Ricky Muir puts VT Calais up for sale

WANT to get a seat in federal politics, but hard up for the cash to get you there? There is a way: former Victorian senator Ricky Muir’s project car, a 5.0-litre V8-engined 1997 Holden VT Calais named “Politically Incorrect”, is up for sale.

More at home as the ride of choice in the Howard-era parliamentary carpool, Muir’s Calais is the project car the ’roo poo-flinging senator adopted about the same time he unexpectedly fell into federal politics, and it now has to make way for other projects. The price? A very affordable $800.

“No I am not giving up on motorsport,” the at-times outspoken Muir said. “With the Gippsland Motorplex/Bairnsdale Dragway set to begin drag racing again in a fortnight, our family XR8 is about to inherit some Drag Radial tyres and a little shot of nitrous,” Muir wrote on his Facebook page.

“Just downsizing the toys to focus on some of the others.”

Muir is selling the “reasonably straight and clean” car as a roller. He says it sits on factory alloys, has had the rear seats and boot trimmings removed for weight reduction, while the diff is welded locked. As well, the buyer gets new Pedder Sports Ryder springs (rears fitted, fronts not), and a new radiator.

According to Muir, it was built as a cheap entry-level motorsport vehicle. “It was used for a few burnout competitions and once around a gravel hillclimb track,” he says.

But as always, the political sunshine soon makes way for the post-budget rain. Politically Incorrect needs a new water pump, has “a tendency to break down in higher revs, never got around to looking at why”, and it “seems to have a mystery noise only audible at a certain amount of revs”.

“Selling for the price of a 5.0 roller V8 in need of a rebuild (might not be the case with this one), rest of car comes free,” he says.

Sadly, it’s not the same car Muir’s daughter, then aged eight, was filmed dropping a burnout in – a video that was swiftly removed from social media shortly after he was elected.

Wheels has peeked behind the parliamentary veil a few times in its 65-year history. We’ve even had Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser review cars, and trawled through Australian businessman and former political heavyweight Clive Palmer’s $20 million car collection – he famously knocked back the offer of a commonwealth car to arrive at Parliament House in the back of his chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud to help reduce the financial burden on taxpayers.

A true man of the people.