Searching for history on barnfind.

[Big Rod]

Hi, noob' here!

Great site BTW, very interesting.

The reason I'm here is that the forum kept appearing when I was doing searches trying to find out the history of a car I've recently acquired so thought some of you might be able to help uncover some of the mystery surrounding the car.

To cut a very long story short, while striving to build myself a viable track day car, I was made aware of an 'ex-works' rally spec Opel Monza that was for sale. The catch was that some twunt had set the garage it was in alight and it had suffered a bit of a toasting. ere's a pic' or two of it in it's former guises.......




A bit of digging revealed that it used to belong to a chap called Ken Lark sometime in the early to mid '90's. He now races VW's but I managed to get a hold of him and he told me that this car used to be Austin McHale's rally car in the early '80's, but also while he ownd this one, he also owned Tony Lanfranchi's old Monza Touring Car. The upshot is that McHale's engine had been to Swindon engineering and really was pretty much standard apart from some stronger bolts and the like, but Lanfranchi's car was full Group 'A' spec, so Lanfranchi's engine found it's way into McHale's old shell. Lanfranchi's car was then sold to someone in or around Bristol and had a 24v Vauxhall straight six engine installed.

Basically other than that and some sketchy info from the guy I bought it from, there's a fair bit of blankness. I do know that it changed guises from track to rally to track etc, (not necessarily in that order!), hence the high intensity brake light on the rear valance in the good pic's and that it must have changed reg' plates at some point too as the plate in the pic's don't match pic's I have of McHale's old car, (I'm almost 100% certain that it's his car though.)

Anyway, here's a few pictures of it in it's current state..........





A real shame huh? However, the shell is fully race prepped and while it looks a mess, it's all fairly cosmetic so there are plans, albeit 'fluid' to resurrect it in some way shape or form.

I'm hoping that some of you may be able to shed some light on any of these car's historys as I know there are a few McHale/Lanfranchi/Cleland/Marshall, (all drove Monzas at one point or another.),fans on here.

I look forward to hearing from you.