First published in Street Machine Hot Rod #18, August 2017

You were known for your Munster Mouse funny car-styled B/Altered, but a lot of people wouldn’t know how far back your history with the car went.

I must have picked it up when I was about 17, so about 1964 or ’65. I don’t think I even had a licence. It was sitting in the backyard at a fishermens’ co-op that I used to go past on my way to work. It was a JWF Milano kit car on a Prefect chassis with the original four-cylinder in it and I thought: ‘Beauty, I’ll have that!’ So one day I got game enough to ask them if they wanted to sell it and I bought it. I brought it home and I remember thinking: ‘This is a lot of work.’ But I kept playing with it after work.

What was the story behind the car’s original name, Mighty Mouse?

My nickname was ‘Mick’, which came about from a toy I used to have of the Mighty Mouse cartoon character, and being the youngest of three boys. No one knew me as Ron and people would look at you funny if you asked for me by that name. I got a guy that used to do a lot of signwriting for the speedway and he made up the Mighty Mouse picture on the side with the name.

So you were off to the drags, but an engine swap came pretty soon after?

One Friday night, my mate Billy Fletcher came over and said: “What are you messing around with that thing for? It’s gonna go nowhere. Why don’t we pull the motor out of your [FC] ute and we’ll put it in the Milano!” I’d sort of done my licence for three months and had nothing better to do than play around with it. So Saturday morning, out comes the motor from my ute. It was a hot 179, modified 149 head on it with a Waggott cam. I always liked the twin Strombergs for some reason. Out came the oxy torch and the next minute we were ready to go to the Bunbury drags.

How did that first drag meet go for the new Mighty Mouse?

We ended up chewin’ the tailshaft out of it because we had it on too much of a lean. So we dragged it home again. In the off-season we started to get a bit more serious with it. We took everything out from under it, threw it away, and started again.

That was the new funny car-style dragster with the tilt-up body?

Yes. That’s when it became the Munster Mouse, which was an angrier version of the Mighty Mouse, so we added teeth to the mouse on the side of the car and made him a lot more aggressive.

That new set-up came with a lot more homegrown innovation from the Willmott boys, didn’t it?

We kept the front-end stub axles from the Prefect then modified it and set it up with Volkswagen torsion bars on the front. My eldest brother Charlie was a boilermaker/welder, so he made the [centre-steer] chassis up out of one-inch square tube, and he knew how to build it to allow for stresses. Every time he’d say he was gonna put a thick bit of steel in, I’d say: “Nah, nah, nah. Can’t we go a bit lighter?” And he’d look at me and say: “I’m not gonna answer to Mum if something happens to you!” So we’d argue a little bit, but in the end he built it to what I wanted. My other brother Frank was a spray painter so he did all the paintwork.

Looking at photos of the first build of the car, it had a wilder track that was changed on the Munster Mouse.

The original diff was a Holden one but we didn’t pass scrutineering because it didn’t have safety hubs [fully floating] on it. We got away with it for a while but were eventually found out and told to change it. So we put a diff out of a Ford Thames van in it, which had the right hubs already. It was running a 4.5:1 ratio, I think, so we only used second and top in the gearbox.

You also built a new engine after a bit of strife with the 179.

We ended up snapping three valves off, which then got punched back up through the head. We’d spent so much time on that 149 head, making it a 12-port. It was that shiny inside, it was like chrome. I almost cried when we destroyed it.

Did you get to the bottom of what caused the failure?

At the time, Bert from Bert Jones Cams was at the meet and we went over to talk to him. He gave us a 40/80, which had a 500-and-something lift on it. He told us to get Camaro springs and early-model retainers and they won’t pull the heads off the valves, which is what happened to the old motor, but we ended up rebuilding it.

Most were going 192ci red motors at the time, but you went for something different with the rebuild.

CHES Power in East Fremantle rebuilt the 179 to a 190 for us. The owner said to me: “We don’t want to build you a 192 because we have too much trouble with ’em. I’ll build you a 190 and that’ll hold together.” For some reason the 192s used to always throw rods. We never had any problems with the motor after that.

The new-style front wheels must have turned a few heads at the time.

They came from Joe Oliver, who had a shop out in West Perth. He said: “I know the right wheels for that car!” Nobody else even knew about these wheels at the time. They came over in rough form and I was an electroplater, so I polished them up and made them all spiffy. We had new aluminium wheels before anyone else was running them. People used to say that the Willmott brothers were crazy, and that what they did to their car was that far advanced it wasn’t funny.

So it was well ahead of its time.

We were running the first rose joints when everyone else was running steering knuckles. Joe Sciano’s speed shop in South Fremantle got them in for us and it was quite interesting as Joe came with us when we took it to be scrutineered. They’d never seen them before and were saying: “We don’t know about these…” The next minute, Joe flies over and out comes all these sizes and weights and stress figures. They were dumbfounded! We also used to use the block-mounted fuel pump to pump air into the little fuel tank at the front. We had a cable connected to a release valve to drain the pressure from the tank after a run. It was just enough to not blow the seats in the carbies. It never had a dedicated fuel pump on the car.

After all the changes, how did the new car fare at the then-new Ravenswood track?

We ran it for a couple of years. They put us in B/Altered against the Simca Roller Coaster, which had a 325ci engine with Hilborn fuel injection, all the good American gear in it. We had to run against that all the time and we’d get out off the line okay, but once the V8 came on, they’d go past us.

You used to do a bit of back-road dyno tuning back then. Any stories you can tell us about that?

Colin Roose used to tune the car for us. One day I got him on the back sitting backwards on the frame and we tied him to the rollcage. We hammered down this dead-end street and he’s squealing like a pig. He’s as white as a ghost and we were probably doing 120mph. We only had lever-operated rear brakes! I was yelling at him: “Do you think it’s missing?” and all he could do was scream. Even now when you remind him of it he’ll just go off! He still does my boys’ engine and gearbox work.

So the car-building gene has passed down to your kids?

I like watching Dale and Shane doing what they do with their cars. Now Shane’s got two show cars going I get to drive one of them, but I prefer to drive the rocket ship [Shane’s 1JZ HT ute, which featured in Sleepers in SM, July ’17].

Got anything cooking in the shed?

I’ve got the Torana, which I’ve started putting suicide doors on. I’ve got a supercharged V6 out of a VT for that, which Shane’s going to help me with. I’ve been fortunate to have two boys that have continued on with playing with cars, and I get to lend them a hand or give them a little advice and enjoy it with them.