“It’s about two-thirds the height of a standard beer can,” Australian Autopian reader Laurence Rogers told me over a video chat, describing the diameter of a giant Huntsman spider he lets crawl freely around his house in New South Wales. I had just agreed to spend a month with him fixing a 1969 Chrysler Valiant kangaroo-hunting ute he’d bought for $900 on my behalf, and I was now deeply regretting my choice.
To be clear, I will not be hunting any “roos” (as he calls them). The only hunting that will take place during my trip to the center of New South Wales later this year will involve this spider hunting me, possibly in my sleep:
You thought I was kidding about that Huntsman spider, eh? That’s okay; I, too, figured Laurence was joking, but as shown in the video-chat screenshot above, the crazy bastard actually does live harmoniously with enormous, frighteningly-quick arachnids. It’s been nice knowing you, folks.
Anyway, let’s back up for a second and talk about how I ended up the owner of a 1969 Chrysler Valiant ute located in the Australian bush.
Actually, I really don’t know how it happened, in the same way that I don’t know how I ended up bathing in the Baltic Sea just prior to driving a diesel Chrysler minivan to Koenigsegg, and in the same way that I have no clue how I ended up with trenchfoot off-roading a rusted-out Forward Control Jeep near Seattle.
These things just…happen. One moment I’m chatting with a new friend on social media, then they’re telling me about a cool, dirt-cheap vehicle they’ve found nearby, then I black out, and the next thing I know I’ve wired money to a stranger 10,000 miles away. It seems like a bad thing to make a habit of, but then again, just look at this glorious machine!:
Check out the scaffolding in the back. Laurence, owner of a 1970 “VG” Valiant Wayfarer and a 1974 “VJ” Valiant Charger, tells me that it’s there to facilitate kangaroo hunting. I guess one would rest a weapon on the foam to stabilize a shot?
See those little rear bumperettes with integrated turn signals [Hi, it’s Jason Torchinsky here. I just thought I’d hop in since my Someone Is Discussing Turn Indicators implant started pulsating. You know what’s cool about those bumper-mounted amber indicators? They can also be reverse lamps! Yes, Australia and New Zealand were the only countries that allowed amber reverse lamps, primarily to accommodate U.S.-market cars brought over, where the clear reverse lamps could be repurposed to be amber indicators and back-up lights.]? Those allow the ute’s tailgate to fold not just flat, but also in the downward position so one can better reach stuff near the front of the bed. That’s right, Chrysler Australia had the MultiPro tailgate well before GMC did. Check it out:
Even if you are a Mopar fan, you’d be forgiven for scratching your head in confusion right about now. Because this machine, and many old Australian Chrysler vehicles, was quite different from what Chrysler sold in the U.S.
Laurence, who spends much of his time talking with farmers (who tend to own amazing old vehicles) as part of his job, broke it down for me, saying:
…Chrysler Australia…were always the smallest of the big three. They never had much money, and so did their best to disguise that the same platforms and parts were carried over for several years. We had Valiants from 1961 to 1981, the last two years were actually made by Mitsubishi under licence because Chrysler Australia was broke and sold the factory to them
Getting back to the misfit status of Valiants, they had a reputation as a car bought by immigrants, particularly Italians and Greeks of which we had thousands settle here in the 50sThey were often derided as ‘[derogatory term] Chariots’Farmers liked Valiants though, as the Hemi six pulled like a V8 and Valiant utes were often much cheaper than their equivalent Holden or Ford
Now with classics sky-rocketing in price, quite ironically many of the die-hard Holden and Ford guys that used to give me shit for owning Valiants are now very interested in them and ask me lots of questions
Unlike many of today’s “global vehicles,” which are pretty much exactly the same regardless of the market in which they’re sold (with some differences in standard content and powertrains), Australian Chryslers were thoroughly different than Chryslers sold elsewhere. In fact, Chrysler Australia had its own engineering team that developed its own bodies and powertrains, using basic designs provided by Chrysler engineers in the U.S. as the basis.
