Moffat at Bathurst, 1971. Photo by Robert Davies.
Though he retired from racing more than a quarter century ago and many of his old race cars now exist in collections, Australian racer Allan Moffat just couldn’t let go of his old workshop in Melbourne, the place from which he launched championship-winning campaigns since 1961. At least not until recently, when he decided to sell it, blowing out the cobwebs with a rummage sale set for this weekend.
Born in Saskatchewan, Moffat began racing in his early 20s, a few years after his family moved to Oz. While he drove cars from a number of different carmakers – Triumph to begin with, then a Lotus Cortina, and eventually Mazdas and even Holdens – he became most closely associated with Ford products. In Australia, he won Bathurst four times at the wheel of Ford Falcons, and in the States he drove Mustangs for Carroll Shelby and a Cougar for Bud Moore in Trans-Am.
His time as a hot shoe lasted through 1989, but Allan Moffat Racing, which he founded in the mid-1960s to support his efforts, continued to field cars until 1996. Since then, Moffat’s offered his services as a television commenter and product pitchman, and as Speed Cafe reported recently, he rented out his shop in the Toorak district to a Porsche repair business.
Moffat’s shop in Melbourne. Image via Google Street View.
With developers eyeing the land, however, Moffat has sold the shop and plans to clean house with a garage sale. It appears any cars Moffat held on to over the years have already long been sold off – car care product sellers Bowden’s has a number of them, along with Moffat’s old transporter – but from Speed Cafe’s account, it appears the shop still has plenty of memorabilia from the 1960s through the 1980s.
The sale will take place this Saturday and Sunday at the shop near the intersection of Malvern and Orrong roads.
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