Frank Gardner

Genuine Trans Am guys speak up
Frank Gardner (Oct. 1st, 1930 - August 29th 2009)
© Frank Gardner, David Bowden, Wolfgang Kohrn - February 16th, 2003, last updated February, 6th, 2021

Frank Gardners Trans Am History and a few more insights into his Falcon and other race car related stories - Page 2

..continued from http://www.ponysite.de/transam_gardner_interview.htm

So it was basically finding the best car from the Ford range, and the Falcon was it?
Yes, the Falcon was by far the best car. There was nothing remotely like it and they’ll never ever have to develop it to the extent of .....you know, there were ages of development but we didn’t have to do that, ....didn’t have to resort to it.

The car itself... apart from that, was one of the cars from the Monte Carlo Rally?

1963 Falcon Rallye
Yes, it was one of the cars from the Monte Carlo Rally.... discarded until the regulations came around that way and then it was suddenly in vogue. It had just sat there with weeds and things growing through it cause nobody wanted it. They were a bit of a hybrid thing, so people steered away from fibreglass body work because it wasn’t the sort of thing people were looking for. Just because if you'd done it any injury, you couldn’t take it to a panel shop, and that is what people were educated that way at that time.

Going back to the Monte Carlo Rally, you actually drove a support vehicle?
Yes, that's right. The Ford Transits... they had 7.9, almost 8 litre engines in them, and they were dual rear tyre things. They were quite capable, like Peter Harper, Peter Procter and all these people were driving cars, and we could comfortably overtake them in our van with all the welding bottles, and everything like that because we would work back and get them organized , so they’d been off the road and weld up, whatever was required, work through the night. Then you get into these things, overtake all the bloody rally cars, and be at the finish line first.

Editors note: Alan Mann rather mentioned that there was only 1 big block Ford Econoline, not Transit used, but we'll check that again.

So they offered you more money to do that than to drive the cars?
Yeah... well if you can get somebody who can drive and weld, and you know.... you get a run, jump, stunt, truck driver individual, they said "Well you know, like you‘ll be a hand and you’ll be there, and you can stay awake, and you really did not have to do that much because mostly you totally relied on the navigators.

Did you ever race a Mustang before the 69 car? Maybe an Allan Mann Mustang?
No, I had never ran a Mustang (before that 69er). The only Mustang I ever had was when they ran a production race in America, and a Mustang was first prize. If you won all the production races, which I won them all.... so I came home with an American Mustang, which I converted to right hand drive. I was going to bring it back to Australia but I never did, too much stuffing around at the time. That was the prize for winning the production race. But I never ever drove those from Alan Mann, he had people like Bo Ljungfeldt and they were the drivers. I mean... if you sat with Bo you suddenly realized how inadequate you were. The bloke was absolutely out of this world, he had such fabulous car control, smart on ice, he was spectacular. He didn’t make mistakes.

Yeah, he had a fantastic record...

Picture courtesy Bjornar Djonne
"The bloke was absolutely out of this world, he had such fabulous car control, smart on ice, he was spectacular. He didn’t make mistakes." Frank Gardner about Bo Ljungfeldt
Picture courtesy B. Djonne/Norway
.......but he came into it too late in life, you know, he sat there, and suddenly somebody said "Holy.. this bloke can drive, and he came from zero to hero overnight. He was too late in life and then Ford dropped that particular program that you could have used him for. The Roger Clarke’s and people like that ...we put in as road racers... but they weren’t the cutting edge in road racing. They were good rallye people, but the next rung of the ladder wasn’t a bad thing alongside the Andy Rouse’s and the John Fitzpatrick’s and people like that. They were available, and those two sat in their way, they rallied and rallied and rallied, off the bitumen, and in the snow and stuff. They were spectacular, but where it had to be the fine sophisticated edge.... where you work with your car, not against it...... they didn’t get up to that stage ever.

We’ll get back to the ’69 Mustang now, you raced it in England of course, you won the British Touring Car championship with the car?.... any memorable races?

Frank Gardner, BTC Champion in 1967, in 1969 he missed it due to tyre problems in the final race Picture courtesy Ford

Oh, (you only remember) the last one you won. You don’t horde up things like that, otherwise you get to the stage where you wouldn’t walk under a black cat or where Tuesdays are a bad day, (where) I won’t wake up. Or Friday the 13th, I won’t go out. You can’t ever ever ever say that.

