What about 6cyl 4spd?

I was thinking HK-HG 6cyl 4spd commercials. Surely they are rarer than V8 4spd commercials. I have only ever seen one, a white HK Van, 186, M22 and sports dash. I went to buy it at 7am one Saturday morning out of the local paper but a demo derby bloke beat me to it. Rust free too.
6cyl and M21 or M22 in HK-HG passenger would be extremely rare too. Probably doesn’t exist in HG but I have heard of one HK GTS with a heavy duty 4spd.

There was a HK Belmont sedan for sale in Albury area a year or so ago too, I think it was a 186, M20, bucket seats with HR style floor shift. It was blue with red trim too. This would be a very rare combination.

Yeah, 4-sp manuals in early non-GTS cars seem be quite thin on the ground.

On the subject of 4-sp 6-cyl commercials, a friend of mine used to work for Sydney County Council & in their fleet they had quite a few HT 186 Saginaw 4-sp panel vans.

They were painted that plain green fleet colour. They had trouble selling them because of the colour, many not realising how good the drivetrain was.

Dr Terry

202HC and M15 3spd manual was standard in a HQ 6cyl Statesman. 253HC and M15 3spd manual was standard in V8 HQ Statesman. In the 6cyl one you could option M40, M20 and possibly even M22. Not sure if you could option a heavy duty rear axle (Salisbury) in HQ Statesman, also if 202LC was optional. In V8 HQ Statesman you could option the other three optional V8 engines (253LC, 308 and 350). 308 would be standard with M21 and optional with M40, L30 (350) would be auto only.

I have total HQ to WB Statesman build numbers, 6cyl is pretty low in comparison, around 1500 from memory. I think there was one 308 M21 Statesman and not many 350 either but 1000’s of 350 Devilles plus lots of the Chevrolet badged XU7 export/consulate versions as well with 350. There used to be a white M21 plated Deville near me but it had to be a mistake as it didn’t have the telltale 4spd evidence on the body.

I have seen plenty of both 6cyl and 253 Statemans in wreckers but never bothered collecting tags off them. I only ever collected 350 Deville tag sets which I think I have at least two sets, maybe three. Dr Terry told me he saw an 11QS engine once, but I have not seen an 11QM or 11QS personally.

Plenty of HJ Devilles made in 3.3L 4spd too for export to Malaysia as SUP vehicles. This was the standard driveline for this car in that market. I don’t think any of the Statesman bodied cars were CKD either, only SUP so they would only ever have got GMH engines not local engines eg 250ci Chevy design in South Africa.

Edited by user Wednesday, 31 July 2019 11:59:52 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

HQ Monaro with 350 auto is 1 only as well.

308 manual was always pretty rare in anything outside of GTS and later in Sandman. It is mainly only HQ onwards commercials you regularly see it, otherwise the bulk of times you see 308/5.0L it is an auto. So once you start getting down to models that are relatively low build numbers to start with you can understand why only the one (known) HQ L31 M21 Statesman was built. Also remember that outside of GTS and Sandman that the most likely place to find 308 was Brougham, Statesman Deville/Caprice and Premier/LS and apart from late HT to HQ Premier/LS auto was standard with 308. Plus whenever 308 was available in cab-chassis it was auto standard too.

Those would be fairly rare. I think there were 700 or so HZ L31 M21 in SL sedans, I used to own one in Madeira Red with chamois trim. Most L31 Kingswood or SL sedan or wagon would be auto though. I also had a HJ Kingswood wagon in L31 M41 (chamois/chamois) too, and have seen lots of tags of L31 HJ-HX Kingswood sedan/wagon too (from memory a few L31 M21). But I can’t say I can recall seeing many HQ-HZ Kingswood or Kingswood SL wagon in L31 M21.
I did cut up a HZ Premier wagon that was L31 M41 with air, steer, power windows, sports dash, disc rear etc. Cut it straight through the windscreen pillars and across the front floor simply for everything on the firewall and dash to put on a Tonner. Someone else used the mechanicals and doors (I didn’t want electric windows) but the rest got scrapped. But around 2002-3 such cars were still only worth $1000, this one had faded paint and some rust repairs in normal wagon spots, run out of rego. HJ-HZ Premier 5.0L were cheap back then, I used to buy them and Statesman as everyday drivers and wreck or sell them when rego ran out.

Edited by user Wednesday, 31 July 2019 8:58:19 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

That one that I know of was Amethyst metallic or Royal Umbra in colour.

I know that they are really rare but they are in Tasmania . In that era at Burnie Motors PTY LTD we only ever had one L34 delivered to us . I did the predelivery on it . it was yellow and destined to a buyer in Smithon . Never saw the car again . like I said not rare over here but in Tas very rare and really there was not a hell of a lot of them made .

Royal Umber was an EH colour. Didn't look too bad on an EH, but on an HQ, Yuk !

Dr Terry

That is how many were actually registered and warranty commenced (they are counted off the Service/Warranty report on microfiche). But if a car never had warranty activated it doesn't appear in that report. If the report had been run with the pivot/search as L34 (similar to the A9X report in Eric Blair's book) I bet there would be more, especially with a car like L34 where it was really only built to homologate bits for racing. There have been a few other cars turn up that don't appear in the service/warranty reports for a number of reasons, but normally it is because either the warranty hasn't yet commenced or it never did.