to Joe because it was never going to stay that way.
“Where I come from, if you have a car, you don’t say it’s a Ford, you say it’s a V8. So we bought the Cortina because we liked Fords, and it was a beautiful shape car. But all my generation loved V8s so it had to have that sound.
“We added a fuel-injected 302 that was giving 550hp at the time, and we installed a Ford Toploader four-speed close ratio gearbox. And the diff was a Ford diff, so everything Ford. That car is