You can have races where you think, it all went well, and then you go back and you say, you were supposed to do this and do that, and what went wrong? You know.... the bloke might have been in hospital or something, but if you had a bad day or a bad week, there’s always a very logical reason for it. You can see it coming, but in the situation, you got to stand by it quickly, and get the contingency plan underway rather rapidly. So you don’t have a bad weekend, just every couple of years, you get one slip through.

The reasons, "the boat got held up crossing the channel", "the storm", or something and you arrive late, and the weathers shithouse, and you can’t catch up..... and you haven’t quite got the ratios right, and then you might get your arse blown off, but you cut your losses, and bring it home in one piece.

You don’t get stupid about it thinking I’ll come here, I’ll come from the middle of the grid, and lead this race. You can’t do things like that, so you just cut your losses and bring it home all in one piece so you don’t get stuck working on the damn thing at a panel shop or with your suspension, just keep it ready for the next race.

About the history of your Mustang, did you import it to Australia?

Picture above courtesy Peter Lyall

Picture courtesy Dale Smith

Picture courtesy Australian Muscle Car Mag
No, I didn’t. (What I remember) the car was to the best of my knowledge - and Brabham can back this all up - in South Africa (the last time I saw it). It won in the Springbok series, and we usually drove to the Weelong(?) Street in Johannesburg, where it was at the big Ford dealership.

So they were our posts, we had our workshops. The car was on the top floor, getting detailed after the race. It only had to have the paintwork touched up, and there wasn’t a great deal to do to it, so they wanted to bring it down into the showroom. So I think the "jungle bunnies" pushed it with another "jungle bunny" at the wheel, and they didn’t understand that the motor had to run to have brakes. So it came down the stairways gathering speed, tidied up a couple of cars in the showroom and ran out into Weelong(?) Street. It got itself reasonably bent, cause it hit some concrete on the way through and stuff like that, and it had done an enormous amount of damage.
So Jack Brabham went around to see Walter Hayes and told him that I would like to buy it and bring it to Australia. Walter asked me, if we could do anything more with it. And I said, no we had by then gone over it and I did not want to race it again. So, it is only an incumbrance, so it would be good if you could get some money for it or if you think it is a promotable thing. So we sold it to Jack Brabham.

(So Jack brought it to Australia). Arrived in Sydney at the docks, Jackie’s there. They’d straightened it out a bit at Grosven Motors in South Africa and put it on the boat. So then its down at the wharf and Jack obviously didn’t go down to the dock himself. He let the labourers and the winch people.... and those people giving him a hand running around. Jack had a zip on wallet and I think he had one of those big Yale box things as well. They got it to a reasonable height and surprise surprise..... it fell down onto the docks.

So everything got up through the mudguards, and so then there was a whole heap more work to be done to straighten it out. Anyway they got it straightened out, and then they went to Oran Park to have a race and Johnny Leffler drove it. And then coming back from the race, they didn’t have safety chains on around the tow ball.... and they’d been celebrating and the thing came off and bounced down the bridge end of the creek, and really destroyed itself. So it had three major shunts, after having a lifetime of not even getting a mark on it on the race track.

Not one of them at a race track!
Not one of them at a race track, true and that was it, it was all over rover. So... what happened with the engine? I think it got sold into a speed boat, I never bothered to check with Jack, as he was the proprietor of it, but I believe Walter Hayes was extremely generous with what he did.
So, that was really the demise to the motorcar. What happened to the bits, and the gearbox, and diffs, which were good parts? You know they were the best of the best. I do not know where they all went.

Going to the engine now.... I’m not sure, was it the 302 engine Mildren used in the formula 5000?
No, certainly not, no. that was a different engine.

Frank, how do you evaluate that ’69 Mustang as a race car, looking back on it now?

