Latest / Rusty's Garage / Colin Bond | Part 1 - Discovering Motorsport and the power of throttle control

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Colin Bond | Part 1 - Discovering Motorsport and the power of throttle control · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:19
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:25
  For this episode, I've taken a couple of mics and an audio recorder and headed round to Colin Bond's house here in Sydney.
• 0:31
  It's mid-morning, it's warm, on a Monday after a very memorable Bathurst 1000, won by young Kiwi Matt Payne for the first time and Garth Tander, his sixth win in the great race.
• 0:43
  GT would later decide it was kind of the perfect bookend to his success.
• 0:47
  supercars driving career.
• 0:49
  Bondi was at the mountain for some appearances.
• 0:52
  He's among the names that made the Bathurst race and the Australian touring car racing scene such a success and laid the foundation for people like GT in the decades that followed.
• 1:04
  My decision to get Colin on follows the recent John Smales feature episode that you can find in our library.
• 1:10
  JS has written a fantastic new book.
• 1:13
  It's called Full Tilt on Colin's Career and Colin's observations of so many areas that he made his presence felt in indiscriminately.
• 1:21
  in the Australian motorsport landscape and the surrounding region for that matter too.
• 1:27
  Colin, as you'll hear, has done it all.
• 1:29
  He worked with Harry Firth, drove in teams with the late Peter Brock and Alan Moffat.
• 1:34
  He's in the unique position of driving for the big factory squads back then too.
• 1:40
  Holden and Ford.
• 1:41
  There's round Australia's hill climbs, single-seaters against some absolute guns, the Australian Rally Championship, the Australian Touring Car Championship, which later became the supercars we know today, sports cars and a whole lot more.
• 1:56
  VWs, Mitsubishi Colts, Ford Escorts,
• 1:59
  Falcons, Holden Tiranas, the Ford Sierra, Alfa Romeo's Porsche.
• 2:03
  The list of cars is huge.
• 2:06
  I forgot to mention the Lynx Peugeot and someone will pull me up for not saying the Corolla too, no doubt.
• 2:11
  We're not going to get to every aspect of his story or every car.
• 2:15
  This is a relaxed convo that gently meanders across some key things while leaving you with plenty to read in the book.
• 2:23
  John and Colin, in my opinion, have done a terrific job on it.
• 2:26
  There's no
• 2:27
  commercial connection for us here.
• 2:29
  I just think that it's kind of right to support the industry where I can.
• 2:32
  So if you're looking for a Christmas gift, search for Full Tilt.
• 2:37
  You can find it in my colleague, Aaron Noonan's V8 Sleuth online store, for example.
• 2:42
  Colin's wife, Robin, has kindly made us a coffee and I'm a sweet tooth, which I reckon she knows or remembers, so there's some biscuits here too.
• 2:50
  And we have a couple of hours before his daughter visits.
• 2:53
  This is Colin Bond, humble, someone with great mechanical empathy, which served him well in his career.
• 3:00
  He could have had quite the international aspect of his career too, as the 1980 Formula One world champion Alan Jones reminds us in the book.
• 3:10
  But the family man chose to make a career here and he chalked up some seriously impressive achievements along the way.
• 3:17
  Supercars and the Australian Motorsport Halls of Fame.
• 3:21
  And rightly recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours in the early 90s with an OAM or Order of Australia Medal.
• 3:29
  Enjoy the conversation with Colin Bond.
• 3:31
  Well, Colin, I'm immensely grateful that you've agreed to do a bit of this.
• 3:36
  And we're doing it basically after an epic Bathurst 1000.
• 3:40
  And you've almost spent two weekends straight there, haven't you?
• 3:43
  You were with, I think, the Cortina Car Club.
• 3:45
  We're celebrating a fantastic new book.
• 3:48
  It was terrific at the mountain and then even at that car club gathering that people are celebrating your great story, isn't it?
• 3:54
  It is because it's not just me.
• 3:55
  It's 50 years of motorsport through my eyes, basically.
• 3:58
  And when you consider...
• 4:00
  all the times the motorsport, I suppose, we've done.
• 4:03
  And not only that, all the manufacturers that were involved and the people in the manufacturers who were sort of pulling the strings at the time and making it all happen, I think makes it interesting reading because it's not just about me and what you've done and that.
• 4:15
  It's just the whole industry.
• 4:17
  The connection, the people and so on.
• 4:19
  I've put the link for the book, which is called Full Tilt and written by a great friend and colleague in John Smiles.
• 4:27
  I put that in the app description so people can go and read.
• 4:29
  by that.
• 4:29
  Well, I think we're just going to touch here on various aspects of your career.
• 4:33
  Can I start with your childhood?
• 4:34
  Because you've basically remained true to your roots in terms of where the Bond family were settled and established in Sydney.
• 4:42
  And you were quite a good soccer player as a young fellow, weren't you?
• 4:45
  With maybe even potential to go that path.
• 4:47
  It was.
• 4:48
  Look, in hindsight, I mean, I had a three-year-old brother.
• 4:52
  He was interested in sport as well.
• 4:53
  And he always took on funny sports like pole vaulting and things just because he could.
• 4:58
  And we all played soccer.
• 5:00
  We all played cricket, you know.
• 5:01
  Mum and Dad played tennis.
• 5:02
  They played tennis.
• 5:04
  But because he was three years older, you were sort of always playing against them.
• 5:08
  Not that you're trying to be better, but you want to play at their level.
• 5:13
  So was that a competitive thing?
• 5:14
  Did that become a competitive thing for you?
• 5:16
  Very competitive, you know.
• 5:18
  And, look, soccer was easy.
• 5:20
  We started soccer at six, you know, and you probably started cricket at six.
• 5:24
  And you go through all the, you know, every two years you keep going up a level, up a level, up a level.
• 5:30
  And when we got to when I was 17, I played representative soccer as well.
• 5:35
  And we were offered a couple of clubs, one Arpia, which was the Italian people, and the other Croatia, which were all the Croatians.
• 5:44
  And I went there.
• 5:45
  The Croatians only taught Croatian.
• 5:49
  They didn't speak English.
• 5:50
  I bet they could.
• 5:51
  Same with the Italians.
• 5:52
  But the quality of their football, I mean, that sort of underscores the level that you were playing at.
• 5:57
  We were at the top level, I think.
• 5:59
  I then played actually for the local team, which was Gladesville Ride.
• 6:03
  And Gladesville Ride was sort of the old Poms.
• 6:06
  Probably played third division over there.
• 6:08
  But at least they spoke English and you could talk to them.
• 6:10
  And I played one game in second grade and I was straight up into the first team.
• 6:15
  Amazing.
• 6:15
  And played there, you know.
• 6:17
  And it was sort of something that I always wanted to do.
• 6:20
  I was always good at sport, generally any ball sport.
• 6:23
  And...
• 6:25
  So I thought, well, there's only two sports that you could still do in those days when you were 50 and win.
