Southern Tablelands Heritage Automotive Restorers Club Inc.

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10^th Anniversary Dinner July 2011	Car of the Month

Rob and Heidi Smith-Saariven’s 1971 HG Holden Monaro GTS

Photos by Steve Cole.

Article by Rob Smith-Saariven

1971 GTS HG Monaro

My journey with my beloved 1971 GTS HG Monaro, factory 4 speed 308, 10 bolt with factory tramp rods, finished in cashmere  white with hounds tooth interior,  started in winter 2005. At the time I had a very nice older restored HK 307 Monaro, this car was to good to start again and not at a standard that i wanted my hobby car to be at. I was looking for a real challenge, a car i could strip and rebuild from the ground up.

I stumbled across my Monaro on EBAY; it was being sold by a local guy so I decided to take a look. The guy selling the car had owned it for 2 years; he also brought the car from Ebay. From the original owner. He had intended to fully restoring the car, when he purchase the car he started a very unorthodox restoration process. This involved pretty much painting the car with paint stripper, and then attacking the panels with an orbital sander and possibly an angle grinder. Unfortunately the plan didn’t include removing anything from the car, so when I turned up to inspect the beast, it was bear metal, covered in dents, with the usual Monaro rust spots, the interior looked like it had been used as a kennel, the motor sounded like it was running on 2 cylinders with no power and a terrible rattle, sounds attractive.

I must admit I felt a little sorry for the old girl. The good part was it was matching numbers and all original, with its factory motor running gear etc and it was in need of a full restoration, exactly what i was looking for.

The day I had it delivered to my place it was pouring with rain, the truck driver thought I was mad, I must admit I was having second thoughts as I examined my bare metal Monaro covered in surface rust. I had to work fast as it was completely soaked from the trip in the rain and was rusting before my eyes.

I did say I was after a project, so I got started, stripping the car back to an empty shell and catalogued every part. I sent the body off to the Fyshwick sand blaster, when I got the shell back it was in pretty bad shape, with pretty much every panel either dented or rusty. I sent the car to a local guy who ended up being a bit shifty, taking my money and doing a runner, after 6 months of messing around I eventually dropped the shell of at Canberra Body works who finished the panel work and applied the paint. He felt sorry for me after hearing my story of paying $$$$ to this guy who after 6 months had left the car in a slightly better shape than when he started the job.  CBW did a fantastic job, getting the panels dead straight without using filler and then finishing of the job with an immaculate paint job.

The running gear was fully restored, the interior was pretty much completely replaced with new or NOS items, I used John at Custom motor trimmers to re do the seats; his work was fantastic and identical to the original factory seats. Once the paint and panels where completed i started the fun part of the job, the reassembling of the car. This was by far the most satisfactory part of the process, and took me 18 months to slowly rebuilding the car piece by piece.

From start to finish the process took me 3 years. The journey was interesting with some standout experiences and some very, very disappointing work performed. My advice before you start your restoration project is talk to people in the car club who have restored cars, before you agree to let any one touch your baby.

I’m just about to start my next project, a very original, matching numbers LC GTR, wish me luck!

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