Re: Hemi 6

The export field was small... New Zealand being the big market (there are many keen Hemi 6 owners and developers there still today) with a small number to New Guinea, I would think, and some to England.

South Africa, which was a major market for Chrysler Australia, still got the slant 6, probably for spares inventory rationalisation.

Today the motor industry in Australia is on the verge of dying. Free trade agreements and high labour costs weigh against us, Chrysler Australia was sold out to Mitsubishi in 1980 or '81, they did keep making Mitsubishi Valiants for a short time because they were so profitable. Even though the body was an outdated design, the equipment was amortised totally and overheads were low.

General Motors and Ford are pulling out of manufacture in the next couple of years, BMC (later Leyland) were shafted out of the market in 1974 or 1975, I don't know what level of assembly is still done here of Toyota and other Japanese makes, but most cars will be full imports in a year or two. A really sad situation.

And, of course, those local content rules went by the board years ago. On that subject there were some strange alliances came up... JRA (Jaguar Rover Australia) were assembling Dolomites here, a 2-litre sedan under the Triumph brand name and a quota system came in at that time. Let's say they sold 1,500 of them in a year, so they retained a quota to make 1,500 sedans of that size per year and the Dolomites went out of production. They took over assembly of the Peugeot 505 to fill that quota.

The place is filling up with Hyundai and Kia now, though there is still a lot of Holden and Falcon around. Toyota and latterly Mazda are strong, Subaru has a good presence.

Gary, I doubt that there was any such motive with Mitsubishi and the Hemi 6. They did keep making it through for that final year, the last of the Valiants were all Hemi 6 equipped.

By 1981, of course, you would have to say that any pushrod engine was becoming a bit old hat, not something you would tool up to build. Ford had their OHC motor for the Falcon within another decade and all the Nissans and Toymotors were also OHC by then. The Japanese influence here was very strong.

Ray