Robbo's Archives

‘The circuit is now open for Formula One practice.’ You’ve come halfway round the world to hear those nine magic words boom out across the pits. But now you wonder if the announcer can really be serious. Just minutes earlier the world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, with Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter, James Hunt and Graham Hill, […]

Takaharu ‘Koby’ Kobayakawa It is impossible to imagine how Mazda’s image in 1976 could have been more disastrous. Boat loads of rotary-powered RX-2, RX-3 and RX-4s were turned back across the Pacific after US sales plummeted in the wake of the first energy crisis. Two years earlier, 50 percent of all Mazdas used a rotary engine: […]

The meal had been lavish, the wine magnificent, under the chandelier of the ancient dining room in The Welcombe Hotel, a grand old English country house just outside Stratford-Upon-Avon. It was clearly an occasion the image makers felt worthy of a new Jaguar. My dinner companion that cold night late in February, 1979 was unknown […]

The Man Who Invented Zero to 60 ‘Uncle Tom” McCahill invented the benchmark 0-60mph acceleration test. British motoring magazines like The Autocar and The Motor performance tested cars over 20-years before Thomas Jay McCahill’s road tests appeared in the long defunct American magazine Mechanics Illustrated, but it was the American who made ‘nought to 60’ […]

This is a mildly edited version of the talk AMHF board member Peter Robinson gave to the 51st National Citroen gathering in Bendigo on April 4. Good Evening….and thank you for inviting me to the 51st National Citroen gathering. It is far too long since I spent time in the presence of so many marvellously […]

This is a mildly edited version of the eulogy delivered by AMHF board member Peter Robinson at Bill Tuckey’s funeral in 2016. When Marcia and Stuart asked me to speak about Bill today, I was stumped. What could I possibly say that would properly honour Australia’s greatest motoring writer? Simple. Since he died, I’ve been […]

In the words of the late-Bill Tuckey, Australia’s finest motoring writer, “When anything can go wrong with a new model press launch, it will.” Perhaps most famously, even for supposedly bullet-proof Toyota. Convinced the quality of the T140 Coronas (note: not the previous unfortunate Holden Starfire-powered model) from the Melbourne plant was so good they […]

Leonardo Fioravanti gripped me by the elbow and steered me to a point diagonally behind the red Daytona. I’d asked, apprehensively, “Is there anything you would change, if you could do it again?” This question, akin to suggesting another Leonardo alter the Mona Lisa, proposed reworking the voluptuous Ferrari GTB/4 Daytona? All skin-tight curves, every […]

This was a private mother-and-son moment that transcended their roles as European automotive nobility. The proud engineer son and CEO of Audi, Ferdinand Piech, parading his new concept sports car to mum, Louisa Piech, on the first press day, Tuesday, October 8, of the 1991 Frankfurt show. Louisa, brother of Ferry Porsche and quietly influential […]