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Transcript

Ron Goodman - Part 1 · Rusty's Garage

• 0:02
  A listener production.
• 0:14
  I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
• 0:27
  For this episode, I'm in what you might consider as the perfect man cave, particularly if you're a Porsche enthusiast.
• 0:35
  That word enthusiast probably isn't a good enough description for my guest today.
• 0:40
  Ron Goodman started out with the love of traditional Aussie cars, and he's raced other marks, as you'll hear, but developed a fondness for the German brand that has become obsession.
• 0:52
  in a good way.
• 0:53
  And he is now a go-to for restoration and bodywork repairs on them, recognised internationally by Portia for the quality work he and his team at Exclusive Body Works in Sydney turn out.
• 1:07
  Some of the things that I've seen on my visit are beyond beautiful.
• 1:12
  I actually first started the idea of this podcast about a year ago with the aim of timing the release around a trip that Ron was planning to the Red Centre of Australia in a restored 356 with a very special Indigenous paint scheme.
• 1:27
  You can find pics of that car on his social media.
• 1:31
  Ron regularly gives back, and this mission was all about raising money and awareness for the children's hospital.
• 1:38
  Hardcore race fans may know him from Speedway and NASCAR, but some of you would have seen documentaries and in-flight specials on his classic racing in America, where he has wowed them.
• 1:51
  Impressing not just with his race craft and machinery, but the never-give-up approach when things don't quite go to plan.
• 2:00
  I won't spoil those yarns for you.
• 2:02
  See if you can find them online.
• 2:04
  The Road to Monterey, for example, is an award-winning doco that charts his bid to tackle the Rolex Monterey reunion at the famed Laguna Seca circuit in California.
• 2:16
  An invite-only meet with some concourse-spec incredibly rare race cars being used as the maker intended despite their multi-million dollar values.
• 2:28
  Watkins Glen, Sebring and Road Atlanta.
• 2:31
  Ron's been there too and won and he's still hungry for more.
• 2:36
  To give you a sense of how he ticks, it's not uncommon for me to get a DM from him at some ungodly hour of the morning.
• 2:43
  That's because Ron's at work well before sunup, continuing the hands-on, tireless ethic that he's known for.
• 2:51
  Wow.
• 2:52
  If I've joined the dots right from his social media, it looks like another doco movie is in the works too.
• 2:59
  He's always got a project.
• 3:00
  Now, for this chat, we sat down in an American diner-style booth in amongst his amazing collection of cars and memorabilia gathered from a life around racing and cars.
• 3:14
  Most of them, as you'd expect, have the iconic Porsche Stuttgart German badges on them,
• 3:20
  But there's a couple of other things, like a Mustang, some military machines, a tractor, and even a combi that are all parked among them.
• 3:29
  This stuff naturally has a story or is close to his heart.
• 3:33
  People have come from all around the world to check out this collection and signed the Rensport Festival Autograph Wall.
• 3:42
  And while authenticity is a hallmark of Ron's creations, he's not afraid to experiment either.
• 3:49
  Like the Porsche he entered in the Hot Wheels Legends with a plane engine in it and World War II aeronautical gauges.
• 3:58
  It is a work of art and finished in the top three in the Aussie leg of that comp.
• 4:03
  More on that later.
• 4:05
  We begin with the early influences that would set him on this wonderful path.
• 4:12
  I love to start these with a little story that sets the scene on where you grew up and the connection and the first kind of recollection you might have about an engine, a car or something that made you gravitate to these things that have become part of your life.
• 4:29
  It would be the old grey engine in the EK Holden that my grandfather gave us.
• 4:34
  We used to take it and paddy bash it and we remember that we had a problem with it.
• 4:38
  I remember we pulled it apart and we couldn't work out how to strip it right down and that was the end of that car.
• 4:45
  But the beginning of a lot of love and a lot of learnings, you...
• 4:48
  We're in Liverpool, I think, at this stage.
• 4:50
  We're in that part of Western Sydney.
• 4:52
  Tell me about life growing up there.
• 4:54
  And did the passion come from family for cars?
• 4:58
  Or where did you find that and latch onto that?
• 5:01
  I grew up in Green Valley and we sort of all loved our cars out there.
• 5:06
  I loved going to the Speedway every Saturday night.
• 5:09
  Liverpool.
• 5:10
  Liverpool Speedway, yeah.
• 5:11
  We'd finish our football on the Saturday, go home, have a shower, and then I'd hobble up to the Speedway and watch the Speedway every Saturday night.
• 5:20
  This was a kid who was collecting the early generations of tear-offs and things.
• 5:27
  You genuinely loved it, didn't you?
• 5:29
  Oh, I loved it.
• 5:30
  And my hero was a guy named Eddie Gort.
• 5:34
  He drove the water truck.
• 5:35
  Oh, wow.