Take the “VF” Chrysler Valiant Wayfarer ute that I now own (woh that feels weird to say). As you can see in the little orange box in the brochure below, there’s a little storage area behind the bench, below the front part of the bed. This is actually just a byproduct of using the American Plymouth Valiant wagon platform as the ute’s starting point. That storage area is shaped exactly like the wagon’s rear footwell.
Chrysler Australia vehicles — which absurdly mishmashed American nameplates to bring the world vehicles like the “Chrysler by Chrysler” and “Chrysler Valiant Charger” — had styling that might look familiar, but it’s not quite same as what Americans are used to. That’s because Australian Chryslers’ sheetmetal and bumpers were often a blend of parts from various U.S. Chrysler model-years, and grilles and lighting was sometimes totally unique for the Australian market.
More fascinating than styling differences and vehicle platform adaptation, though, is the existence of the Hemi-Six. My 1965 Plymouth Valiant, and every Valiant offered in the U.S. through the 1970s, came standard with the Leaning Tower of Power — arguably the most reliable engine of all time, the slant six. The heaping pile of crap 1969 ute that I now own (still feels weird) also came equipped with the unkillable motor. But in 1970, the base motor became the Hemi-Six, an Australia-designed straight six that allegedly has its roots in an old U.S. Chrysler design that never was. As rumor has it, Chrysler sent blueprints over to its Australian division, the Ozzies actually finished up the development process, and started building the iron-block 215s, 245s, and 265s for Valiants and Chargers and more until the early 1980s. It’s become a legendary engine in Australia, right up there with Ford’s hallowed “Barra” straight six, which could be modified to handle immense power.
Needless to say, I will be removing the slant six from my rustbucket and chucking in a Hemi-Six and three-speed column-shift manual Laurence has sitting around (apparently the motors and transmissions are as ubiquitous as Kangaroos).
The engine swap should be easy, as the underhood packaging is the same between slant six and straight six Valiants, but I just had a chat with Laurence the other day, and the farm insurance agent just had to point out this white ball by my motor:
It’s an egg sack from a Redback spider, which Laurence says is “not generally deadly.” Between that comment and the beer-can reference to his house-Huntsman (both made with a smirk on his face), I’m beginning to wonder if the man is messing with me, or if I’m about to be rid of my arachnophobia through exposure therapy.
Anyway, let’s have a look at what I’m in for. The slant six appears to be in good shape, and I bet it runs just fine, but I must have the Hemi-Six, so I’m selling this to one of Laurence’s friends to offset the Hemi cost.
As for the rest of the vehicle — well, it’s rough. [Jason here again–look how cool the front turn signals are, integrated into the body as those two rectangles over the headlamps.] As a general rule, if you buy a vehicle with only three wheels, it’s almost certainly a massive pile of crap; it means someone yanked a wheel and thought the vehicle was so far gone, it wasn’t worth the immeasurably low effort needed to bolt the thing back up.
Laurence went out to a local woodcutter who had bought the ute from a nearby farm, and jacked up the machine he had bought for a random American journalist halfway across the world; then he threw some rubber onto that front right corner. But that didn’t exactly help the ute roll, as the brake in that corner — along with the rear brakes — was locked up.
As shown above, the Mopar fan and his buddies had to resort to some drastic measures to get the ute onto a trailer, with the result being that the ‘roo hunting bars in the back took a bit of a beating.
While we’re talking about the ’roo bars in the bed, it’s worth mentioning that there are some rust issues with the shotgun shell-covered bed floor:
Also, the exhaust basically doesn’t exist:
And the front right frame rail is a bit tweaked from an apparent impact:
But overall, the body looks mostly rust-free. Check out the underside:
The rear left quarter panel is rusted out, sure, but the main unibody rails look solid:
And the interior isn’t too bad, either. Sure, the dash is cracked, and the seat is a bit rough on the driver’s side, but the former doesn’t matter, and a seat cover will clean the latter right up.