• 6:31
  One was golf and the other was motorsport because, like, you look at motorsport, Fangio only turned up when he was about 40 or so.
• 6:37
  Not really, but it was late in life.
• 6:40
  So I thought, well, they're two good sports that you could probably do so you make a living out of.
• 6:45
  You know, cricket was good.
• 6:46
  I was really good at cricket.
• 6:47
  I used to be open bat, open bowl, all that type of thing.
• 6:50
  But in those days, carry back ahead and got onto cricket, you know, so there was no money in cricket, you know, at all.
• 6:57
  So I thought, okay.
• 6:59
  So soccer was good, but I was 17 and then I got a car.
• 7:03
  Yep.
• 7:04
  And that changed things, of course, again, because with the car, you go, ah, that's more like it.
• 7:10
  So anyway.
• 7:11
  We used to after the Red X Troll days.
• 7:13
  I mean, when I was a kid, that sort of really got my interest in motor cars.
• 7:18
  And the fact that they were sort of, you didn't have TV even, I think, because you had to go to Zinni Sound in town or something where they have the news rules that keep going around.
• 7:28
  And you could watch it three times or something.
• 7:31
  But, yeah, look, it was one of those sort of situations that,
• 7:35
  Then we got our push bikes when we were younger kids and you sort of pretended we were rallying around the Brownian Park bush here.
• 7:40
  I think that is sort of where, if I'm right, the fascination with speed or manoeuvrability came from.
• 7:46
  You become quite a good golfer in later life and things like that, I know.
• 7:50
  But that is, I think, the true spark because the family didn't necessarily have a connection to motor racing, did they?
• 7:55
  No, not at all.
• 7:55
  No, well, see, we never had a car, you know, until, I mean, it was unbelievable, I suppose, in this day and age.
• 8:00
  So it was your grandma that had the car?
• 8:02
  Oh, absolutely.
• 8:03
  Yeah, it was.
• 8:04
  My dad in the war, you know, went to Darwin and he ticked the box that he never drove because I hadn't driven or something.
• 8:09
  But he learned to drive up there on trucks, of course.
• 8:12
  Okay.
• 8:12
  This is World War II we're talking, aren't we?
• 8:13
  Yeah, World War II.
• 8:14
  Anyway, and then when we came back, you know, mum and dad lived opposite each other, you know.
• 8:19
  Yeah.
• 8:20
  So, you know, you say married the girl next door.
• 8:22
  Well, it was actually the girl across the street.
• 8:24
  Across the road.
• 8:25
  Okay.
• 8:25
  Yeah.
• 8:26
  But anyway, your mum's mum, you know, so she brought the Dodge.
• 8:30
  Okay.
• 8:31
  And my uncle was back from the war as well, so he used to drive and we'd all pile into this and go down to Collaroy or something on a Sunday.
• 8:38
  So Sunday school went out the window, basically.
• 8:43
  And you'd all be standing up behind the seat, you know, hanging on to, there's a thing where you could hang your coats in those days.
• 8:49
  And you'd say, overtake him, Monk, come on, you know, all this sort of stuff.
• 8:52
  Okay.
• 8:54
  But, you know, and there's no seatbelts and as many kids as you can pack in the car, of course, you know.
• 8:58
  But the bikes and I guess that particular car lit a spark for you.
• 9:04
  Take us to what happens next.
• 9:06
  Was it an invitation to go to a motor car?
• 9:09
  Did you borrow a car?
• 9:10
  How did it start?
• 9:11
  No, possibly Andy Frankel's dad was a member of the ARDC, right?
• 9:16
  And he was just one of the mates who used to ride the push bikes around with us.
• 9:19
  And he took us to Mount Drillett.
• 9:22
  Which was very different to what it is now, obviously.
• 9:24
  Well, of course it was.
• 9:25
  It's a shopping centre where it probably was.
• 9:27
  But in the early days, there were lots of Air Force trips built during the war, just in case, I think, it happened.
• 9:35
  If it happened in Sydney and the guys took off on their planes and they bombed the airport here, you could go somewhere else.
• 9:41
  You've got a secondary airfield kind of thing, don't you?
• 9:43
  And they were all over the place.
• 9:44
  They were pit town everywhere, you know.
• 9:46
  So anyway...
• 9:47
  So we went there and there was a guy in a Dodge, Don Gibson, in his side valve Dodge, same as my aunt, you know.
• 9:53
  And he was up against all these Holdens and was looking pretty good in the old Dodge.
• 9:56
  I thought, fantastic.
• 9:58
  And, of course, there were MGTCs.
• 10:00
  There must have been 100 of them, I think, you know.
• 10:02
  Yep.
• 10:02
  One Aston Martin and one Healey or something.
• 10:04
  That was about the racing.
• 10:06
  Yeah.
• 10:06
  But it was good.
• 10:07
  I mean, it was funny.
• 10:09
  It was a little track that went around a hill, I suppose, started down.
• 10:14
  A hairpin was the 44-gallon drum at the end.
• 10:16
  I can't turn around and come back up.
• 10:19
  But, you know, Jack Bradman was there in a race car, you know, in his Cooper Climax, you know, and it was Red X Special in those days.
• 10:27
  And there was this kid sitting at it, and it happened to be George.
• 10:30
  I didn't know him at that stage of the game.
• 10:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:32
  Yeah, so it was something like that and you looked at it.
• 10:36
  Were you hooked straight away or was it like, this is amazing?
• 10:39
  What affected it?
• 10:40
  I wouldn't say straight away because we didn't have any money.
• 10:42
  You know, it was certainly one of those things and besides that, I hadn't got a licence now.
• 10:46
  This was well before, you know.
• 10:47
  Yeah.
• 10:48
  But, you know, it was just, well, coming back from Bathurst and this is probably, we went to Bathurst a couple of times and slept, you know, in the camp and watched the racing that was on at the time and this is when we were still, before we had a car.
• 11:00
  But we're coming back from Bathurst, it was when I was, you know, must have had this thing a night at the time, I was an apprentice mechanic at Grinville Motors at New Sydney under the Harbour Bridge.
• 11:09
  Yeah, yeah.
• 11:11
  And this bugger, it's right, went past, you know, beautiful line of road.
• 11:15
  Yeah.
• 11:16
  And I looked at it and I said, God, that's something I've got to have, one of those.
• 11:21
  So you're an apprentice mechanic at this stage or what are you?
• 11:23
  What are you doing to earn the money to buy this?
• 11:25
  Yeah, if I was over 17, I was apprentice mechanic at Grenville Motors and they were part of LNC Industries, of course, in those days.
• 11:32
  Yep.
• 11:32
  So they had Volkswagen and all that as well.
• 11:35
  And...
• 11:37
  So I used to somehow really get, I don't know, well, I get the job back in the city when someone was on holidays.
• 11:44
  and you would sort of go and register cars for them and all this sort of stuff.
