COLIN BOND – LICENSED TO THRILL

Colin Bond – Licensed To Thrill

For the latest Living Legends feature, Foges spoke with motorsport all-rounder Colin Bond covering a variety of topics including his beginnings on both dirt and the tarmac, his successful career in Holdens, touring car rivalries and his shock defection to Ford.

Foges and ‘Bondy’ cover a lot of ground in their conversation, below is a snippet of an intriguing discussion:

How and why did you get into in motorsport?

What got me interested were the RedEx Trials in the 1950s. The amount of publicity they got in the early days really captured my imagination. This was even before I could drive. As kids, we used to get on our push bikes and make rallies through the bush in Hunters Hill and Gladesville.

I became an apprentice mechanic at Grenville Motors under the Harbour Bridge on the north side. They were part of LNC Industries, the Land Rover people. I had a Singer 9 for a little while because a lot of the boys at Grenvilles were in the Singer Car Club, but then I got a Bug-Eyed Sprite. I joined the MG Car Club and ran the Sprite in motorkhanas − very successful.

Apart from the 1969 Bathurst 500 victory, was the other highlight of your time at HDT the 1975 Australian Touring Car Championship?

I think winning three Australian rally championships was more of an achievement. We should’ve won four because in ’73, my teammate Peter Lang beat us because I broke an axle in the last event while we were leading. It was a pretty good period overall – a Bathurst win, four straight rally titles for the team, the touring car championship and a manufacturers’ championship, plus lots of race wins.

In those days, I concentrated on NSW and Queensland while Peter focused on Victoria and South Australia. There were a lot more races in those days. We’d be racing at Amaroo Park and Oran Park in Sydney and Lakeside and Surfers Paradise up north. They were good days.

What happened in ’76 that made you accept Allan Moffat’s offer to join him?

Well, the writing was on the wall. Harry had become stale and Moffat was offering to pay me more. Money was always a bone of contention with Harry. It was a better deal and the Falcon was going to be a better car than the L34. Moffat had Carroll Smith coming out from America to engineer the cars that year and they were the better cars in ’77. But then the Torana A9X came along in ’78 and it was the better car.

Read the rest of the chat with Colin Bond in issue 1799 of Auto Action available right now.

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