The Monza from Melbourne

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The Monza name certainly graced a wide variety of automobiles. From Lamborghini Monza to Opel Monza, from DKW Monza to Chevrolet Monza, from Devin Monza to Kougar Monza and from Ferrari Monza to Alfa-Romeo Monza. Right. But you may have missed out on the most stunning of them all: the Molina Monza. Australian auctioneer Moss Green has an interesting assumption about it. They say: “Australia saw its racing Specials in the 1950’s developed to a degree well beyond most other nations, largely due to the shortage of pedigree racing cars and components, being so far from the epi-centre of engineering overseas. And so, the local racer had to improvise and invent in order to be competitive.”

Food for thought, but fact is that the 1957 Molina Monza - which they offer for sale on November 27 - indeed has to be the finest of what the Antipodean Specials Scene brought forth. Instigated by Melbourne racer Lou Molina, the Monza started out as a tubular chassis’d and alloy-bodied project in early 1955. Being Australian, the power naturally had to be Holden sourced. And so, they took a straight-six with Repco crossflow head and Marshall blower and mated it to a Jaguar Moss box, good for 199bhp. From May 1957-on the Monza was campaigned intensively. In between the races it could also be seen in the 1959 flick ‘On the Beach’ with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire.

But after being sold, crashed, resold, fallen off a Tasmanian truck, sold again and once again, it took until the 1990s before a proper rebuilt was planned. And until 2000 before this restoration was finished. It changed hands once or twice more but was never raced in anger again. Now, with a healthy 290 dyno’d bhps and reportedly over 150,000 Australian dollars spent since January 2013, the Molina Monza is ready for a new era.

(Words Jeroen Booij, pictures courtesy Mossgreen)   

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