• 5:37
  Yeah, just to watch him run around with the water truck every day.
• 5:39
  We were wrapped in that.
• 5:40
  But you gravitate towards these older drivers.
• 5:43
  Well, they're my age now, but I suppose.
• 5:46
  But we gravitated towards these drivers that were just our heroes, like the Bruce Maxwell in the Chesterfield Mustang.
• 5:52
  A lot of these guys I still remember now, but you ask me guys that are racing now, I probably don't remember their names, yeah.
• 5:58
  It was a really cool place.
• 6:00
  I can vividly recall going there with my parents, my dad especially, and they would open that big gate on the far side of the track and you could hear the cars coming but you couldn't always see them and you more or less launched them over and down into the track, didn't you?
• 6:15
  Absolutely.
• 6:15
  And when I started racing there, that was exactly what you'd done.
• 6:19
  You'd come out of the pit.
• 6:20
  It was like riding a bull when you see him throw the gate open and you'd accelerate out.
• 6:26
  And if there was anything underneath you, you wouldn't even know.
• 6:28
  You'd just run over him, drive down into the pit and away you'd go.
• 6:32
  So the first car that you talked about was the UK, the family car.
• 6:37
  What about the first race car?
• 6:39
  How did you get enough money together for the race car?
• 6:42
  What was it?
• 6:43
  race car or my demolition derby?
• 6:44
  Ah, let's start with that.
• 6:46
  Actually, that's a part of the story that's important here.
• 6:48
  Tell me about demo derbies and what was the first one?
• 6:51
  We got so rapt, we used to go up there and watch the demo derbies, and of course I'd be the best driver in my head.
• 6:58
  So I ended up getting hold of an old Toyota.
• 7:01
  I can't even remember what model it was.
• 7:03
  It was a little shovel nose.
• 7:04
  Yeah.
• 7:05
  And we thought that we'd do a little bit of modifications to it to make it better.
• 7:10
  So we moved the petrol tank from in the back to the inside of the back seat, and where the petrol tank sat, we filled that up with cement.
• 7:17
  Oh.
• 7:19
  So lo and behold, the first car that I hit, the rear of the car just all come off up over the roof, except for the rear rails and the cement blocks sticking out of the back of this car.
• 7:29
  I got disqualified for that.
• 7:31
  But ever since then, I've always been caught for cheating for my cars, I suppose.
• 7:35
  But that was my very, very, very first foray into racing was that car.
• 7:40
  And then I ended up with a HG Monaro.
• 7:44
  that we took into the stock cars, which was called stock cars back then.
• 7:49
  I remember we'd done a lot of modifications to that car.
• 7:51
  And my very first outing in the car, I think I started rear field and I probably finished two laps down.
• 8:00
  We were pulling it into third gear when you didn't have to.
• 8:03
  I didn't know that you just revved it out in second gear.
• 8:05
  So every time I'd pull it into third gear, the fuel to just leave me.
• 8:09
  And then I'd think, what the hell am I doing wrong?
• 8:12
  And on that same night, my wife's, well, it was my girlfriend back then, her brother said to me, roll it down the straight.
• 8:19
  And that's what happened to me at the end of the night.
• 8:22
  We ended up all the way down the straight on my roof.
• 8:24
  Oh man, didn't put you off the love of racing.
• 8:28
  And some people that aren't into Speedway can't quite appreciate always, you know, they think of it as, I mean, just going round and round and how exciting can it be?
• 8:38
  But you obviously enjoyed going wheel to wheel with people, didn't you?
• 8:42
  Speedway to me, dirt racing, NASCAR, the whole lot, is my forte.
• 8:47
  I love it.
• 8:48
  I love the close to people racing, especially on the dirt, and I don't mind rubbing fenders with another car.
• 8:55
  I've been told that I do that a little bit too aggressively in the road courses as well, but my way is if you're racing, you want to get to the end of that race as quick as you possibly can, and if the car in front is starting to balk you, well, things happen.
• 9:12
  The young Ron Goodman does what?
• 9:15
  You leave school at 16.
• 9:17
  What was your first job?
• 9:18
  And how were you getting the money together to go?
• 9:20
  A little bit of motor racing.
• 9:22
  My very first job was some friend of mine got me a job at GE Electric at Enfield on Cosgrove Road.
• 9:31
  As the fridge would come down the assembly line, I'd open the door, shut the door, open the door, shut the door.
• 9:36
  Quality control.
• 9:37
  Put a stamp on it and say that works.
• 9:40
  That was my job.
• 9:41
  I think I lasted that three weeks because on our way home, there was outside of Smash Repairs, it was Stratfield Smash Repairs.
• 9:49
  They had a sign written on a bonnet in hand saying, Boys Wanted.
• 9:53
  So I went in, I got the job and I ended up being a panel better.
• 9:56
  Amazing.