The floor does look a bit perforated there under the disintegrated milk jug with a shotgun shell in it:
Laurence ratchet-strapped the Ute’s hood shut (I’ll have to figure out what the deal is with that, too) and towed the vaguely vehicle-shaped carcass from Tottenham (a city in New South Wales with roughly 300 inhabitants) to his place near Dubbo (which has nearly 40,000 residents).
I’ll be lugging my tools onto an airplane and flying there this September. My plan? I don’t really have one, other than: Wrench my heart out and pray I can get the ute into good enough shape for an epic road-trip through the Australian outback, where I plan to learn as much as I can about car culture in the region, with regular dispatches making their way onto The Autopian for your enjoyment.
Unlike all my other hopeless wrenching projects through the years, the vehicle itself — which I’m naming Project Roo until I can think of something more clever — is, despite its horrible condition, somehow not the most likely thing to kill me this time around. And that’s a bit alarming.
Never had an account over at Jalopnik but now here I am finally registering for something.
It is a great looking car for sure, But also The El Camino did have that rear storage under the bed as well, My 83 and 85 had them and I filled them with speakers when I was young but always thought it was a neat feature especially with a nice carpeted cover of them.
Glad to see you both making this site a success. When is the merch coming?
David, if you are planning on taking this shitbox across the Outback, please make sure you have a sat phone in case you have a problem.
The taillights on this ute are similar to ’67 Barracuda taillights..
I’m here to read your wacky content and also to let you know I’ve been clicking through on the sponsorship ad on this site because you guys done a good thing.
When I read the title “Why I Bought A Dilapidated Kangaroo-Hunting Ute Sight Unseen In The Middle Of Nowhere, Australia”, my answer was because you are insane due to rust inhalation and we love you for it.
This is what I was looking for, a car ready for the scrapper and David throwing himself on the hood “I can save it. Spark damn you Spark! I will not let you get crushed on my watch!”
Also now you don’t have to worry about the city saying “No more cars on the property”.
I want to see where this ends up. Also a general update on the projects once the madness of starting a new venture allows you to.
Welcome back David! I have thoroughly missed reading about your latest attempts to get tetanus!
This has exactly the correct amount of rust and hopelessness for a David Tracy vehicle.
This is the most David Tracy thing I’ve ever read. Looking forward to updates!
Oh boy, this makes the 3rd valiant ute I have seen in my life. Though the other two were in person, and were imported to the US. Both in Colorado. One at the Golden Cruise night, the other sat in the back of a mopar restoration shop that I worked at for a while. Don’t know the current location of either one. As I recall the one at the shop had a 273 under the hood.
The outside isn’t what scares me so much, it’s the inside! I can’t wait to hear what the airline charges for bags full of tools flown half way around the world.
Get their credit card and make them sorry that it gets you 2 free checked bags
If you don’t take the Roo on at least the easy section of the Telly Line, by the Lions Den saloon, I’m disowning you.
This site is sooo easy to read. Where’s the endless ads, pop ups and programming bugs???
Best wishes on the new project, try not to get eaten by an angry spider.
Not one slideshow yet. Come on guys, people love them.
I’m one of the literal dozens of Australians lurking here. A few tips:
With 40,000 people, Dubbo is one of the bigger inland towns in NSW, but smaller than the suburb I used to live at in Sydney.
Australia is a big place with plenty of space in between, Dubbo in our terms is not a massive hike, but it is a long way from the big smoke
I know you’re not into fancy food, but there are some good places to eat and drink in Dubbo
Visit Western Plains Zoo whilst you’re there
Visit the Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum (in a hangar on the airport zone), gives you a real sense of life in the outback.
Huntsman are fine
Red Backs are not
It’s a debate for another column as to the good and bad of it, but as another commenter has mentioned, our rego (registration) rules are less USA, more TUV. Flout them at your peril.
Spiders aren’t your primary concern in Dubbo, it’s snakes. See a snake, walk away, whilst watching it, let someone who knows what they’re doing handle it. Make plenty of noise if you’re approaching a derelict car. They’ll generally slither away.
