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Published on 07 January 2024

Not at all Pony. The Tilley brothers Brad and Cameron are Mopar motor racing legends and very relevant to this discussion. I remember in the early days of Australian Muscle Car magazine, I gathered some Historic Group Nb (pre-1965) and Group Nc (pre-1972) touring cars at Oran Park and got John Bowe to test-drive them. One of the cars was Cameron Tilley's S series Valiant, which was reminiscent of the famous Abbott/Smith/Leonard R series cars of the early '60s in terms of modification and performance. JB got the fright of his life when he first applied the Val's four-wheel drum brakes when they were still cold and it pulled left, right, left, right - it was all over the road! He praised Cameron's ability to squeeze so much speed out of the old girl, with its stove-hot slant six equipped with the longest inlet trumpets I've ever seen for the trio of 45mm twin-choke Webers. At the time Cameron claimed he'd never been beaten by a Hemi Charger in a Historic touring car race, which showed how quick it was. I think he used the same engine initially when he upgraded to the VF Pacer before switching to a V8 under TCM rule freedoms.