• 9:58
  The lifelong love of it now has grown into something quite significant, which we'll talk about.
• 10:04
  Were you good at it straight away?
• 10:07
  And what did you do from a study point of view?
• 10:08
  Were you off to TAFE as it probably was back then?
• 10:10
  What did you do?
• 10:11
  Yeah, we used to do TAFE once a week.
• 10:14
  Yeah, I took to it nicely because I'd done a bit of metal work at school.
• 10:18
  And I think it's like anything, if you have a passion or if you like what you're doing, it's not a chore and you do the best you possibly can at it.
• 10:26
  and you're usually pretty good at it.
• 10:27
  I think that I'm half okay at repairing cars.
• 10:30
  You way, way undersell yourself there, and I gather that that sense of perfection probably crept in early on with the work that you did.
• 10:38
  I mean, the ethic now, which we'll get to, is amazing.
• 10:41
  You were in here at 1 a.m. this morning working.
• 10:46
  Have you always been like that?
• 10:48
  I'm in here at 1am every day between 12 and 1.
• 10:52
  It's the only way that I can get my handle on the day, organise the day for the guys, get my paperwork out of the way.
• 10:59
  And as you saw, I'm working on a little special projects in there.
• 11:02
  So I get to spend a bit of time on that and get to do what I want to do.
• 11:07
  And then during the day, because I'm held up with all the work commitments.
• 11:10
  The first road car that you bought yourself, not Grandad's car, what was the first car that you could afford to buy?
• 11:17
  How much was it?
• 11:17
  What became of that car?
• 11:19
  My very, very first car was a Mini Miner.
• 11:23
  I cannot imagine you in a Mini Miner.
• 11:25
  And I remember vividly, like, the CV joints were gone in the car.
• 11:30
  And I'd had it for probably two months.
• 11:32
  I only paid, like, probably $50 for it.
• 11:34
  I think I can't remember the exact figure.
• 11:37
  But I went around the corner pretty quick, and I remember getting pulled over by the coppers.
• 11:41
  And they said, is there any reason why you're going so fast?
• 11:44
  And I told them, I said, well, the front end's got a funny click in it and the only way to get it around the corner nicely is to go around fast.
• 11:52
  So not only did I get a speeding fine, I ended up with a defect notice.
• 11:55
  I learned to keep my mouth shut from that day.
• 11:58
  Then after the Mini I got a HR Holden.
• 12:01
  Sorry, no, it was a HD before I had before the HR.
• 12:05
  There was a full rust bucket.
• 12:06
  So I've had a lot of not so elegant cars before I started to get the good ones.
• 12:12
  Speedway stuff with sedans progresses.
• 12:17
  Ultimately it would become Grand National but how...
• 12:22
  Hard was that whole process.
• 12:23
  And when did you – was there ever a moment where you thought, oh, maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew here with the racing, or were you just –
• 12:30
  like a dog with a bone, I love this, I've got to succeed at it.
• 12:33
  I think I was like everybody that takes up motorsport.
• 12:37
  You do whatever you have to to go racing to get that fix.
• 12:41
  I loved my speedway.
• 12:43
  I'll never forget the very first Grand National car that I bought.
• 12:46
  I bought that from Colin Robinson at Norseti Race Cars.
• 12:50
  I was so proud that we could afford this brand new race car.
• 12:54
  We took it out to the track to do some testing in it.
• 12:57
  Turn one, lap one, very first time in the car, left wheel turn left, right wheel turn right into the wall.
• 13:04
  It annihilated this car like there was nothing left of this car.
• 13:09
  To their credit, Button, the SETI race cars, they took it, they admitted it was their fault.
• 13:14
  They rebuilt the car again.
• 13:15
  I think it was like a couple of months later we were back out there with a brand-new car again, but we'd done good in it that time.
• 13:21
  Some cool names around in that racing scene back then, wasn't there?
• 13:25
  I mean, you know, to be a part of that.
• 13:28
  We talked very, very fondly about Liverpool before, but to race those kind of cars at Liverpool, special.
• 13:34
  Mate, when you look back at it now, when we were doing it, it was just like normal, just a bunch of blokes out there running around in cars.
• 13:40
  A lot of the names now are really big names, like Walter Giles has made it big in America with the NASCAR crew chief, Barry Graham.
• 13:48
  He even run a school over there teaching people how to drive NASCARs.
• 13:53
  But a lot of those guys have all moved on to other stuff, and Speedway sort of pilfered out in Australia, unfortunately, like NASCAR did.
• 14:00
  So that's why I got into the historic cars, and it was probably the best thing I've ever done.
• 14:05
  We'll wrap up before we get to the amazing chapter with some of the historic cars that you've got as we sit in here around them, which is awesome.
• 14:14
  You did have a very unique sponsor on the Grand National car.
