Upper Middle Petrol Head:

  This Tasmanian Land Rover looks fantastic, a mere 66 years or so after it was built.  It appears to have had a comprehensive restoration, including brand new tyres, fresh paint and a canvas roof that smells like it’s just out of the box.  The interior - as spartan as it is - is also mint, with its steering wheel, gauges and seats having apparently been recently refurbished. The only obvious mods were a damper on the Pitman arm to help manage steering kick-back on extremely rough terrain and a set of early Thomas-style hand-operated free wheeling hubs.  Other than that, there was no PTO, no winch and no nothin’ else!  Which probably doesn’t matter because this old Landy’s likely to be pretty much unstoppable as it is, anyway! Did you enjoy this article?  If so, why not browse the rest of the uppermiddlepetrolhead site?  There are loads and loads of classic, sports and performance vehicles featured, as well as stacks of car shows and motorsports events.  Even better, you can follow eit

Yes.  Another one.  This time, it’s a fabulously honest track car that wears its history with pride.  It may be a tiny bit battered and bruised - as you might expect of any competition vehicle of a similar vintage - but it's straight and looks great!  The Nippon Datsun Club badge is a cool touch. It doesn't seem to have beeen heavily modified, although there's nothing to say what sort of engine it's running.  However, it appears to be fitted with a standard brake set-up - discs upfront and finned drums at the rear - and has a nice set of 14" Superlites all 'round.  Inside, there's a race seat and sports steering wheel, a couple of extra gauges, a cage and that's about it.    The high-beam delete is a common mod, presumably to aid under-bonnet ventilation.  It also reveals a wonderful DIY olive oil catch can. Did you enjoy this post?  If so, you might also like the following two pieces.  The first features a wonderful BMW E9 CS, while the second showcas

Here it is:  September, 2024's, Classics by the Beach, summed up in a single image!  Cold.  Wet.  Miserable.  And not very well attended, either.  Not that you could blame anybody for not turning up to Southern Tasmania's (usually) premier cars 'n' coffee event at Sandy Bay, 15 minutes' drive from Hobart's CBD, in such appalling conditions!   It's unclear if this very cool first gen Pajero was at the event as a participant or it just happened to be there.  Either way, it was a ripper, being in great all-round nick and nicely specced, too.  The neatly fitted winch and nudge bar combo were really cool, as were its fat alloys and flared wheel arches. And just in case the first photo didn't speak to the pox-horrific crappiness of the weather, this one might tell you something about the effect it had on the event's attendance.  At least parking wasn't a problem. So, just to balance the books the tiniest little bit, here's a link to the final piece

I've subtitled this third instalment of my Noosa Concours series  Australian and Other Marques.   However, that really means mainly British cars and a few Bugattis, as for whatever reason some of the examples shown here - ie: predominantly the Aussie ones - seem to be not so common at events like this.  These less-represented vehicles all struck me as being sufficiently concours, as I understand the term, so perhaps they're not considered to be as elegant as their more fancied counterparts?     Which is probably why I've led the piece with Dick Johnson's ballsy XE Falcon racing car.  It's in excellent nick - thus being "concours" - but its elegance could be debated.  Or you could argue that being elegant is overrated, anyway; that it's a bit wanky and elitist, and just get on and enjoy a magnificent example of Aussie motorsports history!  What really struck me about the Dick Mobile was just how much actual XE Falcon there is.  It's an ostensibly st