Ian Stockings

Loved to tune and “hot up” his own cars and those of selected friends from his mid teens, and then trained in formal engine design at the GM-H drawing office. Came to the Lot 6 team from the Repco – Brabham Engine Company where he had worked in the Design Office as an engine design engineer, while studying part time for a Mechanical Engineering Diploma at RMIT.  

Excerpt From…

Behind the Locked Gates of Lot 6 we developed The GTHO Falcons

by Ian M. Stockings 

INTRODUCTION

At the time when all this began, Dale my son was just a few months old and far too young to appreciate what was happening.  Now that he is much older, having just entered his 40s, he has placed me under some considerable pressure to document my recollections from this most extraordinary part of my life.  Rapidly joining him and adding to the pressure on me was my daughter Nicki and wife Val, followed by anybody who hears about it.  Mind you, my family were not the first to suggest that this ought to be done, in fact I had in mind to do it myself back in the early mid eighties. Anyway, be that as it may, I did not do it then, when perhaps I should have.

According to Dale, there are many people who are still truly interested to know what it was like to be a part of a genuine works motor sports team creating motoring history, people interested to hear the inside story, not observations by outsiders who just looked through those locked gates or saw us and our cars at race meetings.

This book is then my attempt to convey some of the passion, the excitement and adventure of working in such a team that is buried deep in the large corporate structure with all the associated intrigue, politics and disciplines.

There has been many articles and stories about these exciting cars from the "muscle" era, but none of them tell the real story from behind the “LOCKED GATES” inside the group that developed and raced these unique cars for Ford.  This is then the  inside story from my perspective.

 For myself I claim no more than to have been a part of an extraordinary team of highly talented people dedicated to making road cars that are capable of winning races.  Each team member brought a specific skill set to the party that all in combination made a truly unique and formidable team. To put any one member of that team, including myself, above the others would be a gross distortion of the matter. We were a team, a damned good team with an amazing boss. Now HE is the one person who has a right to be seen as above us and he certainly should be seen as being our fearless leader.  An extraordinary man, a very unique and talented man and an extraordinary manager. Of course I speak of Al Turner, or Big Al as he was affectionately called.

Anyone who has been involved in management of a group of people will also know that the attitude of management will be the make or break of that group no matter what the skill levels of its members.  It is this attitude that creates a ‘culture’ that drives what happens on a day to day basis with each person individually and the team as a whole.  Big Al truly was the driving force that we all looked up to, even at those times when our opinions may not have fully aligned with his.  At no time did any of us not respect him for who he was.