• 14:18
  Tell the audience about that.
• 14:21
  Yeah, the sponsor was Salome's Escorts.
• 14:25
  And they didn't pay in girls neither.
• 14:29
  No, they were really good.
• 14:30
  He was a friend of mine, a close personal friend that owned the brothel.
• 14:34
  He was a good businessman and they've usually got a spare bit of cash that they need to get rid of and so they got rid of it in a race car.
• 14:42
  The Speedway, did that chapter of your racing, I mean, there was a NASCAR 402, which I want to get to, but, you know, when Liverpool very sadly closed down, I mean, the –
• 14:55
  just the progression and growth of housing in the area and so on ultimately, and very sadly sort of closed.
• 15:00
  I mean, I can remember Mike Raymond commentating out there and some of the great events that we've talked about before.
• 15:05
  But was that sort of a significant line in the sand for you as far as the Grand National stuff was concerned?
• 15:12
  Yeah, it was.
• 15:13
  Towards the end there, it just wasn't the same.
• 15:15
  When it went from dirt to tar, then it went back to dirt again, and it just wasn't the same when it went back to dirt.
• 15:23
  I don't know whether it was just me getting older or just nothing was the same as it was previously.
• 15:29
  So I just thought it was time for me to get out of it, and I just pulled the pin on the dirt racing.
• 15:35
  At that time, I would imagine, or not too far beyond it, Bob Jane is pushing into NASCAR and Oscar racing in this country and so on, the advent of the Thunderdome, places like Adelaide International.
• 15:48
  Cars also got to compete on the Gold Coast as well, and off you went on that path, didn't you?
• 15:54
  Yes, we built a car.
• 15:57
  First of all, we borrowed a car from George Elliott.
• 16:00
  He lent us a car to do… What was that?
• 16:02
  What did you have?
• 16:03
  We had a Pontiac.
• 16:04
  And it was Pontiac Grand Prix, and it was sponsored by Atage Gold Company.
• 16:10
  back then.
• 16:11
  We'd done the 500 at Thunderdome and our new car was finished then ready for Gold Coast, which was the West Coast wine cooler car.
• 16:22
  We had a really good run with West Coast there for a while.
• 16:26
  We went up there and we done good in it, considering that we weren't really road course drivers and we didn't even have the car set up properly.
• 16:34
  We tore it up unfortunately in one of the races, but
• 16:37
  That usually happens in NASCAR.
• 16:38
  It's not often, it's not when you crash, it's just how often you crash in NASCAR, you know.
• 16:43
  What were those things like to manhandle?
• 16:45
  They were an addictive sounding thing.
• 16:49
  What were they like to hustle?
• 16:50
  Mate, they were the best race car I've ever driven.
• 16:54
  I quite often say now if NASCAR was to come back to Australia, I'd jump in one.
• 16:58
  Whether we'd be competitive or not, who knows, but they were just driving them at like 200 miles an hour and then coming into a corner with someone right next to you.
• 17:07
  You can't beat it.
• 17:07
  You really cannot beat that feeling.
• 17:09
  We are surrounded here by great pictures, great life memories of yours, of things that you've done along the way.
• 17:16
  And immediately over your shoulder here, I'm not sure if that's you, but there is a picture of a driver bailing out of a NASCAR.
• 17:23
  The fire is going to work at the track.
• 17:26
  What's the significance of that pic?
• 17:27
  Come on.
• 17:28
  That was Thunderdome's very, very first nighttime race.
• 17:32
  Yep.
• 17:33
  And we got punted into the wall at 200 miles an hour and the car exploded.
• 17:37
  We were like a pinball bouncing off the top wall, bottom wall.
• 17:42
  The car was a mess.
• 17:43
  It was probably one of the worst wrecks that they've ever had.
• 17:46
  I got out of it okay, thank Christ.
• 17:48
  And they said that we were the first person to ever knock the AFL off the back page on a Sunday morning.
• 17:56
  So we were pretty wrapped in that.
• 17:57
  Amazing.
• 17:58
  That place, when you go there now, it's, you know, grass is kind of growing in the wrong places and the tarmac is bumpy in the wrong sort of spots as well.
• 18:09
  But there's still something magic captivating about it.
• 18:12
  What was the Thunderdome like to race on?
• 18:14
  What memories does it evoke for you?
• 18:17
  The Thunderdome, I'd always let my guys drive or tow the car out under the tunnel into the middle, and I'd walk from the pits out to where the scrutineering was into the middle because the atmosphere was just electric.
• 18:30
  We don't get the crowds that they do in America, but what we had here in Australia, it was just very, very awe-inspiring.
• 18:37
  What they did do successfully to push into that space was to bring some Americans out here in the early part of that.
• 18:43
  What was that like?
• 18:44
  That was unbelievable.