Except for Brown snakes, they’ll go for you.
what is the big smoke?
‘The Big Smoke’ is an old Australianism referring to the big cities. Small country towns had clear skies, and the big cities were smoky due to home cooking and heating fires plus all the factories. So as you travelled from country town to city, you could see where you were going by the smoke haze.
Given our remaining factories are fairly clean and people don’t tend to have home fires, the cities aren’t smoky any more, so it’s just a term that will slowly fade into history.
Everything that this post says and more.
Once you head west of Dubbo the biggest town until you hit Adelaide is Broken Hill (8,000 people). Other than that it’s towns of 300 to 1,500 people with nothing in between. So if you break down don’t expect a lot of other traffic and there will be absolutely no mobile (cell) phone coverage.
Also only drive during daylight as you will inevitably have to dodge or hit kangaroos. There’s thousands of the dumb bastards, all wanting to ruin the front or side of your car. That or put a freakin big bull bar on the front to knock them out of the way. I knew a guy who ran into a mob of them and hit 6 of them. They really are stupid. Otherwise out in Western NSW look out for feral goats and pigs.
Other than that you should hold a meet and greet, you’ll be surprised how many of us turn up
Absolutely on avoiding dusk, dawn and night. Because Covid, our last two holidays have been driving ones through Central NSW and then the Great Ocean Road and inland. We always made sure accommodation was near the centre of town, both so we could have a drink and stumble back to our accommodation and to avoid driving at night.
Roos are indecisive
Emus will run at your car
and depending on where you are you’ll have the ferals to deal with as you mentioned and also foxes and deer.
Halls Gap in Victoria has some magnificent and huge deer, but they don’t belong here. We got quite the surprise walking back one evening down a bike path to come across a magnificent stag and his doe, but fortunately they turned and kept wandering down the bike path, rather than try out his antlers on a reasonably squiffy me.
Hey David, you should check out the Mighty Car Mods video where they take a road trip to Tottenham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rivLpmOVZGw
If you don’t feel like lugging all of your tools halfway across the world, perhaps they (or some of their mates) will let you borrow some.
And by the way, Redbacks are deadly. Have fun!
I was going to suggest he team up with them, if their schedules allow for it. The usually don’t work on rustbuckets like David, so it would be interesting for them.
Yup, I was going to suggest a visit to Rusty! His collection of cars would be right up Autopian’s alley.
hm, comparing to your other ventures, this Ute looks almost salvageable. Go Roo!
Was going to say, compared to the FC, this ute is rust-free!
Never thought you’d end up down here wrenching on a Valiant ute, but looking forward to seeing the journey!
It doesn’t look like a half bad starting point, and not too rusty as far as Valiant utes go.
We did build quite a few variants of the Valiant down here, gradually drifting away from the original USA designs as local content and design input increased, but there was a LOT of continuity of design throughout the entire timeline of models. Some spare parts are listed in parts books as fitting EVERYTHING from the SV-1 right through to the final CM model, only excluding the RV-1 that came at the very start (The RV-1 were all CKD kits built in the USA and imported and assembled here, and were almost 100% imported components).
I’ve got an SV-1 sitting waiting for a bit of love (registered but needs a few things to get back on the road) and a long term project AP5 ute that doesn’t even appear on that Model Identification Guide, since the factory never built them. But fortunately a VC is close enough in design to the AP5 that I could convert one just by swapping panels, dash etc. And for a bit of a Torchinsky flavour it is being made more confusing to Valiant purists by having SV-1 tailights swapped in!
It’s pretty cool to see all of us Australian readers coming out of the woodwork – there must be DOZENS of us!
I’m only an hour and a bit from your mate, Laurence. So if you need a hand in September then I’m potentially available. And I just saw two more Valiant parts cars parked in a paddock in town today.
