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HomeNewsZAK BROWN ADDS ALLAN MOFFAT CAR TO COLLECTION

ZAK BROWN ADDS ALLAN MOFFAT CAR TO COLLECTION

ZAK Brown’s already impressive collection of racecars now includes a machine once raced and owned by Allan Moffat.

V8 Sleuth can reveal that the Walkinshaw Andretti United co-owner and CEO of the McLaren Formula 1 team has acquired the Chevrolet Monza that Moffat campaigned in Australian Sports Sedan races during the 1970s.

The car was originally built by expat-Australian Horst Kwech and renowned engineer Lee Dystra’s DeKon Engineering company in 1975 and was one of a suite of IMSA-spec Monzas the outfit built.

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Moffat raced the car in a couple of IMSA races that same year before buying the car and shipping it home.

The Monza’s arrival down under came as a bit of a shock to fans – a Ford hero racing a Chevy?!? – and to Moffat’s Sports Sedan rivals.

Moffat heading Jim Richards on his way to victory in the 1976 Sandown ASSC round, held on July 4 – the Monza’s #200 is in honour of the United States’ bicentennial. Pic: an1images.com / Ian Smith

He romped to victory in the car’s first races on Australian soil at Amaroo, then won the first two rounds of the Australian Sports Sedan Championship at Surfers Paradise and Sandown.

The victories underpinned Moffat’s victory in the inaugural national Sports Sedan title, during which he campaigned both his new Monza and his Ford Capri RS3100.

However, the Monza’s time in the sun was very brief; Ford’s decision to return to touring car racing through a Moffat Ford Dealers team meant the Chevrolet was parked for the next two seasons.

After Ford’s exit, Moffat returned to the Monza’s cockpit for a handful of races in 1979 and 1980 before he sold it off.

Moffat campaigned the Monza in this stunning brown, red and yellow livery in 1979-80. Pic: an1images.com / Ian Smith

The car passed through the hands of several competitors over subsequent years, before being sold back to the United States in the mid-1990s.

Californian Steve Sorenson purchased the car in 2005 and completed a thorough restoration of the Monza in 2015, returning the car to the same livery and specification it ran in Moffat’s hands in 1976.

The Monza is not the first car in Brown’s collection that holds an Australian link.

He also owns the Williams FW07B that Alan Jones used to win the non-championship 1980 Australian Grand Prix, and also won the British and French Grands Prix on the way to Jones’ F1 World Championship victory.

Brown also owns the Holden Racing Team VE II Commodore that won the 2011 Bathurst 1000.

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