The car culture of America is well known, but what many people might not be aware of is that Australia has quite a car culture of its own. Perhaps it should not be so surprising, given the sheer size of the country. There are a number of types of cars that are native to Australia, like the Holden, and major international manufacturers have often produced specialized automobiles for the Australian market, an example of which I will get to in a moment. Now, outside of the metropolitan areas, a vehicle is a must. For the sake of versatility and utility, many families own a pickup or SUV ("ute") such as the one you see above. That black snorkel attachment you see is quite functional. It prevents the engine intake from being smothered by water if the truck is forced to ford a deep stream.

There are, of course, Australian vehicles that were never intended to come anywhere near the mud. While walking through Melbourne's bayside neighborhood of Brighton, I had the pleasure of running across an exciting rare car of the Musclecar era, a 1972 Chrysler Valiant Challenger R/T 265cid Hemi Six Pack, which appears to your left. The history of this limited edition performance car goes beyond the scope of this blog and is readily available on Google. However, suffice it to say that it is very different, say, from the American musclecars Chrysler was producing at the same time across the Pacific.
First of all, the engine is a high-compression six-cylinder, with specially tuned six-barrel carburetors. The body is smaller and lighter than the American Dodge Challenger - in this way it is way more Valiant than Challenger. Mated to a four-speed manual transmission, with a racing suspension that loved to be tossed into corners, this car was arguably the fastest car on Australian roads in its day. While I generally don't pay much attention to cars these days, to see a car like this used as a daily driver was pretty exciting.