Well, you have to evaluate it on its results. It’s not a point of anybody standing up and saying if and but or what, if you look at its results, it never ever broke down. It won most things it was entered for, it was used considerably, it’s got the Championship, so endurance wise and for the state of the art of what was around..... and what it was running against and the quality of the drivers, it was competing against.....you have to just treat it like that. You can’t say, and I would never get up and say, that for the state of the art it’s like the T70 Lola. I think, at that point it was the nicest car I had driven.
And I had driven a fair few cars with Ferrari, but the T70 was something special, it really was a good car, but that was a state of the Art then. I remember sitting back in an MG, you get back in these things like a little MG with wooden doors and wooden dash... and you go around a corner, and all the white ants stand up and hold hands to give it a bit of torsional rigity ... and the little gear lever is rattling.... and the Lucas windscreen wipers, and you look at it and say, well... everything rolls on so dramatically.

Well at the time, the memory, it’s like going back to your little old village and thinking well, I thought that hill was steeper. You see you can never ever get yourself a fixation, and say that was a great car, or that was a great board, or stuff like that.

That was like... I think Colin Chapman made a Lotus Sports car, a Lotus 30 sports car, and when he made a Lotus 40 sports car, it was just the same car with 10 more mistakes. You have to get these things, I mean if you’ve driven over, and tested well over 100 vehicles in your time, and raced.... your job is to make that thing competitive, and you can’t shrug away the hours & hours you’ve put in, if you want to have a crack at something, you put in a 100% effort. They’re your rule books. Because if you give 10% to there family, and 10% to a business down the road, and another 5%, then suddenly you’ve got just 75% effort you can only put into your racing. It takes the full 100%. So how are you going to win with 75%. If you get the vehicle, you know you gotta give it 100, to get it all organized, and the right people, and the right things, to look at it, and don’t bother to bring it out.

Thanks very much for your time, Frank.
Your welcome David, your always welcome.
Editors note: We are right now re-checking a few more very interesting statements of Frank as for his stunt driving in a few movies. . ..
Well it never happened and by 2009 we are sorry to notice he died on August 29th. 2009.
Rest in Peace and our condolences are with his family.
What happened to #148625?
When I visited the Bowdens down under a decade or more ago they told me about the remainders and what they had on their mind to get it together again or rebuild the bits and pieces and joining it with the title. Such a project is not really matching the Bowdens idea of buffing it out with their Bowdens Own products, though it will support the project - financially spoken.
The project turned out to be a long-lasting one. We are curious to see when it comes back in the mid to late 2020ies maybe. (Status 2021)

