FOUR-POT AIN’T BAD

It’s 1984, I was ‘only’ 19, and I owned a 1980 VC SL Commodore – with the four-cylinder (stop laughing you bastards).

The hubcaps; my god, no idea what they were off, but they were on there when I bought it. I left them on because I couldn’t afford mags at the time.

Couple that with the fact the ‘four’ only had 13-inch wheels – and the smaller Torana bolt pattern instead of the larger Commodore pattern – and it meant it was hard to find mags at wrecking yards that would fit.

Still, I loved it. And it was actually a pretty good car, for its time, on fuel. It was also very comfortable on the highway and handled well with the lower weight over the front.

I always wondered, in later years, how something like that would go with Nissan’s SR20DET and a five-speed manual.