All Of Norm's Horses Back Together Again

The Age

Thursday March 25, 1999

Kevin Norbury

"Hurling nearly two tons of Chevrolet Impala saloon round Katoomba's twisty 1.3 mile Catalina circuit ... Norm Beechey carried off the NSW Touring Championship ... and thundered under the checkered flag a good 20 seconds ahead of Ian Geoghegan's ailing Jaguar."

WHEELS, November 1962.

Norm Beechey gently pats the immaculate iridescent turquoise blue and white Chevrolet Impala sitting on blocks (only temporarily, mind you) in the driveway of his Lower Plenty home and confides: "When I got it back, it was like having had a 17-year-old girlfriend and seeing her again at 80."

When he drove the Impala it was new. When he found it again 30 years later, it was only half the car it used to be. But it was the car from his heady racing days of the early 1960s and he wanted it back. It represented, in anybody's terms, a nostalgic journey. To slip behind the wheel again "brought back great memories", he says.

And now it is back, sitting in his driveway, beautifully restored, its cloth inlaid black-striped turquoise seats in showroom condition. And that engine. Wow. That famous 409-cubic-inch (6.7-litre) V8, with its unusual butterfly cylinder heads, plus a couple of Beechey additions, fills every nook and cranny under the bonnet.

Beechey bought the Impala in 1962, importing it new from the United States "to confront Bobby Jane's lovely Jaguar". As he says: "At the time the Jags were dominating touring car racing here and in England. Nothing beat a Jaguar in saloon-car racing for about seven years. Then along came this big, ungainly Chev that got them."

And as the above extract from WHEELS confirms, on his first "serious day out" in the Impala, he beat Geoghegan's Jag with 20 seconds to spare. "Storming Norman", as he became known, because of his flambouyant and aggressive driving style, went on to win two Australian National Touring Car Championships, although never in the Impala.

While he had the car for only a year, and drove many others in his 16-year racing career (a Ford Mustang when he won his first championship in 1965 and a Holden Monaro for his second title in 1970), the Impala was the one many motorsport fans of the 1950s and '60s still remember. And it was the one Beechey himself never forgot. "I fancied this one because it was such a unique car," he says. And it had that famous 409 engine. Beechey retreats to a room above his garage and flicks the switch on an old jukebox. Suddenly the Beach Boys belt out the song that immortalised the 409. It is clearly one of his favorite songs.

Now 66 and tending to talk as fast as he used to drive, Beechey candidly admits he's always had "very fond memories" of the Impala. It represented, he says, "a very glamorous part of my racing history". As he tells it, about 1990 he was off to the United States with plans to buy a similar car. But, before he left, he got to thinking that he wouldn't mind buying back one of his old racing cars. The Chevy in particular.

And, like a long lost pal, he went looking for it. He rang the local Chevrolet Club, although, he says, "I didn't expect it to be around". He got a call next day. The club knew exactly where it was. It was in a shed not far from Dan Murphy's Cellars, in Alphington. "It was in the hands of a collector, Barry Fletcher, and had been in his garage for 15 years," says Beechey.

Beechey went to see it. "When I looked at the car I nearly fainted. The tyres were flat, it was covered in spiders and cobwebs. It looked bloody awful." But he knew "instantly" that it was his old Impala. "Well, the bloody speedo's in the middle, isn't it?" he says, as if that were elementary. Then there's that tell-tale crinkle in the wheel arch in the boot where he came to grief at Catalina, a racetrack in NSW. And the scuff marks on the chrome around the driver's seat, caused by the roll bars.

Beechey explains that, before he sold the car, he had to put it back into road condition and converted it to right-hand-drive, but, because the speedo was diecast, it ended up in the middle. He won't say how much he paid to get the car back, although he admits it was "five times" its worth, and he has since spent megabucks restoring it.

He actually bought the car and chose the specs originally from a GM-H brochure, through his former racing driver/car dealer mate Frank Coad (winner of the Armstrong 500 at Phillip Island in a Vauxhall Cresta). He decided on the "new, revolutionary" 409 cubic inch engine - "the first of the big-block Chevs" - which came with two Carter four-barrel carbies, a four-speed gearbox, limited-slip diff, a tacho mounted on the dash and "special sintered metallic brake linings" that didn't fade.