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	Frank Gardners Trans Am History and a few more insights into his Falcon and other race car related stories - Page 2 ..continued from http://www.ponysite.de/transam_gardner_interview.htm
So it was basically finding the best car from the Ford range, and the Falcon was it?	Yes, the Falcon was by far the best car. There was nothing remotely like it and they’ll never ever have to develop it to the extent of .....you know, there were ages of development but we didn’t have to do that, ....didn’t have to resort to it.
The car itself... apart from that, was one of the cars from the Monte Carlo Rally? 1963 Falcon Rallye	Yes, it was one of the cars from the Monte Carlo Rally.... discarded until the regulations came around that way and then it was suddenly in vogue. It had just sat there with weeds and things growing through it cause nobody wanted it. They were a bit of a hybrid thing, so people steered away from fibreglass body work because it wasn’t the sort of thing people were looking for. Just because if you'd done it any injury, you couldn’t take it to a panel shop, and that is what people were educated that way at that time.
Going back to the Monte Carlo Rally, you actually drove a support vehicle?	Yes, that's right. The Ford Transits... they had 7.9, almost 8 litre engines in them, and they were dual rear tyre things. They were quite capable, like Peter Harper, Peter Procter and all these people were driving cars, and we could comfortably overtake them in our van with all the welding bottles, and everything like that because we would work back and get them organized , so they’d been off the road and weld up, whatever was required, work through the night. Then you get into these things, overtake all the bloody rally cars, and be at the finish line first. Editors note: Alan Mann rather mentioned that there was only 1 big block Ford Econoline, not Transit used, but we'll check that again.
So they offered you more money to do that than to drive the cars?	Yeah... well if you can get somebody who can drive and weld, and you know.... you get a run, jump, stunt, truck driver individual, they said "Well you know, like you‘ll be a hand and you’ll be there, and you can stay awake, and you really did not have to do that much because mostly you totally relied on the navigators.
Did you ever race a Mustang before the 69 car? Maybe an Allan Mann Mustang?	No, I had never ran a Mustang (before that 69er). The only Mustang I ever had was when they ran a production race in America, and a Mustang was first prize. If you won all the production races, which I won them all.... so I came home with an American Mustang, which I converted to right hand drive. I was going to bring it back to Australia but I never did, too much stuffing around at the time. That was the prize for winning the production race. But I never ever drove those from Alan Mann, he had people like Bo Ljungfeldt and they were the drivers. I mean... if you sat with Bo you suddenly realized how inadequate you were. The bloke was absolutely out of this world, he had such fabulous car control, smart on ice, he was spectacular. He didn’t make mistakes.
Yeah, he had a fantastic record... "The bloke was absolutely out of this world, he had such fabulous car control, smart on ice, he was spectacular. He didn’t make mistakes." Frank Gardner about Bo Ljungfeldt Picture courtesy B. Djonne/Norway	.......but he came into it too late in life, you know, he sat there, and suddenly somebody said "Holy.. this bloke can drive, and he came from zero to hero overnight. He was too late in life and then Ford dropped that particular program that you could have used him for. The Roger Clarke’s and people like that ...we put in as road racers... but they weren’t the cutting edge in road racing. They were good rallye people, but the next rung of the ladder wasn’t a bad thing alongside the Andy Rouse’s and the John Fitzpatrick’s and people like that. They were available, and those two sat in their way, they rallied and rallied and rallied, off the bitumen, and in the snow and stuff. They were spectacular, but where it had to be the fine sophisticated edge.... where you work with your car, not against it...... they didn’t get up to that stage ever.
We’ll get back to the ’69 Mustang now, you raced it in England of course, you won the British Touring Car championship with the car?.... any memorable races? Frank Gardner, BTC Champion in 1967, in 1969 he missed it due to tyre problems in the final race Picture courtesy Ford	Oh, (you only remember) the last one you won. You don’t horde up things like that, otherwise you get to the stage where you wouldn’t walk under a black cat or where Tuesdays are a bad day, (where) I won’t wake up. Or Friday the 13th, I won’t go out. You can’t ever ever ever say that. You can have races where you think, it all went well, and then you go back and you say, you were supposed to do this and do that, and what went wrong? You know.... the bloke might have been in hospital or something, but if you had a bad day or a bad week, there’s always a very logical reason for it. You can see it coming, but in the situation, you got to stand by it quickly, and get the contingency plan underway rather rapidly. So you don’t have a bad weekend, just every couple of years, you get one slip through. The reasons, "the boat got held up crossing the channel", "the storm", or something and you arrive late, and the weathers shithouse, and you can’t catch up..... and you haven’t quite got the ratios right, and then you might get your arse blown off, but you cut your losses, and bring it home in one piece. You don’t get stupid about it thinking I’ll come here, I’ll come from the middle of the grid, and lead this race. You can’t do things like that, so you just cut your losses and bring it home all in one piece so you don’t get stuck working on the damn thing at a panel shop or with your suspension, just keep it ready for the next race.
