THE LAW MAN – JIM KEOGH

The Law Man – Jim Keogh

A footy injury provided the excuse for Jim Keogh to pursue a lifelong dream of going motor racing, which his mother had knocked on the head in his senior years of schooling!

By HEATH McALPINE

Now approaching 50 years since Keogh started his legal practice, the Victorian still retains the photos and books that track all aspects of his racing career until he stepped away from the sport at the end of 1989.

Many circumstances led to Keogh racing.

One was neighbouring business owner John Stoopman’s annual Bathurst trips, another was his football injury, and the final piece of the puzzle was an Ad that kept attracting his attention in Auto Action.

“I played a lot of footy and by the time I was 26, I was getting towards the end of my career,” Keogh told Auto Action.

“I pulled my first ever hammy and thought “Bugger this I’m going to go motor racing”!

“Freddy [Gibson] had been advertising this XB Hardtop (the former works ‘test car’) in Auto Action for $8000, I’ll never forget it. It didn’t sound like a lot of money at the time.

“I thought ‘That was cheap’ and I went up to see Freddy. He test drove it at Oran Park and I bought it. I took it back on a trailer and thought ‘What do we do now?’”

it wasn’t until Keogh became involved with Graham Ritter that the XB GT really got going.

“I got a call from Graham Ritter who had been a very successful touring car driver, starting off in the Humpy Holdens,” Keogh recalled.

“He was selling a diff or something so I went over and had a chat with him at his workshop in Camberwell. That was the introduction that really got me going because at that point the car was a nightmare to drive.

“Graham took one look at it and set about revising the whole front-end geometry. He made half-inch, solid steel caliper mounting brackets and suddenly we had good straight-line braking.

“The way Graham had set-up the front suspension, the car suddenly started to turn in!”

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