• 11:48
  And if we sold Land Rover, say, to someone, post office or something.
• 11:53
  You're almost delivery-cum-test, let's call it test driver.
• 11:57
  If you're doing four, if you're doing four, the boys would drive them out and you'd go out in the Volkswagen and bring the boys back.
• 12:04
  Ah, gotcha, okay.
• 12:04
  So when you'd bring them back, you'd scare the living daylights out of them.
• 12:08
  LAUGHTER
• 12:10
  Excellent.
• 12:10
  I mean, it was always a bit of a joke.
• 12:12
  How'd you cobble together the money to get the Bug Eye Sprite?
• 12:15
  Because you're a young fellow.
• 12:16
  This would have been quite an outplay then, wasn't it?
• 12:18
  Oh, over a thousand dollars.
• 12:19
  A thousand pounds, I should say.
• 12:20
  Yeah.
• 12:20
  Look, you know, Andy Frankel found one for us.
• 12:22
  It was, you know, in a used car lot on Parramatta Road.
• 12:26
  And it was supercharged for some reason.
• 12:28
  I don't know about the guy, you know.
• 12:29
  He'd spin the wheels.
• 12:31
  A thousand bucks.
• 12:31
  I didn't have a lot of money, but I probably had enough to, you know.
• 12:35
  And my mum said, oh, I'll give you the rest, you know.
• 12:37
  Lovely.
• 12:38
  And I said, I'll pay you back, which I'm not sure whether I actually did fully pay it back.
• 12:44
  That's beside the point.
• 12:45
  Point, yeah.
• 12:45
  Because then when you got it.
• 12:48
  It had a drudges and supercharger on that was hopeless, basically, because it had drip feed oil to lubricate the veins.
• 12:54
  Okay.
• 12:55
  And when you're just in traffic and everything goes, it'd get too much oil and you'd foul a couple of spark plugs and all this.
• 13:00
  Oh, my God.
• 13:02
  So we decided that's got to go.
• 13:04
  Are you hands-on in fixing this?
• 13:06
  Oh, absolutely.
• 13:06
  Absolutely, yeah.
• 13:08
  So we did what you normally do on those things.
• 13:09
  You bore it out to 1060, get a web and all that, camshafts and what have you.
• 13:14
  And we then members, we joined the MG Car Club New South Wales.
• 13:18
  Yep.
• 13:19
  Which is still strong today.
• 13:21
  Oh, they are very strong.
• 13:22
  Anyhow.
• 13:23
  I was club champion, I think, in about 1965, you know.
• 13:30
  And before that, there was what they used to call the Camp Skorobbery, which was the biggest motor car event we had in New South Wales every year.
• 13:37
  Nice.
• 13:37
  And all the car clubs we go to Pitttown, which is another old airstrip.
• 13:40
  Yeah.
• 13:41
  And I won that twice out of two attempts.
• 13:44
  Yeah.
• 13:45
  And looking back at it now, it's one of the things that I think was really good because –
• 13:52
  With Matakana, even like straight flag bends and things, you had to be close and do it smoothly and short distance and just do the right turn and come back, and that was fast.
• 14:02
  When you attacked it and you think, oh, that's really fast, but it's really slow.
• 14:08
  It wasn't fast, yeah.
• 14:09
  It's really slow.
• 14:10
  I'm intrigued by that because, I mean, your career is so diverse from circuit racing and rallying and so on, but you put a lot of value in that period, don't you, to your driving?
• 14:17
  I took it all my way.
• 14:18
  It's how we approach hill climbs.
• 14:20
  We were three times New South Wales Hill Climb champion and we had the outright record on all the hills we ever went to.
• 14:27
  But I got done twice in the Australian ones by Tim Shankan and the other by Alan Hamlin.
• 14:32
  The first one was in Melbourne and Tim had this go-kart with a bloody 500cc motor in the back or something.
• 14:38
  Do you two wind each other up about that even now?
• 14:40
  Oh, I know.
• 14:40
  I used to keep saying to him, no.
• 14:42
  Tim, when you went overseas, did you tell Enzo Ferrari that you beat me and that got you the job or something like that, but it's just a joke.
• 14:49
  Love it.
• 14:50
  No.
• 14:51
  And the other one was when we were in Collingrove, you know, the following year with Alan Hamman out of Porsche, you know, box of thing.
• 14:58
  And I still only had the Lynx Peugeot, which was a great car.
• 15:00
  But anyway, but only had a supercharged Peugeot motor in a proper open wheel car.
• 15:05
  It was quite a big car, really.
• 15:07
  Yep.
• 15:08
  So...
• 15:09
  Look, and even in rallying, you know, I used to go for night, which you could do in those days, and you could go up to Gosford when I had my Volkswagens and things, and you'd go through some of the stages which you knew and you'd drive it really out of, not out of control, but you're just sliding it and sliding it.
• 15:27
  But with that perfection you're talking about from the motor car, he's trying to say like a bit of that.
• 15:31
  Then I'd do it like a race car, you know, and drive it straighter and tighter and things.
• 15:36
  And it was more constant.
• 15:38
  doing it that way than attacking it.
• 15:41
  Wow.
• 15:41
  But I must admit, when we got the BDA escorts later on, you know, with a lot more horsepower and things, it was, when you're, Bega to me, was one of the best areas for rallying in Australia.
• 15:53
  Rallying.
• 15:53
  It's iconic, iconic roads down there.
• 15:55
  Yeah, yeah.
• 15:57
  The Shire roads would have to be the best Shire roads in the world, I reckon, because they're really well packed.
• 16:02
  Yep.
• 16:02
  Yep.
• 16:03
  They're banks.
• 16:03
  Yeah.
• 16:04
  You know, so the water runs off them.
• 16:06
  Bit of camber almost, so to speak.
• 16:07
  It is camber.
• 16:08
  Yeah.
• 16:09
  And you're setting it up and, you know, you go one and you're already set for the next corner, but you're not there yet, you know, and all this sort of stuff.
• 16:16
  And it's a fantastic thing.
• 16:19
  It's one thing I liked about rallying over racing, that in rallying, if you tried really hard, you went faster.
• 16:27
  Yeah.
• 16:28
  Whereas in racing, sometimes you try really hard and go slower.
• 16:30
  Yeah.
• 16:31
  And you think, oh, that's not right, you know.
• 16:35
  I should have been going faster because I was trying harder.
• 16:37
  So you had to work out what's fast and what isn't fast.
• 16:41
  I love it.
• 16:42
  You've already sparked a couple of things in the conversation which I want to dive around.
• 16:45
  Firstly, can we come to Lynx Peugeot?
• 16:47
  Because in the book there's a number of signature cars, right, and I feel like that's a standout car for you.
• 16:52
  Tell me about it and, you know.
• 16:54
  Yeah, well, it was after the Round Australia race,
• 16:57
  We went with Andy Frankel and that.
