HQ Sandman found!!

[HK1837]

Most HQ Sandmans won't have XX7, especially in Tasmania. Most of those will be Elizabeth bodies which is probably what the one you describe will be. It'd be rare to find a Pagewood or Acacia Ridge van bought new in Tasmania. Yours will be very much a minority to be firstly an Acacia Ridge van in Tassy, and secondly being a Brisbane build to be missing it's special vehicle package code.

[will.co]

Ill get back to you Byron but im 99% that she is a Brisbane built...wtf?

[hxbunny]

Just looked at all your pics up, as they said in 'Life of Brian' you lucky lucky bastard

[adam perth]

Ill get back to you Byron but im 99% that she is a Brisbane built...wtf?

looks like your chassis number ends in B, so yeah....B for Brisbane. Those windows look good.... right size and shape...

[HK1837]

Wrong car Adam, another one in Tassie

[hainzy]

Just wanted to bump this story up Byron cos its so ace!!

OK, here we go.

I have a head on in my HJ Kingswood ute. Pretty nice ute, 350, TH400, LSD, WB Caprice nose etc. Destroyed, not worth fixing. So I go looking for a cheapy to keep me going until I find another good car. Find a HZ sedan with rego cheap, go and look. Absolute bogged up sh!theap, but we get to talking about Monaros and bloke shows me pictures of 2 x cars up the bush. Stripped bare body is a "Bathurst" apparantly but ID has been stolen. 12 months go by, and I find the paper with the ad for the HZ in the shed. Ring the bloke up again about the Monaros. He isn't going to do anything with them, but he tells me where they are (Inverell). So another 12 months go by and I find a rust free but stripped bare HQ Sandman van shell in Gilgai. Mate and I go to look at it, and decide to look for these Monaros in Inverell. We find the place, meet the bloke (relative by marriage of the original dude). So we walk to the back of this guy's property and here are the 2 x Monaros as they were in the pictures. I walk up to the bare body and immediately see it is a HG GTS350 manual shell. I walk over to the other car (a Daytona bronze HT), lift the boot and see it is also a GTS350 shell. Hmmmm. Neither have tags. So we decide they are worth having for body sections and buy them both off the owner (ex son in law of the guy who owned the property, and brother to original guy). Take HT up to my in-laws at Emmaville, bring the HG back to mate's in Manilla for a garden ornament for now.
A year goes by, I consider cutting up the HT one Xmas at in-laws when visiting but wire up the shed instead. Car has a word - Oppy on one door.........

Backtrack a while, when we go back to pickup the HQ Sandman shell my mate out of the blue asks the kids at the place if the work Oppy means anything to them. "Yep, that is ______". So me being a sleuth finds the guy 12 months later, rings him and finds out he has the tags off the HT on his wall. My mate swaps him some bits for them and we now have a semi-complete Daytona Bronze GTS350! Tags align perfectly with the chassis number.

Forward again, probably 18 months after the HT was stuck at Emmaville. We decide to go and get the HT and take it back to Manilla. Once we get to just west of Glen Innes we have a choice to turn right to go back to Manilla, or left and 1kM into town. Both of us are hungry so we go into Glen Innes. Big car show in the main street, so we park in a side street with the trailer and a very ugly HT Monaro on the back. Funny thing is they all flock around the old Monaro and ignore all the rods! Guy approaches us and says "my son has a beauty of a HT in his shed, come and look". So we drive 1 minute up the road, son doesn't want to show us the car. However after I talk to him about his WB Statesman he realises i'm no idiot thief. so he shows us the mintest HT GTS I have ever seen, a really low mile Platinum Metallic with red trim 6cyl GTS. He says he was going to make a 350 out of it using tags off an old wreck he found in the bush. Both my mate and me get curious. He points to the tags on the wall, we look at each other and recognise the HG chassis number (VERY easy one to remember). So after some chatting and telling him we now have that car whose plates were supposedly stolen he gives us the plates (in nice good gesture as he realised long ago the HT was better as it was, and was happy for the HG to go back together, plus he obviously recognised the HT)! Now we have both cars re-united with their tags.
HT was sold recently, mate concentrating on his 2 x HK's. We still have the HG.

How's all that for co-incidence!

[will.co]

What happened the hq from your story Byron?

[HK1837]

Been fully restored, but is now green.

[will.co]

Any chance of a few pics for me please

[HK1837]

If I can find them