Machine-Tech Northland Ltd

08/10/2026

I’ve never been much of a Ford fan but thats irrelevant when reliving these nostalgic runs at Bathurst.
This old GTHO doing respectful lap times despite being as aerodynamic as a house cow.

08/10/2026

15/09/2026

The 426 Hemi is the most famous engine Chrysler ever built. Eight cylinders. Hemispherical combustion chambers. 425 HP that was actually more. NASCAR banned it. Drag racing was rebuilt around it. That story has been told on this page. In 1970, Chrysler Australia built a Hemi with six cylinders, and in its most aggressive configuration it produced more torque than any street-legal production six-cylinder engine in the world. That record stood until 1975, when Porsche introduced the turbocharged 930. A naturally aspirated inline-six from Australia held the world torque record for street-legal sixes for five years against every manufacturer on every continent.

The Hemi-6 was designed by a five-man team led by Maurice Harcus. Chrysler Australia needed a replacement for the American Slant Six that had powered Australian Valiants since the early 1960s. The Slant Six was reliable, unkillable, and completely uninterested in performance. Australia wanted something that could compete with Holden's Red Motor 202 and Ford Australia's 250 crossflow six in a market where the six-cylinder family sedan was the volume product and where Bathurst results determined showroom traffic. Harcus and his team designed a thin-wall cast-iron block with a beefy crankshaft supported by seven main bearings, the same over-engineered bottom end philosophy that every serious inline-six on this page uses.

The cylinder head is where the name becomes complicated. The combustion chambers were closer to semi-hemispherical than to the fully hemispherical chambers on the American 426. The valves were splayed at an angle in a non-crossflow arrangement rather than the true opposed-valve layout that defines a genuine hemi head. Chrysler Australia called it a Hemi anyway because the name carried enormous marketing weight and because the chamber shape was hemispherical enough to produce the airflow advantage that the name implied. Purists have argued about this for fifty-five years. The engine did not care. It made torque.

Three displacements: 215, 245, and 265 cubic inches. The 245 was the volume engine, powering Valiants, Chargers, and commercial vehicles. Truck and heavy-duty versions ran low compression with a single Stromberg carburetor and a forged crankshaft for durability under sustained load, the same conservative calibration philosophy that every workhorse engine on this page follows. The performance versions went the other direction entirely.

The Six-Pack was the range-topping configuration. Three Weber 45 DCOE side-draft dual-throat carburetors on a bespoke intake manifold. Six throats feeding six cylinders. One throat per cylinder. The same individual-runner induction principle that the Weber cross-ram 283 used on a Detroit V8, applied to an Australian inline-six. A hotter camshaft. High-load valve springs. Revised exhaust headers. Compression raised to 10.0:1. Chrysler Australia never officially published output figures, but the engine is believed to have produced between 185 and 302 HP depending on tune and configuration. The torque figure is documented: 320 lb-ft. From 265 cubic inches. From six cylinders. Naturally aspirated.

Three hundred twenty lb-ft is the number that earns the Hemi-6 its place on this page. More torque than any street-legal series-production six-cylinder engine anywhere in the world until the Porsche 930 arrived in 1975 with a turbocharged 3.0 liter flat-six. Five years of holding a world record. The Jaguar XK six couldn't match it. The BMW sixes couldn't match it. The American sixes weren't remotely close. The Ford 300, the most torque-oriented American six on this page, made 260 lb-ft. The Hemi-6 Six-Pack made 60 more from fewer cubic inches with a compression ratio and induction system designed for performance rather than durability.

The Valiant Charger was the car that carried it. A short-wheelbase two-door coupe that Chrysler Australia built specifically to compete with the Holden Monaro and the Ford Falcon GT in the Australian muscle car market and at Bathurst. The Charger R/T E38 and E49 with the Six-Pack engine were among the fastest Australian production cars of the early 1970s. The E49 is widely considered the quickest Australian muscle car ever built, running 0 to 60 mph in approximately 6.1 seconds from a six-cylinder engine in an era when Australian V8s from Holden and Ford were the expected performance choice. A six-cylinder beating V8s. The same story the Holden 202 wrote at Bathurst in 1972 with Peter Brock's Torana XU-1, written by the competition with more carburetors and more torque.

The Hemi-6 remained in production from 1970 to 1981. Eleven years. It powered Valiants, Chargers, the Chrysler VIP, and the Chrysler by Chrysler across the entire final decade of Chrysler Australia's independent operation before the company was sold to Mitsubishi. When Chrysler Australia ended, the Hemi-6 ended with it. No American application ever used it. No other market received it. The engine that held a world torque record for five years existed only in Australia, powered only Australian cars, and disappeared when the Australian subsidiary that built it was sold.

The American Hemi is the engine everyone knows. The Australian Hemi is the engine that beat Porsche. Same name. Two fewer cylinders. Three Webers. And a torque record that no naturally aspirated production six-cylinder held before or matched for five years after.