• 16:59
  We did it in 65.
• 17:02
  There was an award for the crew under the age of 25, which we all were.
• 17:06
  And we thought, oh, this is pretty simple.
• 17:07
  We'll go on that, win that.
• 17:09
  It was 250 pounds prize.
• 17:11
  That will pay for the...
• 17:12
  for doing the event.
• 17:13
  You did it with your brother, is that right?
• 17:15
  No, no, he loaned the car.
• 17:16
  Oh, he loaned it.
• 17:17
  Sorry, thank you.
• 17:17
  Thank you.
• 17:18
  Thank you for correcting me.
• 17:20
  We'll get there in a second.
• 17:21
  Okay, okay.
• 17:22
  I think my brother was my first sponsor when I consider it.
• 17:25
  Come back to Lynx Peugeot.
• 17:26
  Well done.
• 17:26
  Okay.
• 17:27
  But anyhow, Bob Holden was in the same event, you know, Peugeot, of course.
• 17:31
  Okay.
• 17:32
  I mean, we didn't have any accommodation.
• 17:34
  I think we used to sleep in the grandstands and things, you know, in those days and, yeah, sleeping bags and that was it.
• 17:40
  Yeah.
• 17:41
  Anyhow, and Bob was sort of there and he was saying he had this thing, Peugeot, and he really thought he should sell it, you know, and he said, why don't I buy it?
• 17:49
  And I said, oh, you know, maybe.
• 17:51
  Anyhow...
• 17:53
  We decided, Bob Riley and himself then, we said, oh, we sell the Sprite and we can buy the car.
• 18:00
  So we went to Oran Park because Bob was racing it there and in those days you always bought the car as soon as it came off the racetrack.
• 18:10
  Gotcha.
• 18:11
  Because if you let him go home, you never know whether you're going to get the same engine or whatever.
• 18:16
  Anyway.
• 18:16
  We'll take delivery now, thank you.
• 18:18
  Yes, exactly.
• 18:19
  But what actually happened, he broke an axle, back axle, and the wheel disappeared, you know.
• 18:24
  Okay.
• 18:25
  Didn't do much damage to the car at all because it sat down on the lower up.
• 18:29
  Anyway, so we put the car in the trailer.
• 18:32
  That's how I was paid for it.
• 18:34
  Took it back home and Dad was at work, so I put it in the garage.
• 18:37
  Okay.
• 18:39
  Didn't have a car.
• 18:40
  We might have had one.
• 18:40
  It doesn't matter.
• 18:41
  Anyway, so I put a brick under the suspension and just put the tyre in its place.
• 18:47
  Propped it up kind of thing, did you?
• 18:48
  Sure, propped it up.
• 18:49
  Yes, I was sitting there.
• 18:51
  And he came down to have a look at it when he came home and he kicked the tyre and, of course, it went down the garage.
• 18:56
  Oh, no.
• 18:57
  You see, shit, son, I think it's a bit fragile.
• 18:59
  I'm not trying to tell you.
• 19:03
  It's all right.
• 19:04
  But, I mean, those were the days where you never...
• 19:07
  Like if we wanted to change, you know, put some new uni joints in the back or something like that, we'd have to wait till Friday night to get paid to then go and buy the uni joints, you know, and then you'd be working all, you know, Friday night to do it all, put it back together again.
• 19:22
  You know, and we did...
• 19:24
  I think we did 28 races with it, 121 of them.
• 19:27
  Amazing.
• 19:27
  Plus owning all the hillclubs.
• 19:29
  We didn't realise it was a hillclubs car.
• 19:31
  But the very first race meeting was interesting.
• 19:33
  It was at Christmas time down at Hume Ware.
• 19:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:37
  And have you been to Hume Ware?
• 19:38
  I have, yes.
• 19:39
  Okay.
• 19:40
  Well, in Hume Ware, you know, they have the starting gridders off the track.
• 19:43
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:44
  So you go on the next race up before the other race is finished.
• 19:47
  Yeah.
• 19:48
  And not only that, you go out and practice and you only get about three or four laps anyway.
• 19:53
  So I go to line up and the guy says, over here.
• 19:57
  And I'm on pole.
• 19:58
  See?
• 19:58
  Okay.
• 19:59
  So anyway, next minute we had Barry Collison, it might have been someone in a rabble.
• 20:07
  I'm on pole.
• 20:10
  Mate, if you want it, you can have it.
• 20:16
  Anyway, as it turned out, yeah, so that was the first.
• 20:19
  I mean, we went well.
• 20:20
  Actually, I think we finished third or something.
• 20:22
  What was that place like to drive?
• 20:23
  I mean, it's held in such esteem now.
• 20:26
  What was it like to race on to drive?
• 20:27
  Well, look, it was the bottom of the, when they built the dam, you know.
• 20:32
  to hold up all the water.
• 20:34
  So it was just the base of the dam.
• 20:36
  And when you went down, it was only Fede and Aloha, and you went around the corner, you came back, and there was just a fence.
• 20:42
  You went down, did a loop, came back.
• 20:44
  So the other cars are going, like, it's almost like on the highway, you know, just with a bit of arm go between you, one's going this way, one going that way, at one area only.
• 20:53
  No, but it was good.
• 20:54
  I mean, you'd go there and on one day you could practice, you know, have 25 practice sessions and have 25 races.
• 21:02
  It was all over and done in one day, you know, because… That's how they did it then.
• 21:06
  They just kept moving them through, didn't they?
• 21:07
  Oh, absolutely.
• 21:08
  And it was quite a great idea that you didn't line up on the grid.
• 21:11
  There was no warm-up laps, of course, or anything like that.
• 21:13
  You just got there and away you went.
• 21:15
  But that was him here.
• 21:16
  But I must admit that the Lynx was good.
• 21:19
  I mean, we drove it at Bathurst.
• 21:21
  Well, we went to Adelaide at one stage, Andy and I, because we wanted to run the hill climb because the Australian Hill Climb Championship was going to be held there later on in the year.
• 21:29
  This is a cotton group.
• 21:31
  So we went early and this is on when Bathurst used to be on the weekend and I think the bikes were on on Friday, Saturday and the cars were, you know, Sunday, Monday.
• 21:39
  Okay.
• 21:41
  So we went across there, did the all climb, broke an upright, but the guy said, oh, you'd go and get Harold Wint.
• 21:48
  He's an expert welder in town sort of thing.
• 21:51
  Fix it for you.
• 21:51
  Fix it man, yeah.
• 21:52
  So he fixed it for us.
• 21:54
  And he was a lovely guy.
• 21:55
  Anyway, and then we drove all the way back to Bathurst to the race the next day.
• 21:59
  And so we took off and there was, you know, Spencer Martin and KB in the two and a half there.
• 22:06
  And I was actually, I could stay with them, but they got away because they had bigger tyres and better brakes in the end.
• 22:11
  But in performance-wise, you know, we did, I think in those days, 162.4 miles an hour down Continental Street.
