Crashing the first Lamborghini Diablo allowed out of captivity should have ended my attempt to work in Europe. Long before the career move from Australia really began to pay dividends such public humiliation – try keeping a Lambo prang quiet in an industry that thrives on ever more exaggerated gossip – could, rightly, have meant […]
Mazda-MX-5
Thirty years ago in Wheels magazine’s January 1990, which named the original Mazda MX-5 Car of the Year, I wrote: “I’ll admit I’m biased. You see, I love the MX-5. Mazda’s delectable little sports car is exactly the kind of machine I’ve been pleading for the world’s car makers to build for more than two […]
Ronnie Peterson
Ronnie Petersen, almost certainly the fastest Grand Prix driver of the 1970s, died after an horrific multicar pileup at the start of the 1978 Italian Grand Prix. Tragically, Ronnie – SuperSwede – was killed unnecessarily. The story of Petersen’s seemingly pointless death was first described in detail in my August, 1997, Wheels magazine story Safe […]
Olivier Gendebien
One July day in the late 1960s, 12-year old school-boy Robert Gendebien returned home from his Belgium boarding school for the summer holidays. Over dinner with his father and two younger sisters Astrid and Colienne, Robert asked a fateful question. “Father, did you ever drive in the Le Mans 24-hour race?” Olivier replied that […]
Franco Scaglione
Automotive historians, like historians in any field, occasionally commit unforgiveable errors. I’m hugely embarrassed to admit that in a 1991 Autocar magazine story, I killed off designer Franco Scaglione. Only to learn two years later that he had just died. Humiliating. At the time I was living in Italy and wanted to know more about […]
Phil Irving
In 1966 a new set of regulations was adopted for Formula One racing. The 1.5-litre engine capacity ceiling for both normally aspirated and supercharged engines gave way to a 3-litre limit for NA engines, while supercharged units remained limited to 1.5-litres. The racing world was alive with rumours, supposition and high chance. Ferrari, which always […]
Anatole “Tony” Lapine
Few travelling companions were as stimulating as Anatole ‘Tony’ Lapine, the Latvian-born American who ran Porsche design from 1969-1988 and died in late April, 2012, just weeks after the death of his predecessor Butzi Porsche. Tony and I were two of a disparate group of journalists gathered together by Automobile Magazine in the week before […]
Rudolf Hruska: Mister Alfasud
Rudolf Hruska belonged to the old aristocratic school of automotive design. His was a simple philosophy – much ignored, he believes, in the creation of modern cars. “In my opinion,” the tall, elegant and impeccably dressed, Austrian told me in 1990, “when you set out to make a new product, you should start from fundamental […]
Russell Brockbank
Every motoring enthusiast has a favourite Brockbank cartoon. Usually, only after long and careful consideration: how do you choose between the dozens of his wonderfully simple yet astute sketches that so often provoke open laughter? Among the diverse assortment that have amused my curiosity and delighted my sense of humour are a few so sublime […]