14/09/2026

The Holden engine story on this page has been told through color codes. Grey Motor: 1948 to 1963. Red Motor: 1963 to 1978. Blue Motor: 1978 to 1980. Black Motor: 1980 onward. The 202 cubic inch Red Motor won Bathurst with Peter Brock driving a triple-carburetor Torana XU-1 against V8s. That story has been told. The 149 cubic inch Red Motor has a different story. No Bathurst. No triple carburetors. No Brock. Just millions of Australians driving to work, to school, to the shops, and back again. Every day. For a decade. In the smallest engine the Red Motor family offered. The one that nobody wanted and everybody got.

The 149 was the base engine. The one that came with the car when the buyer ticked no boxes on the option form. Two point four liters. Cast iron block and head. Overhead valves with hydraulic lifters. A single carburetor delivering fuel to six cylinders through an intake manifold that was designed for fuel economy and idle quality rather than airflow and power. Seven main bearings supporting the crankshaft, the same specification that defined the Red Motor family's durability advantage over the four-main-bearing Grey Motor it replaced. The 149 made modest horsepower. The number varied by year and market but hovered around 95 to 115 HP depending on compression ratio and emissions equipment. Not a number that made anyone's pulse quicken. A number that moved a Holden Kingswood or Belmont through suburban Sydney traffic without drama and without cost.

The shorter stroke was the 149's distinguishing characteristic within the Red Motor family. The 202 used a longer stroke for more displacement and more torque. The 161 and 173 sat in between. The 149 used the shortest stroke of all, which gave it a smoother-revving character and slightly less low-end torque than its larger siblings. In practice, the difference between a 149 and a 161 was perceptible to an enthusiast and invisible to a commuter. The commuter pressed the accelerator and the car moved. Whether it moved with 95 HP or 115 HP or 130 HP was a distinction that mattered on a spec sheet and disappeared on the Pacific Highway.

The 149 served the same role in Australia that the Slant Six served in America: the engine for the buyer who could not afford the engine they actually wanted. Every Holden buyer in the late 1960s and early 1970s who sat in the dealer's office wanted the 253 V8 or the 308 V8. The V8 sounded better. The V8 accelerated faster. The V8 impressed the neighbors. The 149 cost less to buy, less to insure, less to fuel, and less to maintain. The buyer's budget chose the 149. The buyer's ambition chose the V8. The budget won more often than the ambition. Millions of 149 Red Motors were sold to buyers who spent the first year wishing for a V8 and the next ten years spending less at the petrol station than their V8-owning neighbors.

The Red Motor family's interchangeability was the detail that gave the 149 a second life the factory didn't intend. Because all Red Motors shared the same block architecture, bore spacing, and bolt patterns, the 149 block could accept the camshaft, intake manifold, carburetors, and exhaust system from the larger 202. A Saturday afternoon with a socket set and a workshop manual turned a 149 into something closer to a 161 or 173 in character without changing the block. Head swaps. Cam swaps. Carb upgrades. The same progression that American hot rodders follow with the Chevy small-block, starting with the cheapest version and upgrading the parts on top, Australian enthusiasts followed with the Red Motor. The 149 was the starting point. The 202 parts catalog was the destination. The path between them was a weekend and a set of spanners.

The 149 was discontinued as the Red Motor family evolved and minimum displacement requirements grew. The 173 and 202 carried the inline-six role forward into the Blue and Black motor eras. The 149 disappeared from the option sheet without fanfare because base engines always disappear without fanfare. Nobody writes a tribute to the base engine. Nobody restores a car because it has a 149. Nobody puts a 149 badge on a t-shirt. The 149 is remembered by the people who drove one. Not with enthusiasm. With the quiet acknowledgment that the little engine started every morning, used less fuel than the V8 next door, and asked for nothing except oil changes and the occasional timing adjustment. The most modest engine in the Red Motor family. The one that did what an engine is supposed to do: work without being noticed. In a country where the V8 was king, the 149 was the commoner who kept the kingdom running.

13/05/2026

Before Toyota became one of Australia’s most trusted vehicle brands, it arrived through mining and construction, not suburban showrooms.

Sir Leslie Thiess, the Queensland contractor behind major earthmoving projects, is credited with bringing the first Toyota LandCruisers into Australia in 1958. He needed tough, reliable vehicles for the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, where roads were rough, weather changed fast and ordinary work vehicles struggled.

Thiess imported 13 LandCruisers and put them straight to work. Their performance in the Snowy mountains proved the Japanese 4WD could handle Australian conditions, from construction tracks to remote bush access.

That decision opened the door for Toyota in Australia. By 1959, Thiess Toyota was handling official imports, and the LandCruiser quickly moved from project sites to farms, mines, stations and government fleets.

What began as a practical contractor’s choice helped create one of the strongest 4WD reputations in Australian motoring history for decades to come.

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