• 22:18
  which was fairly narrow with only barbed wire fences either side.
• 22:21
  Yeah.
• 22:22
  But no chase back then.
• 22:23
  No chase.
• 22:24
  No, no, no.
• 22:24
  That chase came much, much later.
• 22:26
  Later, yeah.
• 22:28
  Yeah, I mean, and over the last hump, I mean, the bikes, you know, Greg Hansford and all those guys were...
• 22:33
  be monowing over the last hump and things.
• 22:36
  And besides, you know, it killed a few people as well.
• 22:38
  Don Gibson, Gibson, that lived in Orbury.
• 22:41
  Not Don Gibson, it's... Don Watson.
• 22:44
  Don Watson, you mean, from Watson Transport?
• 22:47
  No, no.
• 22:48
  No, no.
• 22:49
  The young kid that was driving for...
• 22:52
  Bob Jane at the time, Bevan Gibson.
• 22:55
  Okay.
• 22:55
  Bevan Gibson, where the car just took off and flipped on its back and skidded down the road, you know.
• 23:02
  And Tom Solomon, I think Tom Solomon might have been one there.
• 23:05
  And so, look, it's, it was, I don't know what you say, dangerous, but I think in those days motor racing was dangerous.
• 23:11
  Dangerous, yeah.
• 23:12
  Generally speaking, it was...
• 23:14
  had a stigma to it to say that motor racing is dangerous, you know, and all that type of thing.
• 23:18
  And when you look at it, the cars were pretty dangerous and the tracks were very dangerous.
• 23:23
  They made a combination of both.
• 23:25
  Whereas today the cars are much, much safer and the tracks are much safer.
• 23:30
  And you sort of, whereas I guess in the old, I would say old days, you know, but when Jack Bradman was around, you know, they were killing one a day or one a week or one a month.
• 23:37
  But you didn't know any different.
• 23:38
  That's how it was back then, wasn't it?
• 23:39
  It was, yeah.
• 23:40
  You know, that's what you did.
• 23:41
  What I'm intrigued about in this phase, maybe I haven't covered everything in the timeline, that doesn't matter, but are you sort of working and doing this part-time?
• 23:50
  Are you now starting to get to the point where you're making a name for yourself and maybe this is going to lead to something?
• 23:54
  Where are you in your career at this point?
• 23:56
  Yeah, no, what actually happened, we were paying for everything except Mitsubishi came on board.
• 24:00
  Doug Stewart, these two cars came from Mitsubishi and they just wanted to – Were they Colts or Colts?
• 24:08
  Yeah, the Colts.
• 24:09
  These are early Colts, right?
• 24:11
  Number 10 and 11 off the assembly line.
• 24:13
  Oh, wow.
• 24:13
  Wow.
• 24:14
  That's how – anyhow.
• 24:16
  And Doug got some of his mates together and the two Japanese turned up.
• 24:20
  And they just did some trips in Australia, like as though it was the Reddick Stroll again, more or less.
• 24:24
  Okay, yeah.
• 24:25
  And I mean, it was a funny situation.
• 24:27
  You know, Doug said their first, when they took off from Sydney, you know, they were going across the Harbour Bridge in those days and you had to pay the toll.
• 24:34
  And he pushed back to get his money out.
• 24:35
  and broke the back seat and he finished lying down in the car.
• 24:39
  So I had to turn around and go back and we got it all up again.
• 24:42
  He said, but that was fine.
• 24:45
  But they did this test and in the end,
• 24:48
  They left the cars here, the Japanese.
• 24:50
  Like now they just crunch them up or do something.
• 24:53
  Yes.
• 24:53
  But so they left them here and Doug Donaldson, who I think was then, you know, Griffin Motors and so on, which was selling them, said Doug Stewart was a mate of his and he said, look, can we make some rally cars?
• 25:06
  I said, yeah, sure, sir.
• 25:08
  He got me and he said, you know, so we, Bob and I and I, so we had them at our place.
• 25:13
  So we, you know, Garage became the Mitsubishi Rally Team.
• 25:16
  That's amazing.
• 25:17
  And we started them off very basically, you know, and then the Japanese got a little bit enthusiastic about it.
• 25:24
  So Southern Cross turned up, they brought out a new car for us.
• 25:29
  But the old ones were only 850cc, so the next one was probably 950 or something.
• 25:32
  Okay, okay.
• 25:33
  And then the following year was 1,000 or something.
• 25:35
  The next one was 1,100.
• 25:36
  And the last one I drove for them was 1,500, and that was in 69, just after winning Bathurst.
• 25:42
  So Mitsubishi, you know, in those days, you know, when you had, say, Holden had 50% of the market, Forden had 20%, Chrysler had 10%, BMC had 10%, and there was only 10 left over for everybody else, like even Peugeot, Renault.
• 25:59
  Because Mitsubishi was like an emerging brand, weren't they?
• 26:02
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:03
  The Japanese had this much.
• 26:05
  Tiny margin, yeah, tiny bit rather, yeah.
• 26:06
  And the big guys didn't see them coming.
• 26:08
  Yeah.
• 26:20
  What you did, and I think that became a hallmark later on when you did the Ford Escorts and so on, you and Bob and I guess the crew that you formed there, you were very good at building a world-class car more or less.
• 26:33
  You did some very good things, didn't you, around the build?
• 26:35
  No, when we went to Ford, obviously in 77, when Moffat, you know,
• 26:39
  said, do we want to drive?
• 26:40
  And Harry, at this stage of the game, was starting to get a bit suspect, you know.
• 26:45
  And we agreed.
• 26:47
  And it was a good deal.
• 26:48
  You know, when we went to Moffat the first year with the Falcons, you know, we were first and second, everything, first and second in the championship.
• 26:55
  Go to Bathurst and you're first and second, you know.
• 26:57
  It's a...
• 26:58
  It was a great year and because the Ford in that particular time were the car.
• 27:02
  Yep.
• 27:02
  The next year, I think, the ANI-X come on board and it was probably a bit better mousetrap than the Ford was at the time, you know.
• 27:08
  Yeah, yeah.
• 27:09
  Anyhow, but when we went with Ford, I was talking to Geoff Polites at Ford, you know, and Geoff in those days was just a junior coming through the ranks.
• 27:18
  Yep.
• 27:19
  And I said, look, you know...
• 27:20
  You should have a rally come because he said, I know we brought them out once before, you know, with all these, you know, their top drivers and things.
• 27:27
  Cost us a bomb, he said, you know, and they all broke down.
• 27:30
  It sort of didn't do any good.
• 27:31
  This is in the Southern Crossland.
• 27:32
  I said, yeah, but they're winning the world championship.
• 27:34
  They just won the East Africa Safari.
• 27:36
  They've got to be okay, you know.
• 27:39
  So he agreed.
• 27:40
  And what he did, he got two BDA Escorts.
