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

‘How can we get them going quicker? How much power do you reckon we can get out of them?’

Bartlett shrugged. ‘They’ve got 280 horsepower now. I reckon we can get 450. Piece of cake.’

At that time, 1991, the Nissan GT-R was wiping the floor in Australian motor racing, humiliating the traditional favourite Holdens and Fords. And the fastest Nissan GT-Rs in the world were being built in Melbourne by Bartlett’s old racing pal, Fred Gibson.

The instruction was straightforward: ‘It wasn’t, “How much are you going to charge me, Freddie?” It was, “These engines are for Mr Packer, do it right.”’

Packer was delighted with his monster-powered Godzilla toys. He suddenly indicated he’d like a third Nissan GT-R, similarly high-powered, for his Fyning Hill estate in England. Bartlett offered to look into the shipping process.

Packer: ‘Nah. I want the thing there next week.’ Mere days later, Bartlett was sitting in a first-class seat on a Qantas 747 Combi, a red Nissan GT-R on the same flight with him.

At Heathrow, Bartlett was told that this Australian-specification model did not meet local regulations; thus began a frantic overnight scramble to the Channel Isles, where one may often find alternative solutions to such nettlesome matters.

‘With KP, it wasn’t a case of, “How much will it cost?” It was a case of, “Why haven’t you got it done yet?”’ Bartlett says.

‘You were put on the mark, you knew you had to perform because you would let the bloke down if you didn’t. That’s the way I felt about it: I didn’t want to let the bloke down, because he trusted me to do what he asked me to do.’

But Packer had another high-stakes goal, involving a powerful Nissan and a small island.

Twelve months earlier, in April 1992, the inaugural Targa Tasmania had been held—a five-day, flat-out road race around the island state. Each year around 300 competitors, flagged away at 30-second intervals, flash along the temporarily closed roads at better than 250 kilometres per hour.

As motor sport adventures go, Targa Tasmania is tough, wild and utterly unforgiving. And Kerry Packer wanted to do it, in one of the most powerful cars in the country.

‘He was going to drive a couple of the stages with the GT-R, which I’d arranged at great expense,’ Bartlett remembers. ‘I took two cars down: one just for practice, one for the event. I had to qualify the car for the event—big horsepower—but she went boom!’

Packer had been in Sydney, ready to board the chopper the following day to come down to Tasmania. ‘And I had the onerous task of ringing him up and saying, “Uh, KP, I’ve got bad news about the car …”’

After a response that echoed the Nissan’s engine, Packer growled: ‘Well, whaddya gonna fuckin’ do now?’

Bartlett had, with learned foresight, begun preparing the spare car, which had a ‘reasonable’ 350 horsepower (indeed, 20 per cent more than the Honda NSX that ultimately won the event) but Packer wasn’t impressed.

Bartlett did the event and, despite further mechanical issues, finished third in the Contemporary class. ‘But we’d spent $30,000 or so by that time,’ Bartlett sighs. ‘I knew KP could do it, he was a good enough driver. I felt really bad about it. I said, “I let you down.” And he said, “It happened. Let’s forget it.” But I felt bad about that for years.’

BIG BOYS’ TOYS

Kerry Packer in his post-Alan Bond period was a man who took his fun seriously. Where four wheels were concerned, there was one sight more imposing than that of a determined Packer in one of his unholy-horsepower cars: the wheeled man-mountain that was Packer on a 90-kilogram kart, roaring around the dips and twists of Ellerston’s custom-made track.

James Packer had Kevin Bartlett design a kart track on a gentle hillside north of the main homestead area.

‘James rang me up one day and said, “KB, I want you to build a bloody kart track for me and Dad,”’ recalls Bartlett. (James, evidently, had yet to graduate from ‘bloody’). The track, ultra-light aircraft and other Ellerston attractions were not only for the benefit of Packers pere et fils, but to entertain Argentinian polo players—guys who added a Latin dimension to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Bartlett was allocated a 1.5 square kilometre area of ‘snake-infested’ hillside which would, a dozen years later, be among the back nine holes of the golf course. He set to work on a ride-on mower, pegging out the circuit design ready for surfacing.

It was nothing for Bartlett to lob on the doorstep of a Sydney kart shop and buy nine complete K100 championship karts, costing around $2500 each, and a crate of spare parts. Shop owner Peter Dell remembers having to make a new mould for an ‘extra-extra-large’ seat. He’s since used the very same mould for a handful of other plus-sized customers.

A shed was built adjacent to the track to house and maintain the karts. Indeed, maintaining them would become a weekly routine for Bartlett.

‘When we were entertaining the Argies, I’d go up nearly every weekend, maintain the karts during the week for a couple of days and then stick around for the weekend. Nick Ross, the helicopter pilot, would wear out a kart every time he’d go up there.’

Garry Linnell, editor of The Bulletin from 2002-2006, got to sample the karts on an executive retreat in 2003. Linnell admits he’s no racing driver, but was eager to impress the boss.

‘I think he had done a 50-something [in seconds lap] around there. I ended up doing some really pathetic lap time. It was embarrassing.’

The Big Man enjoyed the karts immensely, Bartlett says, and was extremely adept at getting the most out of them on the track. ‘KP’s kart was usually the best, partly because it had the least use,’ Bartlett says. ‘He’d go and race it around, but he wouldn’t wear it out. And his kart didn’t have any weight penalty on it. We put weight penalties on all the others, the light blokes