Monaro convertibles I have found
(I know there are more out there!)

Back in perhaps 1984, I wrote to Street Rodder magazine, Wheels and Motor Manual  and received replies telling me of the yellow and red convertible HQs. I was also told of another convertible which turned out to be an "early" (1st generation) and I visited and spoke to the guy (in St. Albans in Victoria) back in say 1985, but he had sold it by then and he may have shown me pics but I can't recall now. He said he had done his with a roofline closely emulating the hardtop but one change he did do was to cut a V in the panel on either side of where the rear window was and bent and solder the metal so that it turned inwards, otherwise he felt the corner stuck up oddly (I actually reckon a factory one would have had the fender crease merging into the body side as per the HK Kingswood/Belmont and HK-G Premier/Brougham sedans , to resolve the same dilemma; US convertibles often varied from their related hardtop model in this way too). That's what I looked for immediately on the HK above but it doesn't look like that's the case with this one so it's unlikely the same one. I don't know if I could trace that guy now nearly 20 years later - though he seemed a pretty good sort to me - didn't even seem fazed that some stranger turned up out of the blue one evening to talk Monaro convertibles with him! I think I would have bought his car from him without qualms, he seemed the sort of guy you could trust.

Anyway regarding the one above, even if it has been a fairly recent conversion after 36 years of life I would want it checked out as time is not always kind to cars that don't get chopped around, let alone those that have been. Ultimately no hardtop cut down will be as solid as either the original or a model designed as a convertible from scratch. The earlies are built purely as a unibody with only basic subframes for the suspension. The HQ-Z had a "semi perimeter frame" from the front till about just after the door cut on the coupes, essentially half an old style chassis, but by then the frames acted more as an extension of the suspension, and were allowed to flex a bit, with the body being the solid unit. I always thought the later models would be better to cut down (and neater around the window line) as the frame gives some torsional strength, or at least more than not having it.

But both models would need considerable beefing up underneath the cabin to maintain any semblance of solidity. The red HQ on my site had tie rods from each front corner to the centre of the firewall, but these would have just been additional (to stop the front end vibrating separately?) to what was done under the cabin floor I suspect. (Interestingly I think the US GTO version of the current V2 model has them too!).

I was also told once that to tell a good conversion then you need to check the ease of opening and closing the doors; if they are poor fitting or hard to open/close then move on and find another. I always assumed that that meant that a car might bend like a banana and the front and rear ends would sag, leaving the doors not meeting their catches and/or not lining up squarely with the openings. Not sure now but it might be possible instead for the sagging to occur under the cabin and the doors get locked in to their openings and have to be prised out to open/slammed in to shut. Obviously neither of these things are desirable.

If I was going to buy one, as opposed to building one myself, which I still intend to do, I would inspect all the normal rust places underneath and then have an engineer go over the modifications they have done specifically in the conversion. And if there are none - run a mile!

btw I would think $18K is probably not unreasonable these days if the car is in the best possible condition, it certainly looks pretty clean in the pics. The yellow HQ was for sale purportedly at $9,995. The red HQ seems a relative bargain with 327 engine at $9,000 (though both were in 1984/5) but either of the used car dealers probably could have been talked down from those figures I'd guess.