• 27:44
  We're talking Mark IIs, aren't they?
• 27:45
  Yeah, sorry, keep going.
• 27:46
  It's okay.
• 27:48
  I got one and New Zealand got one.
• 27:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:51
  And, you know, he had a bit of swing because they didn't really want to send them out in the first place anyway.
• 27:55
  Okay.
• 27:56
  So that's okay.
• 27:57
  So I went down with Greg Carr and Greg was actually, well, we made an escort, just an ordinary two-liter thing, you know, for him initially.
• 28:08
  And then the BDA, so I took it to Canberra and said, take it for a drive, you know, and he came back with a big smile on his face.
• 28:14
  Love it.
• 28:14
  He said, love it.
• 28:16
  And then when we went to the Southern Cross,
• 28:19
  You know, and in those days, you know, the Nissan people sort of would bring out about five or six overseas drivers and things, you know, in their topic cars.
• 28:27
  Yep.
• 28:28
  After about three stages, Greg was about six minutes in the lead, you know, absolutely annihilating him.
• 28:33
  Yep.
• 28:34
  And then we had an alternator problem.
• 28:36
  And we didn't have any spares, you know, because this is just a new car.
• 28:41
  So anyway, and in the end, you know, we had to change batteries and you'd have to have a torch out the window or something at night.
• 28:47
  And they still finished, but, you know, they were down the field probably fourth or something like that.
• 28:53
  But, you know, and then he ran that in the Rowdy Championship, of course, and in those days we only revved it to eight and a half revs the first year.
• 29:02
  Eight and a half hours more.
• 29:02
  It's still been sounding sweet, though.
• 29:04
  Oh, they do sound sweet.
• 29:05
  But anyway, so at the end of the year we thought we'll send the motor back to Cherry Oil.
• 29:10
  It was a Cherry Oil motor in England, which we did.
• 29:12
  Yeah.
• 29:14
  But then we got it back and all he did was put two new carburetors on it and put some big end bolts in it.
• 29:19
  I said, shit, we could have done that.
• 29:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:23
  The only reason why the carburetors, of course, the spindles were worn, you know, and the big end bolts are things you can change, which, you know.
• 29:29
  Yeah.
• 29:30
  So after that, we did all our own work on the cars ourselves.
• 29:33
  We did the engines and everything.
• 29:34
  But what was really nice about it was that Ford were building escorts just over at Homebush, which wasn't very far from us.
• 29:42
  We were glades for those days.
• 29:44
  And what we could do, we could take one of the boys in a trailer and we'd take a two-door body that's just been dipped to make it rust-proof, put it on the trailer, bring it back to the
• 29:59
  take all the brackets off we don't want, modify the guards and things and what have you.
• 30:05
  We could modify the floor for the ZF gearbox.
• 30:07
  You could, you know, we do all that.
• 30:09
  And what we end up, we made our own diff for it as well because they're only using Capri diffs basically in their cars.
• 30:17
  We could use the Falcon, which uses the BorgWarner 78 series.
• 30:22
  With the tubes, the tubes are heavier and thicker and you could have different size thickness in the tubes if you wanted them as well.
• 30:28
  Okay.
• 30:29
  And then we just made the fully floating things for them.
• 30:32
  And then we put the forward nine-inch centre in it, which was a 31 fine spined axle.
• 30:38
  Okay.
• 30:39
  The old ones, what they were using, what I think was something like...
• 30:43
  Land Rover axles or something.
• 30:44
  And as soon as they ran them flat, they would change an axle over there.
• 30:47
  Gotcha.
• 30:49
  So we had much bigger axles and things.
• 30:50
  It feels like you were building them tough, were you?
• 30:52
  You were building them.
• 30:53
  Oh, yeah, we were building them a bit tougher.
• 30:54
  And the other thing was it was nice that we could do too because of this.
• 30:59
  When we finished doing all the factory and four linking the rear suspension and doing all that sort of stuff, of course, we copied now off the original car and all that sort of stuff, I'd take it back to the factory.
• 31:10
  They'd put it back on the line.
• 31:12
  It would get dipped again and go down the line without a motor gearbox.
• 31:16
  It would have wheels and things.
• 31:17
  Two days and we'd have it back at the workshop, complete the car with everything swinging painted.
• 31:21
  Wow.
• 31:22
  So we only ever took it when I'm painting yellow.
• 31:23
  Yeah.
• 31:24
  That's pretty impressive for a small team to do.
• 31:26
  I mean, that's a great example of what motor racing is like.
• 31:29
  You have to be like that, don't you?
• 31:31
  I think we made six like that in there.
• 31:32
  Did you?
• 31:33
  Just for other people.
• 31:35
  And that naturally leads me to the fact that that program must have been so well respected.
• 31:41
  I mean, you had Ari Vartnan come and drive and all sorts, didn't you?
• 31:43
  Oh, absolutely.
• 31:43
  No, well, see, the good thing about that was that the cars we had here were identical, basically, to what they were racing in Europe.
• 31:50
  Fantastic.
• 31:50
  And winning.
• 31:51
  So...
• 31:53
  What I did the first time, we brought Beyond Watergarden and Four Seelius out when they were world champions and they ran the Southern Cross Rattling.
• 32:02
  Really, yeah.
• 32:02
  And they were terrific.
• 32:03
  The boys loved them.
• 32:04
  And we could still break axles but what we did, I had a Detroit locker which Ford brought out for their race teams but we never used them.
• 32:14
  Okay.
• 32:14
  Because they weren't any good as a race.
• 32:17
  Okay.
• 32:18
  They won't just run spills in race cars because you can break better.
• 32:21
  That's the biggest thing.
• 32:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:23
  But in the rallying, the spool worked perfectly because you're on loose surfaces all the time and because it's gear driven, you had to spin the wheels to get the gears both locked in and then it would just power out.
• 32:33
  And you could drive on one wheel because it was a proper lock diff.
• 32:37
  Whereas if you had a limb-to-slip diff, the limb-to-slip diff would still work for a while on one axle and then all of a sudden you'd wear the thing away a bit and just wouldn't have enough grip anymore and you'd drive into a halt, you know.
• 32:49
  So it got, you know, it can get you then out of trouble, which happened to Bjorn, you know.
• 32:55
  At least you get to the end of the stage, but you're going to drop time.
• 32:58
  And, you know, so we put a new diff and everything else in it for him for the next day.
• 33:02
  And after the first stage, he says to me, Oh, Colin, this rally could end very soon for me.
• 33:06
  I'm driving very fast.
• 33:11
  Yeah, but, and of course when, with Ari and the guys in New Zealand would know all about Ari because Ari did a couple of events over there, you know, and I think at one stage he had one of the local navigators and I think he scared the living bailouts out of him, you know.
• 33:24
  But anyway, that was just Ari.
• 33:26
  But we competed against Ari in Canberra before this, before we brought him out with David.
• 33:34
  Yeah.
