Robbo's Archives

Motoring Interests & Career A 54-year career as a full-time motoring journalist included 16 years as Editor of Wheels magazine, plus 16 years spent living in Italy working as European editor of the UK’s weekly Autocar and Wheels, while also writing for America’s Car & Driver magazine and Japan’s Car Graphic. Returned to Australia in […]

It’s now over 40 years since my first and only encounter with the controversial John Zachary DeLorean, father of the famous eponymous gullwing sports car. In February 1981, having organised to attend the Arizona launch of GM’s new ‘import buster’ J-car (the front-drive Holden Camira), a contact learned that Delorean planned the first public showing […]

On learning that 88-year-old Nino Vaccarella died on September 23, I smiled quietly to myself. No, I’m not callous. I smiled because I was instantly transported back to that March day in early 1992 when Nino and I drove the Targa Florio course. If there has been a better day as a motoring journalist, I […]

Directly opposite my desk, sitting atop my model cabinet, is a voluptuous one-tenth scale clay model of an open sports car. It’s a daily reminder of a unique concept car about which on first sighting Giorgetto Giugiaro said, “it is not a car, it is a piece of art.” This is the Focus before the Focus. […]

The question of who designed the Hurricane supercar has been mired in controversy. Until 2011. Weird as it may have seemed for a car styled just 44-years ago, nobody was sure if the Hurricane was penned in Australia by Holden’s local designers working with their American colleagues on assignment to Australia, or was it, as […]

This story begins on Tuesday, March 4, 1969 in Holden’s Technical Centre, Fishermen’s Bend. And finishes almost 43-years later at Holden’s Lang Lang proving ground. As one of 31 press invitees to that Melbourne motor show eve preview of Holden’s top-secret Hurricane, I never anticipated driving the one-off dream car. At the time I wrote, […]

Google maps tells me the distance by road from London to Moscow is 2890km. Drive a further 1130km east and you’re almost to the Ural Mountains. Or the same 4020km from Sydney to Perth or one side of Australia to the other: Pacific to Indian Ocean. When the final section of the only road across […]

History tells us Mel Nichol’s great HO Down the Hume story is a Wheels’ magazine original. Not quite. In fact, Mel’s still evocative words first appeared in the October 1975 issue of Sports Car World magazine, sister to Wheels. This is how it happened, 50-years ago. In mid-1971, having developed a trusting relationship with Howard […]

When in September 1982, on a private visit to Italy, I first visited Ferrari, Il Commendatore Enzo Ferrari was still very much the autocrat, at least of the racing department. Maranello’s disparate road car range included the V8 308 GTB and GTS, the bigger, two plus two V8 Mondial, and two unrelated 12-cylinder models: the […]