by Janine Hill

IT MIGHT be an old bomb but as far as Tony Cumner was concerned, it did not need to look like one. 

Having got an $800 Holden Commodore mechanically sound enough to drive in this year’s 2023 Shitbox Rally, Tony and his mate Aaron Hollier decided to give it an external makeover, too.

The old white Commo is now a treefrog green with dashes of yellow and black and a happy face at the front.

“We couldn’t go boring. The rally’s a fundraiser for the Cancer Council and the Cancer Council gives people hope,” Tony said. 

“This thing has been a super challenge and there have been some issues but we weren’t going to go boring. We want to give people hope when they see it.”

Choosing a colour scheme was a lark for the two mates, who work at Lindsay Rural, Nambour, but live at Cooran.

“We drove up to Supercheap at Gympie, grabbed the paint colour book, and Aaron found this green in it,” Tony said.

Tony has been driving the car to work at Nambour to iron out any mechanical bugs before he and Aaron depart for the rally, which will begin on October 13 in Port Douglas and end on October 21 in Adelaide.

He and Aaron have done as much of the work on the car as possible to keep it under the $1600 threshold for Shitbox Rally cars but are grateful for the help of Pomona’s magic mechanic, Andrew, who picked up a couple of problems that might have ended their rally journey early.

Tony and Aaron, Team OhShat!, have so far raised more than $15,000 for the Cancer Council so far, well over the entry minimum of $5000, but Tony is not done yet.

“There’s probably another $800 to $1000 in the donations jars we haven’t counted but I’d like to see us go over $20,000. Twenty’s a good number,” he said.

If you would like to donate, go to https://spring2023.shitboxrally.com.au/ohshat