• 33:35
  And he was driving the Massport car which was out of New Zealand and the New Zealand boys were there.
• 33:39
  Yeah.
• 33:40
  And now it was like an event which they run over everything, times of the seconds and things.
• 33:45
  Now, you know, what have you.
• 33:47
  So we had Greg and myself.
• 33:49
  Greg Carr, yeah.
• 33:51
  So anyhow, the first stage was a bitumen stage around the building thing.
• 33:57
  It was a housing development.
• 34:00
  It wasn't, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:01
  No houses, right.
• 34:02
  But anyway, and it had low, the gutters were just low.
• 34:07
  They didn't have big gutters, they just had low ones, which I thought was terrific because if you built a house, you could make a runway wherever it was without smashing up all the concrete and then putting it down.
• 34:16
  So anyway.
• 34:18
  But I was running on better tyres in our area.
• 34:21
  The Dunlops, whichever one, the A2s, whatever one was using overseas, we had Bridgestone we'd made.
• 34:28
  Anyhow, and Ari, when he asked, he had a look at, there was a movie made on this and he said to me, oh, Colin, you had much more grip than me.
• 34:35
  And I said, of course I get Ari, you know.
• 34:38
  We had better tyres than you.
• 34:39
  So I was beating him on those bloody bitumen stages.
• 34:41
  Yeah.
• 34:44
  I mean, there's a shot in the book where I'm up on two wheels because I've hit the curb.
• 34:47
  I love that.
• 34:47
  But you can see Aria skid marks, you know, on the road because he was ahead of us on the road.
• 34:52
  Anyway, and after that you're into the dirt again and he and Greg were having a really ding-dong battle, you know, and Greg knew the area that well, of course, and that – so –
• 35:03
  It was going along well with those two and I was third because, you know, they were just that little bit more than game them and no other road.
• 35:10
  Anyway, so at one stage, of course, you know, Harry comes around in one of the corners and the sill digs in and he rolls over.
• 35:21
  And all the cameramen are there taking photos, of course, you know.
• 35:24
  Anyway, they finally give him a hand, push him back on the wheels and he gets back.
• 35:30
  And it was really funny and he says, because he comes into control and the car's a bit bent, and he says, what happened?
• 35:36
  I said, I stood off the road and rolled over and if your people would have pushed me out quicker, I'd be still winning this defence.
• 35:46
  And then he goes, oh, but of course I should not have rolled over.
• 35:51
  It was a golden period of rallying or something.
• 35:56
  Greg won by 40 seconds.
• 35:57
  That was the movie that was called 40 Split Seconds.
• 36:01
  Yes.
• 36:02
  But then Dave Richards, you know, his navigator and his wife Karen and they had the baby, they come and stay with us here afterwards, you know.
• 36:11
  And then when we used to go to England, we would go and stay with David.
• 36:14
  And...
• 36:17
  In those days, he just had the Rothmans' money.
• 36:19
  He looked after the Rothmans' money because he had it for them.
• 36:22
  So if someone in motorsport went to Rothman, they'd say, just go and see...
• 36:26
  David Richardson.
• 36:27
  And we'll talk to David and see whether it's a good deal or not.
• 36:31
  So anyway, and of course what actually happened there, like when they went Group A or whatever it was, and he got the Subaru, you know, night.
• 36:42
  And, you know, it was a good deal.
• 36:47
  Yep.
• 36:47
  And when I was over there with him, we came, he took us to the airport and he just said,
• 36:53
  He said, I just had the best meeting with British Tobacco today.
• 36:57
  I've got an open checkbook for the rally team, but I've got to win the championship this year.
• 37:02
  Okay.
• 37:03
  We're talking probably around the time of Colin McRae or what are we talking here?
• 37:07
  Yeah, Colin McRae.
• 37:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:08
  Well, but not only that, Toyota were there, of course, Mitsubishi were there.
• 37:12
  Amazing period.
• 37:13
  It wasn't just as though they're the only one, probably Fiat and Lancia.
• 37:17
  Lancia, yeah, yeah.
• 37:19
  And they won that year.
• 37:20
  Yeah.
• 37:22
  And since then he's just gone, you know, because after he got the BAF Formula 1 too.
• 37:26
  Formula 1 thing, yeah, yeah.
• 37:27
  You know, and the Superview thing was terrific and then he was chairman of Aston Martin.
• 37:32
  And now he's head of British Motorsport or whatever it is, you know.
• 37:37
  And a lovely guy.
• 37:38
  I mean, when we go over there, of course, they use a helicopter like we use a shopping trolley.
• 37:44
  That's great that you've been able to.
• 37:46
  Oh, yeah.
• 37:46
  We've been, look, we haven't been for a little while, but we were just talking to them just recently and they said, you better come over.
• 37:52
  My daughter's getting married, you know, early next year.
• 37:54
  So we said, okay, we'll come over.
• 37:55
  Lovely.
• 37:57
  But, you know, I mean, it was a different, just a different world over there.
• 38:00
  The amount of money and that, like, for argument's sake, even when he had...
• 38:03
  the first Subaru when he had Harry driving, he was paying Harry four million pounds for the drive.
• 38:09
  In those days, it was three times, like if you, that would be equivalent to 12 million Australian.
• 38:17
  None of the teams in Australia would have had anyone near that.
• 38:20
  Do you know what I mean?
• 38:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 38:23
  It's just old money, I guess, and there's a lot of people there.
• 38:27
  I think that's a great reflection of you that you've had these sorts of relationships along the way.
• 38:32
  Can I come back to Round Australia?
• 38:35
  You talked about your brother before in the car and so on, and you contested that event on a number of occasions.
• 38:41
  Yeah.
• 38:41
  It's an event that's kind of part of the folklore of Australian motorsport, isn't it?
• 38:45
  What was that like when you did those?
• 38:47
  Well, look...
• 38:49
  Well, you look forward to them, I guess, you know, like in hindsight, I mean, the Volkswagen, I mean, it was just like a Volkswagen race because somehow rather than that, right, we all lined up together, all the Volkswagens, they put you in like a group or something.
• 39:01
  Okay.
• 39:01
  And they regrouped you after all the thingos there.
• 39:04
  And so you kept on and, you know, you'd slipstream everyone and you'd get in the front and you'd be at the back of the field.
• 39:09
  You were getting there.
• 39:10
  This is all the way around Australia, not really.
• 39:13
  And that was a bit of fun.
• 39:15
  But, you know, we had one of the factory cars start behind us and we used to see when we were driving who could drive the furthest before we got overtaken by them because they only had two people in the car and they had a 1500 motor and they had, you know, all spare parts.
• 39:30
  Anyway.
• 39:32
  And that was a bit of fun.
• 39:33
  But then this next one was for the Monaro, just after winning Bathurst and the 12-hour race with Tony Roberts.
• 39:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:43
  So we're going to run the Monaro.
• 39:45
  We had three Monaros.