• 18:45
  And we've heard stories, and we don't know how true it is, of them having small little sneaky beet nitrous bottles in their leg and then screwing it into the...
• 18:54
  Yeah, we could sit here for the next two days and talk about all the cheating that goes on with NASCAR.
• 19:00
  And that's another thing that with NASCAR, there's a guy called Smokey Yannick in America.
• 19:04
  He's a – he was really known for cheating or stretching the rules, which is really good.
• 19:11
  We've been told we've been likened to Smokey Yannick in a few articles.
• 19:15
  with our...
• 19:16
  Interpretations.
• 19:17
  Yeah, with our cars that we race in, the street cars over there.
• 19:20
  So it's pretty awe-inspiring when somebody says that.
• 19:24
  You know, I'm humbled by it.
• 19:26
  But we loved NASCAR.
• 19:28
  And as I said, if it happened back here again, we'd be back in it.
• 19:31
  It's a great, great era.
• 19:32
  A few people, I mean, Jimmy Richards and lots of others dabbled in it at that stage too, didn't they?
• 19:37
  Yeah, look at Jim, yeah.
• 19:38
  But anything, you put him in a go-kart, he's going to go fast against everybody else, you know what I mean?
• 19:43
  Like, he's just a good driver.
• 19:45
  He's a good, good driver.
• 19:47
  You are here doing work on some beautiful, beautiful cars now, exclusive body works, Porsche especially, but on other marks as well.
• 19:56
  What other marks are you working on?
• 19:58
  We're factory authorised to do McLaren, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and Tesla.
• 20:03
  Amazing.
• 20:04
  You set up here, what, early 2000s?
• 20:06
  Yep, it'll be around the start of 2000, yeah.
• 20:09
  How many staff and what would you be sort of working on roughly car-wise at any given time?
• 20:14
  We have an average of 30 cars being worked on at one time.
• 20:19
  And we've got, I think there's 12, 14 of us here.
• 20:31
  Yvonne's passion for Porsche seems infectious, what about funny man Shane Jacobson, you know, Kenny?
• 20:38
  He genuinely loves just about anything with an engine and wheels, and Shane has some good yarns from his time working on the Aussie version of Top Gear, that you just gotta hear.
• 20:48
  We, at that point, learnt that the Lions thought it was three predators or something on approach.
• 20:55
  It just, the game changed instantly.
• 20:57
  And I remember saying at the start to this man, I think his name was Dale, and I said, so is there any guns or anything here if something goes wrong?
• 21:05
  And he said, we won't be shooting any of the staff here.
• 21:08
  And I went, oh my God, he thinks the lions are on staff.
• 21:10
  But I got his point.
• 21:11
  He was right.
• 21:12
  We're the visitors.
• 21:13
  The lions work here, so no.
• 21:15
  So he said, but I've got a wooden stick, and everything.
• 21:17
  Well, God, where's he going to shove that?
• 21:19
  I think, God, he'd have to get pretty close to make that.
• 21:22
  Stop a lion from eating a human.
• 21:23
  Even then, they may not be interested.
• 21:26
  The baboons were actually scarier.
• 21:29
  Fun times, sort of.
• 21:30
  Now it's back to Ron Goodman with Rusty sitting in amongst Ron's wicked Porsche collection.
• 21:37
  Does it become in the modern era, when you started very, very hands-on, you were great from a metalworking standpoint, as you talked about at school and so on, how much of it now is cookie cutter and reading stuff off, you know, online factory manuals and things, and how much do you want your staff to be very, very good in a hands-on perspective like you were back in the day?
• 22:02
  And still are.
• 22:03
  And still are.
• 22:03
  All my guys are super talented.
• 22:05
  Yeah.
• 22:06
  Unfortunately, just the way that the whole business and trade is gone now, we need to have a lot of computers up around the workshop so that when they do a job they can go to that process.
• 22:16
  Everything's about process now.
• 22:17
  Whereas when we used to repair cars, it'd be just pull it out, straighten it up, it looks good, send it out.
• 22:23
  Now with the metals and the way that the cars are built with crumple zones and that, we have to follow really, really strict guidelines and we have to learn a lot as we go along.
• 22:33
  Whereas before you could say you could pull that and make that gap right, now you can't do that.
• 22:38
  There's a reason why.
• 22:39
  If it's bent and it's an aluminium chassis, you just replace it.
• 22:42
  Even if you think that you can repair it, no, we replace everything.
• 22:46
  So racing had been a pursuit for you away from work.
• 22:50
  What about the first car that you treated yourself to in a restoration sense?
• 22:54
  What was the one that you first embarked on that you did up with that real kind of sense of pride and enjoyed either just driving it around or maybe even taking it to the track on occasion?
• 23:06
  That was my wide body 911 1974 model.
• 23:10
  I put my heart and soul into that car, built it like you would not believe.
