A slice of Australian motorsport history went under
the hammer on the weekend, but fell short of expectations. The 1969 Holden HT
Monaro GTS 350 was the first HDT race-prepped car by legend Harry Firth and was
raced by Kevin Bartlett and Spencer Martin.
The very special coupe was expected to fetch a
seven-figure sum at the auction held in Essendon. The final winning bid came
well short, but at US$ 500,000 on the dot, the sellers will hopefully find reason
to smile.
Its new third owner was an anonymous phone bidder in
Queensland, described as a Holden fanatic who only found out about the auction
two days prior. Bidding started at US$ 366,000 and slowly rose to US$ 465,000, where
it then jumped to its final price of US$ 500,000. Many Holden fans on social media
claim it was a bargain.
Present at the auction was Firth’s head mechanic,
Ian Tate, along with Joe Felice – the boss of HDT during that time – and
90-year old “Uncle Bob” Phillips who originally delivered the car to Firth,
new, from Preston Motors.