• 39:48
  And so there was Brian, Hope, myself and Tony Roberts, you know, in our car.
• 39:54
  And then there was John Kieran and I think Roger Bonham in the other car and probably Barry Ferguson and David Johnson in the other one.
• 40:06
  So in those days it was a funny event because you started a bit like some of the ones overseas where they start from different places and they all come to a central point.
• 40:15
  And then from there it was a common route to here.
• 40:18
  To the next thing.
• 40:19
  Yeah.
• 40:20
  But the main event started from this one.
• 40:22
  Okay.
• 40:23
  Yeah.
• 40:24
  So Harry elected just for us not to even do this burst bit.
• 40:29
  We'll just finish up there.
• 40:30
  When you say Harry, you mean Harry Furth, don't you?
• 40:31
  Harry Furth, yes, yes.
• 40:32
  Only because he's out of cock.
• 40:34
  If you're in your car already, you'd better come down and start working on it.
• 40:39
  Okay.
• 40:40
  So we're a week late.
• 40:42
  for scrutineering and you got penalised one point a minute, right?
• 40:46
  So I don't know how many millions of these, but anyway, it's a fair few or something, right?
• 40:50
  So we really didn't have to worry about this, you know, all this bit.
• 40:53
  So we finish up here and then we go straight from there up to where it started then, Alice Springs.
• 40:58
  Yep.
• 41:00
  And, of course, you know, it was dirt in those days.
• 41:02
  So we took off and said, well, if we get going, we'll be there a day earlier and we can have a nice sleep and all this, which we did.
• 41:08
  We looked at the car and the back-made cars had woofed in a bit, you know, because it was serious production in those days.
• 41:13
  And it bothered me out on the truts.
• 41:16
  It just sort of woofed the car.
• 41:19
  Anyway, that's okay.
• 41:21
  But so anyhow, the…
• 41:24
  When the others got there, you know, next day, we drove down through the control the wrong direction because we were just out of town coming.
• 41:33
  And the guy won the Pegas another 250 points.
• 41:35
  And to hope he's there blowing with him, he said, where do you think we're frigging more come from?
• 41:41
  Oh, yeah.
• 41:43
  Anyway, I was like, oh, Brian, we're already down $5 million.
• 41:46
  What's another $2 million?
• 41:48
  But that got wiped, you know, when you started the event.
• 41:51
  Anyway, then the silly part about that event was we started Nuller Springs.
• 41:56
  The first stage went all the way up to three ways.
• 41:58
  Then across to Mount Whitsamining Town.
• 42:05
  Anyway.
• 42:06
  Are you talking in country New South Wales?
• 42:08
  Yeah, nearly New South Wales or Queensland.
• 42:10
  But I don't know.
• 42:11
  Anyway, forget about it now.
• 42:14
  It doesn't matter anyway.
• 42:15
  And they had this really stupid stage through the, if only not very long, 20, 30K or something.
• 42:22
  Anyway, and it was just like a dirt, little dirt road and it went into a creek full of sand.
• 42:29
  And we were one of the first cars, of course.
• 42:32
  So I go through.
• 42:35
  stuck in the sand and you weren't supposed to have outside assistance.
• 42:38
  So we've got the turfers.
• 42:40
  So this thing is beached in the river sand, is it?
• 42:42
  Yeah, in the river sand.
• 42:42
  Yeah, yeah.
• 42:43
  And we weren't the only one that was – and anyone that came along, they got beached as well.
• 42:46
  Anyway, but we're the turfers, so we're off, you know.
• 42:49
  We're winch, winch, winch, winch.
• 42:51
  This guy turns up in a four-wood line of the –
• 42:55
  You know, 50 bucks, I'll pull you out or something.
• 43:00
  And maybe he said, we weren't supposed to have any outside assistance.
• 43:02
  Oh, no, no, we're nearly here.
• 43:04
  So this guy then started pulling everyone out.
• 43:06
  Yeah.
• 43:07
  It wasn't 50, maybe 30 or something.
• 43:08
  Anyway, it doesn't matter.
• 43:09
  Anyhow, he made a pretty good living out of it.
• 43:12
  Yeah, yeah.
• 43:12
  And our other two cars got pulled out, of course.
• 43:15
  Okay, okay.
• 43:16
  So we went off to the very first stage.
• 43:17
  I'm coming last, I think, you know, because everybody had been pulled out.
• 43:21
  Pulled out, yeah.
• 43:22
  From the sand.
• 43:24
  So all of a sudden, Harry doesn't love me anymore.
• 43:26
  Okay.
• 43:27
  So we started working on our own car because, like, the service crews would keep up with Kieran.
• 43:34
  So you're having to do it on your own, basically, are you?
• 43:35
  Basically, yeah, down the back of the field.
• 43:37
  Anyway, so we finally got going and we were knocking off things out of the way.
• 43:41
  And it went for two weeks.
• 43:42
  Anyhow, we finished up – well, we should have finished up winning it, but we –
• 43:48
  And OGA and Edgar Herman were first on the same points and I was next, you know, so I don't know whether I'm second or third.
• 43:58
  But the amount of time we lost in the creek, you know, we would have been ahead of them.
• 44:03
  But...
• 44:04
  That was that one, but that was beside the point.
• 44:06
  But it must have been a rewarding thing, was it?
• 44:08
  I mean, to go around, you probably didn't have much time to take in the countryside, but you went to some amazing places, didn't you?
• 44:13
  Oh, you do, but not only that, I mean, I used to really like the Malaro, actually.
• 44:17
  I rallied it the following year instead of doing an XU1 for them.
• 44:21
  It was, yeah, can I say, plenty of talk.
• 44:25
  And that's how you made it fast, even racing.
• 44:27
  You used the higher gears all the time because it was easier to drive, it was putting the power down better, it wasn't sliding, you know, and it was utilising the torque.
• 44:37
  They had torque those days because they were serious production, unlike a current car, you know, which would have more horsepower.
• 44:43
  But anyway.
• 44:45
  So, yeah, the difference between the Monaro, basically, and the Mitsubishi Colt, for I give it a take, you know, if you had a miscue when you speared off the road a bit and you're going through the trees a bit, you know, with the little Mitsubishi, you have to back, back, back and go again.
• 45:02
  With the Monaro, you keep going, you're not giving any go and go back on the road.
• 45:05
  Keep bowing through.
• 45:06
  Get back on the road.
• 45:15
  That's the end of part one of my feature episode with Australian motor racing legend Colin Bond.
• 45:20
  We're having a nice cuppa and the convo is flowing, so don't worry, there is more to come for you.
• 45:25
  Jump back to the library and there you'll find part two, all loaded up in the garage, ready for you to hit play on.
• 45:31
  There's recollections of some cool cars, the great work the Wives Club did to improve safety during a very dangerous period for the sport, plus Peter Janssen, Peter Brock, Ari Vartnan and much, much more.