• 23:15
  We put nitrous oxide on that car, which back years and years and years ago, and it was done for me by Brad from Brad's Speed Shops back then, and it was new to him too to put it onto an injected Porsche engine.
• 23:28
  Yeah.
• 23:29
  We'd done all our due diligence.
• 23:31
  We put it all in.
• 23:31
  We thought, this is fantastic.
• 23:33
  First time that I drove it, I remember pushing the button and hearing a loud explosion, thinking, wow, it's like a rocket going off.
• 23:41
  Yeah, it was.
• 23:42
  It was the engine spread right across the road.
• 23:45
  It just blew this engine to smithereens.
• 23:46
  So that was a pretty expensive learning curve with that one.
• 23:49
  I'll bet.
• 23:50
  The fascination with the obsession, the love of Porsche,
• 23:55
  came about when and how old were you and when was that moment where you gravitated to them and why?
• 24:02
  I've always loved Porsches, as long as I can remember.
• 24:06
  But my very, very first one that I saw was a neighbour across the road had one.
• 24:10
  It was just a narrow-body one, early 911.
• 24:14
  And I really liked running around in that car.
• 24:16
  And then when I was 17, I think it was, 18, I was...
• 24:22
  I had a chance to buy a 911 and I had to sell my ute to get it.
• 24:26
  And everybody said, you don't sell a ute to buy a Porsche.
• 24:29
  You know, like, but I did.
• 24:30
  I sold my ute to get the Porsche because it was a bit of a mess.
• 24:32
  And that's the one that I'd done up.
• 24:34
  And the affiliation has just been there ever since.
• 24:36
  I just love them.
• 24:37
  Incredible.
• 24:39
  There are, I mean, for lots of people, they are an aspirational machine ride.
• 24:44
  And you have taken that to another level in this man cave that we now sit in.
• 24:51
  Can we talk about a few of them if we can?
• 24:53
  You've talked about your first one there.
• 24:55
  Do you find it hard to part with them?
• 24:59
  How many of you parted with along the way and how difficult is that?
• 25:04
  It's hard to get me to start talking about selling it, but once I've made my mind up to sell one, it's gone.
• 25:10
  Okay.
• 25:11
  I don't regret anything.
• 25:13
  Well, I take that back.
• 25:15
  My speeds that I had, which I'd had for ages, I sometimes think, geez, I shouldn't have got rid of that because they're worth so much now I can't get back into the market.
• 25:23
  And I used to like taking that out every now and then, you know.
• 25:25
  Okay.
• 25:27
  So that's...
• 25:28
  My favourite one here would be the 54, the split windscreen, I think because we've been through so much together, you know, that car.
• 25:35
  We've done a lot of racing overseas with it.
• 25:37
  We've been through a couple of crashes together.
• 25:39
  So, yeah, that's probably my – I don't really have a favourite favourite, but that's my sentimental favourite.
• 25:45
  Let's talk a little bit about that car then because people can find online some documentaries.
• 25:51
  I think I've seen one on InFlight, for example, with some of the stories of international events that you've done from Monterey Historics to – I mean, we're sitting here this morning after the conclusion of the Indy 500.
• 26:04
  You have been and raced at the Brickyard, haven't you?
• 26:08
  Yeah, we actually was winning at the Brickyard and then I got into a pretty bad wreck.
• 26:14
  That was in my cabrio and we had to bring that car home.
• 26:17
  That was the car that I used to keep on the east coast to race over there at Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta and Sebring and all those places.
• 26:25
  So I've learned really these historic cars, the Porsches, have opened a lot of doors for me to race at different places in America.
• 26:34
  If we would have been sticking here doing the Speedway, no, we wouldn't have been able to have the opportunities that they've opened up for me.
• 26:40
  When did you decide to go historic slash circuit racing, you know, actually turning a different direction, different corner?
• 26:47
  When NASCAR was finishing in Australia, I had that big crash and it was either do we build another car?
• 26:54
  So we built the car up.
• 26:55
  We repaired it after that crash.
• 26:57
  Done a couple of races and then NASCAR started to falter.
• 27:00
  And then we thought, should we go to a new car or should we wait and see?
• 27:03
  We waited and see and unfortunately NASCAR just folded in Australia.
• 27:09
  So we thought, let's go road course racing.
• 27:12
  And my guys laughed because they used to always put shit on me saying that you can only turn left.
• 27:16
  You know, you can turn a right.
• 27:18
  And it's true, I'd get lost.
• 27:20
  You know, like on Novel Track, I know exactly where to put the car, how fast you can do it.
• 27:24
  It's been a fair learning curve.
• 27:28
  And I've learned a lot from the guys like Dave Withers, Jeff Morgan.
• 27:31
  They've helped me out.
• 27:33
  Even Terry Lawler.
• 27:35
  All these guys that know road course really well, you just watch them, listen to them, and then they get pissed because you're faster than them.
