G'day everyone,
Nice old car there Mowerfreak! Is that the CL or CM Model Valiant? Seriously when I was looking to buy a first car there was a family friend down the road that had one of these same cars I think it was a 1980 model CM Valiant, it was like a gold coloured model sedan and it had the ELB 4.3 litre inline six? I think that's what it was? Anyway he didn't drive it anymore as back then he had retired and had just bought a newer VS Commodore or something like that. I think back then they wanted something like 1 grand for the car as it was. Anyway he let me take the keys and drive it around for a day to see what I thought of it and if I wanted it I could buy it or just return the car to him if I didn't want it. This must have been around 1998 or 1999. Same era as your photo there Mowerfreak!
It did have quite a bit of rust especially in the plenum area under the windscreen in the engine compartment. Also the interior was pretty worn out and stuffed. The engine also felt like it was missing on a cylinder all the time and felt like it was low on power. I had a look at the engine and it looked like it was recently serviced so I thought back then that the engine had problems and needed a rebuild or something. Anyway in the day that I had it I ended up fixing something where the handbrake lever was and got it working properly. Sadly in the end it needed to much work to get it into roadworthy condition so I returned the car to him, I said sorry but it needs a bit too much work to get it into roadworthy condition. I think after a few months of sitting at the front of his house someone ended up buying it as a parts car or something.
Back then I was also looking at buying a first car, I looked at a few HZ Kingswoods and also a few XC Falcons, as you could imagine even back then most of them were rustbuckets and they were asking around 3 to 5 grand for them! I was looking only at the V8 models though.
Cheers!