"The engine in this car never came to Australia. It was unique to America," he says. "The other interesting feature of the car is that it was a four-door pillarless hardtop with electric windows. In 1962, '63 and '64 in Australia, you had to race a four-door car."

The Impala was shipped to Brisbane and Beechey, Coad "and another friend" went up to get it and drove it back. It took three months to prepare it for the racetrack. But, while he won his first day out in the Impala at Calder and went on to take the NSW and Victorian Touring Car Championships, beating Bob Jane and Pete Geoghegan, in Mk2 Jaguars, the gearbox "proved fragile" and the car was expensive to maintain.

He was offered a sponsored drive in an American-prepared Holman and Moody 1963 Ford Galaxy. "All I needed was my crash helmet," he says. "I thought I'd hit the big time. Probably had." So he sold the Impala.

When he got the car back it had the smaller 327 cubic inch engine in it - "in its normal form you couldn't run it. It did about three miles to the gallon" - an aftermarket Borg-Warner gearbox and no limited-slip diff.

The car took about a year to restore. Beechey bought two 409 engines from the States, but, as neither was satisfactory, he built one out of the two, put back the four-speed close-ratio Chev Muncie gearbox and the limited-slip diff. The Impala has been restored inside and out, although the turquoise door trims, the tops of the seats and star-patterned blue roof lining are original.

"That car as you see it is exactly how it raced," says Beechey - minus, of course, the roll bars and the two big Porsche oil coolers that used to sit under the front bumper - although, on second thoughts, he thinks it's probably in better shape. The original V8 engine put out a thumping 435 horsepower (324kW). "It now has about 100 more (nearly 400kW)." When the Impala ran in the Geelong sprints in 1962, it did 15.2 seconds for the standing quarter mile. He took it back there in January this year and covered the same distance in 13.18 seconds. "So she's got a bit more pickup," he says.

Beechey describes the feeling of getting his old Impala back as "like buying back a little bit of your youth". In its day, the car could do 140 to 150mph (225-240kmh). Now he reckons it could top 160mph (nearly 260kmh). "I can tell you, if you were to go for a ride in that one day, it's a wild ride still," he grins.

Norm Beechey won his first race and touring car trophy at Albert Park during the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956, in a Ford Customline. Then came a black early-model Holden, the 1948 215; he raced it for five years and it was regarded as one of Australia's fastest early-model Holdens.

In 1962 he imported the Chevrolet Impala Mk I, kitted out with a four-speed box and 409-cubic-inch engine. He won 70 per cent of his racing starts in the Chevy, including the NSW and Victorian Touring Car Championships.

The following year he stepped into a 406-cubic-inch Ford Galaxy V8, creating a lap record in the Touring Car Championship at Sandown. Then, in a Holden S4 in 1964, he came second in the Australian championships.

In 1965, Beechey got behind the wheel of a new Ford Mustang, with a 289-cubic-inch V8, a two-door touring car equipped with a full race Shelby Cobra competition engine, and drove the Mustang to its world-first win in a road race and his first Australian touring car title.

The next year he imported a new, super-lightweigh 475hp two-door Chevrolet Nova II, fitted with a 327-cubic-inch V8, led the field at Bathurst, but came in second after a slipping clutch. He went on to win the Queensland, Victorian and SA touring titles in the Nova, which he also raced in New Zealand.

Then came the Chev Camaro 350-cubic-inch V8 followed by the popular Holden Monaro GTS 327, in which he won first time out at Calder against the dominant Trans-Am Mustangs and went on to win the WA Touring Car Championship. Still driving the Monaro, the following year he won the Queensland and Tasmanian touring car titles.

But Beechey's best year was yet to come and, in 1970, driving a yellow Holden Monaro GTS 350 he took out his second Australian title and had several other wins against Chrysler's Valiant Pacer. The next year he took the car to New Zealand for more success and ended his career in 1972 with another win in the Monaro.

But he always had a soft spot for Chevrolets and now drives a sleek, red plastic-bodied six-speed C5 Chev Corvette.