• 27:43
  Was it one of them that half encouraged you to maybe come out to a race meeting and did, you know, what was the moment where you went, oh, this is a bit of me, you know, maybe I could run a Porsche in this style of event and so on?
• 27:55
  Well, I was actually in America and we watched one of the races over there and this car was for sale, a 58 that I had, and it was race ready.
• 28:07
  Ditto, ditto, as they said.
• 28:09
  So we bought the car and we remember waited over there for ages to get it.
• 28:13
  Anyway, when it turned up here, we took it out there being race ready and it lasted about two seconds.
• 28:19
  Yeah, so it wasn't race ready at all.
• 28:21
  We spent some time on it, got it ready, and we were doing regularity in that car.
• 28:26
  And we thought, this is fun, this is really fun.
• 28:28
  So obviously you can't just keep doing regularity, so we had to buy another car for another class.
• 28:33
  And then we thought, yeah, let's go to America, so we bought another car to race in America.
• 28:37
  It just morphed from there, you know.
• 28:40
  There is a fascination.
• 28:41
  I mean, there's all kinds of different models here, which we'll get to, but 356, you've done some good models.
• 28:50
  Not boundary pushing.
• 28:51
  That's not the right word for it.
• 28:52
  What I'm trying to say is you have developed to an unbelievable level with them, haven't you?
• 28:57
  Oh, absolutely.
• 28:58
  And a lot of that is my guys are very, very innovative.
• 29:03
  Gary that does our engines, he's always thinking of different ways to do stuff.
• 29:08
  Our 54, we also hold the lap record for its class at Bathurst.
• 29:13
  It's actually the fastest 356 to ever go around Bathurst.
• 29:16
  I remember coming down the Conrod and there's that little hill part that you go over and
• 29:21
  Just before the chase kind of thing.
• 29:23
  Yeah, we'd put taller gears into that car and we were motoring along and all I could think of was if this turns pear-shaped, I'm going to be like a beetle on the roof spinning around with little feet in the air.
• 29:35
  But no, we'd done pretty good with that.
• 29:38
  We broke an axle in it.
• 29:40
  It's pretty true, like with Bathurst,
• 29:43
  I was getting lost a lot.
• 29:45
  You need a lot of lap time up there.
• 29:47
  Luffy once again come around with me in the Cayenne and gave me a bit of guidance.
• 29:50
  You talking about Warren here or Ian?
• 29:51
  Yeah, Warren.
• 29:53
  We actually broke the lap record by 20-something seconds.
• 29:56
  So we're pretty happy with that.
• 29:58
  Amazing.
• 29:58
  You've got a connection that sort of dates back with the Luffs too, don't you?
• 30:01
  Oh, yeah, mate.
• 30:02
  His dad, Ian, I remember the first time we ever run NASCAR at Oran Park back then.
• 30:08
  And I said to Ian, do you mind if I come out to one of your days and bring my mate's commodore out and just show me a few of the lines through?
• 30:15
  Yeah, there's no worries at all.
• 30:17
  So we're coming down the straight and then he's saying, not yet, as far as braking's concerned, not yet, not yet, now.
• 30:24
  And I jumped on the brakes and there was no brakes.
• 30:27
  So we've just gone straight through the infield.
• 30:30
  I'm trying to steer it.
• 30:30
  This is South Circuit, so off the bottom to the left-hand.
• 30:32
  Correct, yeah.
• 30:33
  I'm trying to steer it and Ian's got the handbrake trying to slow it down.
• 30:38
  And when we did finally stop, he looked at me and he goes, that ain't petrol you can smell.
• 30:42
  Or brakes.
• 30:44
  It wasn't brakes neither.
• 30:47
  But some good memories out at Orrin Park too with Luffs and Warren is an incredible young driver, you know, like incredible.
• 30:53
  He just recently drove one of my cars at the Time Attack event with me.
• 30:57
  Tell me about that because he, I know from having seen him just last weekend at a,
• 31:02
  at a Porsche meeting and then what he's put on social media.
• 31:05
  He loved that experience too.
• 31:07
  He was beaming and so was I. I like to go out there with him and you know that he's just playing with you.
• 31:14
  I mean, like I'm driving the 356 as hard as I possibly can and he's probably yawning as he's going around in the 906.
• 31:21
  But no, we had a great time together and we put on a good show.
• 31:24
  It was really, really good.
• 31:25
  Let's come back again to 356 if we can.
• 31:27
  What about stuff in the development that hasn't worked or has broken and how you bounce from that?
• 31:37
  If you look around here, you'll see engine blocks everywhere.
• 31:41
  You've got to break a lot to learn, and we've broken a lot, and it's cost us a lot, but it's not always about the money.
