Kerry Packer by Michael Stahl (i read books .txt) 📕

and Mercedes, went to Paris to get all the relevant paperwork … Then I went to Detroit and bought a Camaro Z28.’

Bartlett began modifying the car to race in the 1979 Bathurst 1000, just four months away. It was a tough schedule. But come the October date, Bartlett would struggle to drive a wheelchair: he was lucky to have survived a 200km/h crash in his F5000 a month earlier.

‘I remember it well because it was the ninth of the ninth, 1979, and the car number was nine … I thought, this doesn’t bode too well.’

The crash had ended Bartlett’s F5000 career and left him with a lifelong limp.

He continued to develop the Camaro, and was quickly on the pace with it in 1980, taking second in the championship behind Brock. Bartlett qualified the Camaro on pole position at Bathurst in 1980 and again in ’81, though the car would not figure highly in the results.

No, the car that Kerry and Kevin built will be best remembered as the ‘Channel Six Camaro’, for its career-ending 1982 Bathurst race. Bartlett was running with the lead pack when the Camaro’s left rear wheel collapsed. The car lurched into the wall and then neatly rolled onto its roof, sliding inverted along the track for some distance before coming to rest.

Back in Sydney, the car’s sponsor was relieved to see his driver emerge from the car angry, but unharmed. Whereupon, Packer was said to have taken endless delight in seeing his Nine network’s logo—even inverted, as a six—occupying so much of rival Channel Seven’s headline sports telecast.

It was a case of one-downmanship and one-upmanship at the same time.

ROAD TEST

A bloke like Kerry Packer didn’t go shopping for cars; usually, the cars came shopping for him. But when some new four-wheeled toys piqued his interest, few had better resources immediately at hand. Wheels, the nation’s best-selling motoring magazine, happened to be among the ACP stable. As, indeed, was the second-biggest seller, MOTOR.

In 1990–91 Honda had launched a Ferrari-baiting $160,000 supercar, a slinky, aluminium-bodied missile dubbed the NSX. But around the same time, Nissan decided to import 100 road-going examples of its $110,000 all-wheel drive Skyline GT-R coupe. Dubbed ‘Godzilla’, this turbo terror was in the midst of trouncing Australia’s motor racing scene.

The Honda was like a Ferrari that Packer might conceivably fit into. But the Nissan was thematically similar to his trio of Audi Quattros, and Bartlett had already gushed to the Boss about it.

Everyone was interested in these, and the new breed of supercar. And so it came to pass that the Wheels magazine crew arrived just after dawn one Sunday morning at Sydney’s Eastern Creek Raceway, armed with its hi-tech Leitz Correvit digital speed-measuring equipment, chief test pilot Kevin Bartlett and a quintet of supercars adding up to just shy of $1 million.

The pressure was on to make the deadline for the May 1991 issue. Getting through five cars in one day, what with performance testing, course set-up, photography and tyrechanging requirements, would demand solid focus.

John Carey, Wheels’ long-serving road test editor was there:

‘I remember that day well. I was setting up cones with KB

[Kevin Bartlett] on the straight when this nice chopper … that was headed in a westerly direction, went into a hover overhead. I asked KB: “Is that who I think it is?” He fessed up that he’d mentioned this to KP, and that he’d been interested …

‘He was on his way with a bunch of polo players to a tournament in Richmond or Windsor, with young James in tow, too. We had a Honda NSX, Nissan Skyline GT-R, a privately-owned Ferrari 348tb, a BMW M5 and a Porsche Carrera 4.’

Carey recalls that the big boss drove everything except for the Ferrari, and that James was similarly like a kid in a candy store. But another Wheels crew member who was present recalls that the biggest stress-generators were the Argentinian polo players, who were hooning and spinning off the track.

‘KP was in and out of the cars that most interested him, the GT-R and the NSX,’ Carey recalls. Carey was crouching by the door of the Honda, wrestling with the suction-cups and retainer straps that secured the large timing sensor to the door of the car, when a looming presence seemed to suck out all ambient light.

‘KP had stopped to ask me what the Correvit was. So I gave him a quick description of what it did and what it had cost. Which was, in round figures, $50,000.

‘“And who owns it?” he asked me.

‘“Well, I suppose you do.”

‘Made him laugh. Nice big one. Genuine. Wealth can make some people into miserable buggers. Not Kerry Packer. He really knew how to enjoy money.’

Packer had been mightily impressed by the Nissan which, aside from its performance, offered a more accommodating cabin than the low-slung, two-seater Honda. Bartlett was standing by the chopper as Packer climbed on board to depart.

‘Get me one of those cars,’ Packer motioned towards the Nissan. ‘Nah, fuck it—get me two. One for James and one for me.’

TASMANIA BEDEVILLED

In 1988, the BMW 750iL was about the most lavishly equipped, complex and expensive car on the Australian market. But the V12-engined limousine was no less impressive in its ability to burn money: a car bought for $216,000 in 1988 (when the average house price in Sydney was $141,000) could dump half its value in just three years.

It’s probably for this latter reason, rather than any particular affection, that a white, 1988 BMW 750iL, carrying the FP-222 registration plates of his late father, would be Kerry Packer’s automotive staple for the last 17 years of his life. Regularly schmoozed by BMW and other luxury brands, Packer’s attitude remained: ‘What’s wrong with this one?’

But the Packer predilection for performance cars, evidenced by his Jaguar and Audi, had a final, courageous chapter to run, in one of the world’s most dangerous and demanding road races.

Packer had bought two Nissan GT-Rs, and in true KP style, was soon asking Bartlett: