Late last year I met the Australian author, Barry Farr, who has followed Ferrari since his primary school days and has been a member of the Australian Ferrari Club for the past 33 years. This passion for the marque has lead him to spend the last five years comprehensively researching all the Ferraris that came into the land down under during the 1950s and 1960s. The result of … [Read more...]
Summit Roadster
The early years of the Australian motoring industry appears to be very similar to the conditions we seen over the past few decades with manufacturers attempting to beat the imports on price and the Governments of the day desperate to tax the imports yet giving them very big loopholes to avoid paying them! Today however, Free Trade Agreements have reduced the import tax and the … [Read more...]
Update on the Sale of Opel to the PSA Group
About a year ago General Motors sold its European business of Opel and Vauxhall to the PSA Group who own the Peugeot and Citroen marques. It was an interesting deal because Peugeot and Citroen have had their financial difficulties in the recent past and the GM Europe business has had 16 years of losses and only managed to take 6% of the European market. For General Motors it … [Read more...]
Harley Tarrant
I can probably be certain that very few readers will have heard of Harley Tarrant - yet he was at the forefront of the industry and was at the heart of Australian motoring. Tarrant was born in 1860 in the small town of Clunes, in Victoria, Australia and was the son of a couple who had emigrated from Oxford in England. His father started out as a miner before becoming a … [Read more...]
International Drivers are Allegedly Dangerous
I have written several times about the stupidity that can come from State or Federal Governments that is then embellished by the mainstream media. Last week I wrote about the Federal Government jumping in and taking action to fix a problem that bigger Governments and global brands have been struggling with for years. In some respects you have to say “good on them” for trying … [Read more...]