About the history of your Mustang, did you import it to Australia? Picture above courtesy Peter Lyall Picture courtesy Dale Smith Picture courtesy Australian Muscle Car Mag	No, I didn’t. (What I remember) the car was to the best of my knowledge - and Brabham can back this all up - in South Africa (the last time I saw it). It won in the Springbok series, and we usually drove to the Weelong(?) Street in Johannesburg, where it was at the big Ford dealership. So they were our posts, we had our workshops. The car was on the top floor, getting detailed after the race. It only had to have the paintwork touched up, and there wasn’t a great deal to do to it, so they wanted to bring it down into the showroom. So I think the "jungle bunnies" pushed it with another "jungle bunny" at the wheel, and they didn’t understand that the motor had to run to have brakes. So it came down the stairways gathering speed, tidied up a couple of cars in the showroom and ran out into Weelong(?) Street. It got itself reasonably bent, cause it hit some concrete on the way through and stuff like that, and it had done an enormous amount of damage. So Jack Brabham went around to see Walter Hayes and told him that I would like to buy it and bring it to Australia. Walter asked me, if we could do anything more with it. And I said, no we had by then gone over it and I did not want to race it again. So, it is only an incumbrance, so it would be good if you could get some money for it or if you think it is a promotable thing. So we sold it to Jack Brabham. (So Jack brought it to Australia). Arrived in Sydney at the docks, Jackie’s there. They’d straightened it out a bit at Grosven Motors in South Africa and put it on the boat. So then its down at the wharf and Jack obviously didn’t go down to the dock himself. He let the labourers and the winch people.... and those people giving him a hand running around. Jack had a zip on wallet and I think he had one of those big Yale box things as well. They got it to a reasonable height and surprise surprise..... it fell down onto the docks. So everything got up through the mudguards, and so then there was a whole heap more work to be done to straighten it out. Anyway they got it straightened out, and then they went to Oran Park to have a race and Johnny Leffler drove it. And then coming back from the race, they didn’t have safety chains on around the tow ball.... and they’d been celebrating and the thing came off and bounced down the bridge end of the creek, and really destroyed itself. So it had three major shunts, after having a lifetime of not even getting a mark on it on the race track.
Not one of them at a race track!	Not one of them at a race track, true and that was it, it was all over rover. So... what happened with the engine? I think it got sold into a speed boat, I never bothered to check with Jack, as he was the proprietor of it, but I believe Walter Hayes was extremely generous with what he did. So, that was really the demise to the motorcar. What happened to the bits, and the gearbox, and diffs, which were good parts? You know they were the best of the best. I do not know where they all went.
Going to the engine now.... I’m not sure, was it the 302 engine Mildren used in the formula 5000?	No, certainly not, no. that was a different engine.
Frank, how do you evaluate that ’69 Mustang as a race car, looking back on it now?	Well, you have to evaluate it on its results. It’s not a point of anybody standing up and saying if and but or what, if you look at its results, it never ever broke down. It won most things it was entered for, it was used considerably, it’s got the Championship, so endurance wise and for the state of the art of what was around..... and what it was running against and the quality of the drivers, it was competing against.....you have to just treat it like that. You can’t say, and I would never get up and say, that for the state of the art it’s like the T70 Lola. I think, at that point it was the nicest car I had driven. And I had driven a fair few cars with Ferrari, but the T70 was something special, it really was a good car, but that was a state of the Art then. I remember sitting back in an MG, you get back in these things like a little MG with wooden doors and wooden dash... and you go around a corner, and all the white ants stand up and hold hands to give it a bit of torsional rigity ... and the little gear lever is rattling.... and the Lucas windscreen wipers, and you look at it and say, well... everything rolls on so dramatically. Well at the time, the memory, it’s like going back to your little old village and thinking well, I thought that hill was steeper. You see you can never ever get yourself a fixation, and say that was a great car, or that was a great board, or stuff like that. That was like... I think Colin Chapman made a Lotus Sports car, a Lotus 30 sports car, and when he made a Lotus 40 sports car, it was just the same car with 10 more mistakes. You have to get these things, I mean if you’ve driven over, and tested well over 100 vehicles in your time, and raced.... your job is to make that thing competitive, and you can’t shrug away the hours & hours you’ve put in, if you want to have a crack at something, you put in a 100% effort. They’re your rule books. Because if you give 10% to there family, and 10% to a business down the road, and another 5%, then suddenly you’ve got just 75% effort you can only put into your racing. It takes the full 100%. So how are you going to win with 75%. If you get the vehicle, you know you gotta give it 100, to get it all organized, and the right people, and the right things, to look at it, and don’t bother to bring it out.
Thanks very much for your time, Frank.	Your welcome David, your always welcome.
Editors note: We are right now re-checking a few more very interesting statements of Frank as for his stunt driving in a few movies. . .. Well it never happened and by 2009 we are sorry to notice he died on August 29th. 2009. Rest in Peace and our condolences are with his family.	What happened to #148625? When I visited the Bowdens down under a decade or more ago they told me about the remainders and what they had on their mind to get it together again or rebuild the bits and pieces and joining it with the title. Such a project is not really matching the Bowdens idea of buffing it out with their Bowdens Own products, though it will support the project - financially spoken. The project turned out to be a long-lasting one. We are curious to see when it comes back in the mid to late 2020ies maybe. (Status 2021)