Ghosts in the Bull Pens: A Speedway Racing at the Sydney Showground Royale

by: Tony Loxley, Dennis Newlyn

Ghosts in the Bull Pens: A Speedway Racing at the Sydney Showground Royale - purchase the book from the Automoto Bookshop website (click here).

Forewords by Bryan Cunneen, Jim Airey, Doug Robson and Steve Raymond (OAM)
Over 350images covering the years from the '20s to 1996.
Due for Christmas 2011 ! ! !

Book Description

The Sydney Showground Speedway had a mystique about it that no other race track in Australia was able to reciprocate. From its early beginnings in the '20s to its final race meeting on 27 April, 1996, this hallowed and daunting race venue captured the imagination of competitors and race fans around the world — simply put, there was nothing like it — anywhere.
Today however, the majestic and monolithic Clock Tower still oversees this historic venue, now home to Rupert Murdoch's Fox Studios, yet despite the fact that much of the original venue is now hidden behind industrial and office facades, and the once lethal, narrow racing oval now removed to make way for a footpath, the aura of this amazing venue still echoes with the roar of racing engines, and the smells of burnt methanol, cooking hamburgers, chips in the fryer. Pluto pups, and of course, the murmurs and cheers of the massive crowds who freauented the track throughout each summer racing season for six, wonderful decades.
Gone too is the annual two week extravaganza of the Royal Easter Show, but if the imagination is allowed to run free, the specter of the Bull Pens turn, the race track's most lethal corner, is still present; so too, perhaps, the ghosts of the 29 riders and drivers who were lost racing at this imposing speedway.

About the Authors

Historian Dennis Newlyn, who covered the halcyon days of the '60s and '70s as a journalist for the periodicals and newspapers of the day, and who was a leading magazine publisher at the time, and publisher Tony Loxley, who attended on many occasions as a spectator and later photographer, have put together a treasure trove of images and memories of this much lamented venue that allows the reader to drift back into the past, and relive those glory days of racing at the Sydney Showground Royale that continues to mean so much to so many.

Brabham Ralt Honda The Ron Tauranac Story

purchase a copy signed by Ron Tauranac from our official website

 

 

Until now, the man whose racing cars have won more victories than anyone else's, and whose design skills have brought fame to hundreds of drivers and made champions of a good many of them, has remained in the background.
Ron Tauranac - British-born, but brought up in Australia - always preferred to let his cars sing his praises where it really mattered - on the race tracks of the world. They have never been known as Tauranacs, but the names Brabham and Ralt will be very familiar to anyone who has followed motor racing since the Sixties. And so, of course, is Honda, the company which supplied the engines for some of Tauranac's most successful Brabham and Ralt racing cars and with which he still retains close links as a design consultant, working behind the scenes on several of their motor racing activities.
Author Mike Lawrence was one of a growing number of people who felt that Ron Tauranac's significant contribution to modern motor racing should be shielded from public view no longer, for there was a fascinating story to be told. It is one which weaves the familiar motor racing fabric of brilliant success laced with occasional bitter disappointment, and it has at its centre a man who throughout his life has never walked when he could run, has at times been insufferably demanding and a pain to work for, but whose skills, dedication to hard work, honesty and integrity have been such that those who have suffered the most from his tongue remain amongst his most fervent admirers.
Sir Jack Brabham, in his foreword to this long overdue biography, pays generous tribute to his former business partner into whose hands he entrusted the design and construction of all his own racing cars from 1962 until his retirement from driving in 1970, plus all the production Brabhams which brought so much success to many other top drivers during their formative years.
Sir Jack himself and his team-mate Denny Hulme both became Formula One World Champions in Tauranac-designed cars, many other drivers have won National and International championships in them, and nearly everyone who sits on a Grand Prix starting grid today has previously been a Ralt driver, along with former stars like Ayrton Senna, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Derek Warwick and Martin Brundle.
Many of Ron Tauranac's former colleagues and customers - amongst them the most powerful people in motor racing today - speak candidly about the man they have known and worked with, someone who has never courted popularity, but whose talents have been such that his contribution to the motor racing scene is possibly beyond measure. Anyone who is either involved in the sport or fascinated by it will be delighted that through this book The Ron Tauranac Story has finally been told.
Ron Tauranac has designed racing cars for over forty years and Mike Lawrence's book documents his work in detail - particularly with regard to Brabham, Honda and his own Ralt firm. It is a superb biography of one of the pivotal figures in motor sport. It provides an educational outing into the world of open-wheel race car productions. Virtually anybody who was somebody in racing has made an appearance here. If you are looking to learn the truths of who, why and when, then this is the book for you.
With 288 pages and 62 photos and illustrations. (First published by Motor Racing Publications in 1999). SB.

Holden Monaro: It's a Legend (book signed by Gavin Farmer)

Introduction

 

this publication is available for purchase on our official website

Holden was the last of the General Motors' divisions to market a pillarless hardtop coupe. All of its US divisions had been producing coupes for many years and during the 60s Opel ventured into the coupe market with its large Admiral coupe that could be had with a Chevrolet 283cid V8 in its top version. Smaller Opel coupes followed. Even arch conservative Vauxhall had coupes long before Holden.
The European and Japanese companies successfully began selling coupes in small but consistent numbers from the mid-to-late 60s; Holden's great rival in Australia, Ford, introduced the Falcon hardtop coupe with its XP range and while initial success was had, buyer interest waned and Ford also lost interest. Adding the Monaro to the HK range knowing the way the Falcon had blossomed and died must have taken guts. We, the motoring enthusiast of Australia, thank the executives who backed the decision and the talented people who made it happen.
That the third generation should have been called Monaro was quite remarkable. Mike Simcoe was against the name but the dealers and the media had christened it Monaro from the get go once they had seen the Concept Coupe and public opinion in a way forced Holden to go with the name.
The excitement that the Concept Coupe generated for Holden was remarkable, buyers only too willing to place large deposits with their dealer which put an enormous amount of pressure on Holden who in some ways seemed reluctant to go with the coupe. The deal with Pontiac was really icing on the cake and assisted in gaining international exposure for the Holden product but more importantly for the talented people who were able to show that they could design and manufacture a new model in a fraction of the time and cost that it would have taken in America.

About the author

Gavin Farmer has had a lifetime involvement with cars one way or another. He was still in high school when he bought his first car magazine—Modern Motor, September 1959—that began a collection that today numbers in the hundreds. Once he had a job he began adding books to his collection and then model cars.
Today he is one of Australia's leading motoring historians and regularly contributes to such prestigious publications as Automobile Quarterly, Collectible Automobiles, The Automobile, Bimmer, Sports Car International and others. in addition he has written several books including Tickford: The Joy of Driving; Imprezive WRX: Subaru's Turbo Legend; Hey Charger: The Sensational Chrysler Valiant Charger, Leyland P76: Anything but Average, Great Ideas in Motion: A History of Chrysler in Australila 1946-1981 and Aerodynamic Tatras.
From the 70s through to the 90s he worked in the automobile industry in various roles from manufacturing, sales—wholesale and retail—and public relations before turning his abilities to writing. His original professional training was for teaching but he was looking for wider challenges in life. To this end he has been a State Manager for a multimedia educational publisher as well as a company that marketed computerised dispensary systems.
All the while he was adding to his knowledge of automobiles, the industry and the many new technologies. A colleague once described him as a barefoot engineer!" A man who is passionate about the automobile and its history, Gavin lives with his wife on a small property in the beautiful Adelaide hills where he enjoys occasional drives in his Subaru ff-1 and has begun restoring his 1949 Jowett Javelin.

see more details about the Holden Monaro book on our official website