As those old T-shirt transfers back in the 70s and 80s used to proclaim, “Old Holdens never die, they just go faster.” And if you’re looking for a car that embodies that slogan and that classic era of Australian street machining, this glorious FC Holden, built by the late Alan Hale, would be hard to beat.

First published in the December 2024 issue of Street Machine

Virtually from the inception of our scene damn-near five decades ago, Alan’s stunning, pioneering FC build has been widely regarded as one of the all-time greats. But its beginnings were quite modest.

In 1972, a 16-year-old Alan had been tinkering with an FJ sedan when his mum transferred ownership of her beloved, dead-stock, one-owner FC to him. Alan had long been smitten with the car and felt it was more to his taste as a project than the humpy, so the latter was sold and work on the FC began in earnest.

As a mechanic by trade, Alan had no issues screwing together a couple of hot six-cylinder donks for the car over the following few years, but after a while, the hankering for something a little more distinctive – and a tad toeyer – came to the fore. It was 1975, and with the 2nd Street Machine Nationals taking place the following year, Alan decided to get serious.

Alan’s pioneering FC is widely regarded as one of the all-time greats

The six-cylinder mills made way for a 350 Chev conversion, which might seem like fairly standard fare by 2024 standards, but in 1975, any form of partial or full conversion kit was still a ways off, and sourcing a donor small-block in the first place was no mean feat. It’s a testament to the young Alan’s skillset that he both completed the conversion and screwed together a very respectable hottie to boot.

The 350 was cleaned up to 355 cubes and filled with a brace of quality gear for the time. A steel crank and TRW high-comp pistons were connected by polished and shot-peened conrods (remember when that was the rage?), while a Comp camshaft, Manley pushrods, Pete Jackson gear drive, Crane rockers and Isky valve springs sorted the valvetrain. Alan, along with fellow FC-loving mate Rick Martin, built a set of custom fenderwell headers to sort the exhaust, and the ignition system comprised a mix of Mallory, MSD and Moroso components.

A BorgWarner T16 four-speed manual added to the fun, backed by a 4.56-geared, fully chromed Ford nine-inch and that period-perfect suspension rake. An HQ stud pattern conversion meant a set of 14×7 Cragar S/S rims were a bolt-up fit, which contrasted nicely with the 20 coats of gloss-black paint applied to the body by Alan’s good friend – and yet another FC stalwart – Victor Reilly (Time Machine, SM, Aug ’23) and his team at Bucket Panels.

The interior screamed 1970s perfection (and still does today), with Mazda front bucket seats and the factory rear swathed in burgundy crushed velvet, and a B&M shifter and collection of accessory gauges allowing business to meet pleasure.

Alan’s hard work paid off when he won Top Engine Transplant at those 2nd Street Machine Nationals in 1976, and that success spurred him to raise the bar for the next Nationals in ’78.

To that end, a Weiand tunnel ram was polished to the nth degree and installed, along with dual 600 Holley carbs that initially poked a pair of chrome velocity stacks through the bonnet. Alan also revisited the engine bay and undercarriage detailing and adapted some HZ rear disc brakes to the nine-inch diff – a mod that was virtually unheard of at the time.

Those stoppers came into Alan’s life by chance. He was working at Holden’s Lang Lang Proving Ground and noticed the HZ discs being trialled, and before long, a pair ‘somehow’ ended up fitted to the FC. The brakes were a hit at the Victorian Hot Rod Show before Holden had even released them!

These extra mods, along with Alan’s keen eye for detail, rewarded him with the Top Street Machine gong – the forerunner of Summernats’ Grand Champion – at both the 3rd and 4th Street Machine Nationals (1978 and 1980, respectively). That’s not to say the FC was a pampered show pony, though; mid-12-second timeslips made it a very quick street car for the time, and Alan was never shy about boiling the rear tyres when the opportunity arose.

We featured the FC in this guise in the February-March 1982 issue of what was then called Street Machine & Van Wheels, but the car was treated to further upgrades over the next few years. The Cragar rims were swapped for Center Line Indy Champ 500s, and a Turbo 350 auto replaced the manual trans in the interests of improving quarter-mile times and consistency.

Alan continued to attend the Nationals and the early Summernats events – more for the social side than as a serious entrant – and after the 7th Street Machine Nationals in Canberra in ’86, the FC scored its second write-up in SM as part of our ‘Golden Holdens’ featurette in that year’s October-November issue.

The FC continued to be an important member of the Hale family for the next three decades until Alan passed away in 2014. “I’ve never not known this car,” says Alan’s son, Brendan. “I was born in 1988, so it’s always just been ‘there’, and I have so many fond memories of it.

“A couple of years after Dad died, Mum was looking to downsize a little, so space was going to be at a premium, and it ended up on display at the Trafalgar Holden Museum. I had a Commodore in my younger years and later got more into four-wheel drives, but after relocating to Darwin and having a mate do up an HK Kingswood, it rekindled my interest in cars, and I figured it was time to give the FC the love it deserved.”

In 2022, with his family’s blessing, Brendan returned to Victoria to collect the car from Trafalgar, and then towed it all the way back to Darwin. “That drive gave me plenty of thinking time to sort a plan of attack,” he says.

“Sitting around doesn’t do cars much good, and with the carbies being so old, they had been troublesome for quite a while. I bit the bullet and fitted two brand-new Holley 600s, cleaned the tank and replaced all the fuel lines, and rebuilt the brakes. It was amazing to hear it fire back into life, and it clocks up quite a few miles now at our local chrome-bumper cruises and cars-and-coffee events.”

Brendan has no real plans to change the FC; he just wants to keep the maintenance up to it and enjoy it. “Dad always wanted to fit a supercharged, 383-cube stroker small-block, so that would be the only thing that may happen if the current 350 cries ‘enough’,” he says. “The paint is starting to look its age here and there too – it was painted in 1974, mind you – but I keep it in a Carcoon to preserve it as best as possible, as Darwin’s climate is pretty tough on paintjobs.”

With his dad’s old FC too important to mess with much, Brendan is keen to start a new project. “I’m open to pretty much anything old-school, but my attention keeps being drawn back to doing an FC of my own; I think I love them just as much as my grandma and dad did.”