• 31:49
  If you want to be a trailblazer in what you're doing, which we have been with the 356, we've got a pretty good rep worldwide as far as we're concerned with what we're doing with the 356.
• 32:00
  So we've had a lot of failures, a hell of a lot of failures.
• 32:05
  And we've tried a lot of things outside the box that people said wouldn't work.
• 32:10
  We've tried it and they're right, it didn't work.
• 32:11
  But unless you try it yourself, you don't know.
• 32:14
  What's the, you know, is that the car?
• 32:17
  I mean, there's 911s here, there's early generation cup cars and more.
• 32:22
  What's the thing about the 356 that you love so much?
• 32:25
  What is the connection there?
• 32:28
  It's the feeling that you get when you do go fast.
• 32:30
  Like someone will talk to you and you're not supposed to go fast in that car, but we're going fast.
• 32:36
  You get in a cup car and people expect you to be fast or you could even put a novice driver into a cup car and they'd still do okay against another novice driver.
• 32:45
  But in the 356, when you're out there with Mustangs and you're out there with Ferrari GTOs and the really expensive cars and you're beating them, it gives you a sense of accomplishment.
• 32:56
  You have raced, and I know you won't oversell this, you raced Patrick Long for example who people will know and he raced a car with quite a good connection there in the United States and you guys went toe to toe didn't you?
• 33:10
  Yeah, and if you watch it, the car was owned by Stanley Gold, who's the boss of Disneyland, so there was no expense spared on the car.
• 33:19
  We actually, it was pitted too down from us, and when they started it, I looked at Gary and Gary looked at me and we went, whoa, yeah, like is that real?
• 33:28
  You know, like it just sounded so good, the engine in it.
• 33:31
  Yeah, we beat him and we beat him badly.
• 33:34
  very, very well.
• 33:35
  It wasn't just by a little bit.
• 33:37
  Yeah, we've raced against a lot of the high-end people in America, and they're all really down-to-earth people, yeah.
• 33:43
  That scene is remarkable.
• 33:46
  I mean, we have a great car culture in this country, but it's just pure numbers, isn't it?
• 33:50
  I mean, the population of America and so on.
• 33:53
  When you go to those places, A, legendary racetracks, but also, too, the roll-up of people and cars is a
• 34:00
  I mean, I'm salivating at the thought of some of them, mate.
• 34:03
  There's some remarkable cars there.
• 34:05
  Every one of my guys that have come our way with us racing are blown away with the cars that we race against.
• 34:11
  It's the sort of cars that you see on TV shows or the sort of cars that you see in magazines.
• 34:18
  They're not the ones you actually get to race against.
• 34:20
  And over there, they're not...
• 34:25
  To put it in a blunt way, I suppose, we going over there, we're the porpoise.
• 34:30
  When you look at a lot of the cars that race over there, you think, oh, this is a good car, our car.
• 34:34
  It's nothing.
• 34:35
  It pales into insignificance with some of the cars that we race against, yeah.
• 34:39
  It becomes a big logistical challenge because you've talked about keeping cars there and so on when you've gone and competed in that scene.
• 34:47
  But there's been moments where you've had to air freight stuff either way, hasn't there?
• 34:50
  Oh, absolutely.
• 34:51
  And even the last time we had Rensport here, I had to fly the car back from America because we had a pretty bad accident in it.
• 34:59
  So it had to fly back from America to get fixed.
• 35:02
  If we didn't fly it back, it wouldn't have got fixed.
• 35:04
  They've lost it twice going over to America.
• 35:08
  How does that phone call go?
• 35:09
  Sorry, sir.
• 35:11
  And I had to chase it.
• 35:13
  And the last time the tracking people rung up and told us.
• 35:16
  And what we worked out that they were doing, they were charging us full freight for the container going over, but they were bunny hopping it.
• 35:23
  They'd take it off at New Zealand, put it into another ship, which went to somewhere else, and then they'd take it to America.
• 35:29
  And they took it off to New Zealand and forgot to put it on another ship.
• 35:32
  So our car was sitting in there.
• 35:36
  I remember one of the phone calls was, we don't care if you get a Nolten off to pick up that container, the car has to be in America.
• 35:44
  We gave them enough time.
• 35:45
  They've always made it in the nick of time, but they've always made it.
• 35:56
  That's the end of part one of my podcast with legendary Aussie Porsche enthusiast Ron Goodman.
• 36:01
  You get a sense from his words and style that much of his talking is done through the cars and on track.
• 36:09
  Now, you couldn't come to this awesome man cave and check out the collection without starting some of them up.
• 36:15
  That's ahead in part two, which is all loaded up in the Rusty's Garage Library and ready for you to enjoy right now.
• 36:23
  Jump back when you're ready and fire it up.
• 36:25
  from the massive logistics missions of getting his cars safely to the US, to crashes, those in the collection he's got a soft spot for, and much, much more.