I also suggest you familiarise yourself with the vehicle registration requirements for NSW and avail yourself of the details of anyone who might be able to issue you with the ‘blue slip’ necessary to get this ute back on the road….and be very very nice to them.
DT,
FYA, I live a bit closer to Sydney, where you’ll probably arrive. I can give you a lift to Dubbo in another (working) piece of Australian ingenuity – A Holden Commodore V8 4WD station wagon.
It’s at 230k, so no it’s not the original motor. That’s been replaced by a 383.
Let me know (via my registration email) if you need a lift.
Martin
V8 4WD station wagon? Load up a cargo ship once they are 25 years old and bring them to the US!
Please tell me you will organise a pub night/meet when you arrive in Sydney! Unfortunately you are visiting a land where all the local wildlife will try and kill you, buy plenty of bug spray before you go shoving your hands anywhere near this remains of a car. Finally I can have a better webpage to waste work hours on than the dumpster fire that was your previous home.
I wonder how many spiders are living in that car.
Approximately all of them.
It’s not so much the quantity I’m worried about as the quality. One of those giant spiders is plenty to ruin my day. 🙂
The larger spiders aren’t the ones that I worry about, especially as huntsman spiders eat other spiders. It is the small spiders like the redback and whitetail, that should concern you, although before you reach Dubbo you will need it to make it past the Sydney funnel-web which is arguably the deadliest spider in the world.
You’re assuming my dislike of spiders has anything to do with rationality. 😉
Maybe you can look up Marty from Marty’s Matchbox Makeovers on YouTube. He restores Matchbox Cars, and recently moved from Melbourne to the country in that part of the world.
Welcome back! Best April Fool’s prank ever, dumping all this content.
Love this, can’t wait till you come here to Australia. Hopefully JT can find his way here too – we NEED his takes on the taillights on such cars as the 1974 ZG Fairlane, and the differences in Australian-built Beetles!
If you’re after some insight into the 1969 Valiant Ute, Scotty Taylor at Street Machine’s Carnage channel has a great series on fixing up his dad’s old ute, it’s worth checking out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yLhIilCQkI&list=PLDEeLSyDCX7maOE2tiRB-NwR-o9u5nxfZ
So on how many continents do you own shitboxes now?
… three
Well there’s your long term plan. Shitboxes on EVERY continent.
Tune in next week when David travels to the Central African Republic to buy a Toyota Hilux from a local militia group.
“I just bought a derelict bus on McMurdo Station in Antarctica to drive it to the South Pole”
and there we have your first Autopian Quest!
We the unwashed masses challenge you to locate, purchase and thrash a shit-box of at least vaguely automotive shape on all the acknowledged continents on this backwater planet. In each instance the shit-box should have ties to its environment and ideally be unique to the area. While the shitbox must move under its own power to complete each phase of the Quest, additional points can be awarded based upon difficulty and completeness as well as distance and embarrassing activities undertaken in the ensuing roadtrip in said shitbox. Exceptions will only be awarded in the instance of actual risk (ie, no shortcuts allowed in repair of major safety systems like braking and/or arachnid defense).
Since you already have a nearly 50% headstart of 3 continents, you can improve your scores by opting to add additional shitboxes on landmasses not considered continents. A group-vote ruling will be required on whether this up-score will be awarded with simply acquiring/operating a shitbox on a single island in a given archipelago or if each landmass must be addressed individually.
Since this is clearly a rust trap with a photo in front of the Rabbit Trap Motel the project could be The Rusty Rabbit Trap?
Or the Rusty Roo restoration. The Down Under Blunder. Prince Valiant’s Folly.
Now I don’t know the original intent of the term “rust trap,” but I imagine its definition as thus:
/θɜːst træp/
noun
the David Tracy equivalent of a thirst trap.
“I was up all night on Facebook Marketplace looking at rust traps”
Great ideas- David should have a poll. I vote “Prince Valiant’s Folly”
Seems like Asia is missing out. If your brother is still in HK you can ask him to rescue a junkyard GT-R on your behalf.
You rock David!!