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FERRARI IN AUSTRALIA – 60 HIGH PERFORMANCE YEARS
Although Australia is about as far away from Europe as it is possible to get, Australian motoring enthusiasts were aware of the Ferrari legend long before there was ever a Ferrari car.
News travelled slowly to the other side of the world in the 1930s, but Australian newspapers had small news items on European motor racing. And, after several weeks of sea travel, magazines such as ‘Speed’ and ‘Motor Sport’ would arrive from England with more detailed stories.
So Aussie car enthusiasts knew of Enzo Ferrari who ran the Alfa Romeo team under his Scuderia Ferrari banner in grand prix racing after the Alfa factory withdrew from official participation.
The name Ferrari was synonymous with fast, exciting, red cars even before a car bearing that name first appeared in 1947.
It was to be five years after that before the first Ferrari appeared in Australia. Even then, the earliest arrivals were all destined for the race circuits.
About a quarter of a century would pass from the appearance in Modena of that first, 1947 model, Ferrari 166 Spider Corsa, before Ferrari road cars began to be sold in any real numbers in Australia. But from then on, the marque barely looked back.
Bill Lowe, who, in the 1950s, owned an industrial electrical switchgear company in Melbourne, was a motoring enthusiast who loved cars and had imported a French Lombard racing car to drive in the Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island as far back as 1929.
Ferraris had captured his imagination from the outset, and he particularly loved the lean and mean styling of the 212 Export Coupe and its classic 2.6-litre V12 engine, built for races like the Mille Miglia and Le Mans 24 Hour Race.
When Lowe inquired about buying one, Ferrari was reluctant, because there was no Ferrari agent in Australia. So Lowe suggested he could become the Australian importer. A deal was done and Lowe got the agency and the car, which arrived in the middle of 1952.
Although he was then in his 70s, Lowe couldn’t resist giving his new pride and joy some competition outings, beginning with a third in class at the Rob Roy Hillclimb in November that same year. Soon afterwards, W H Lowe and Co Pty Ltd began advertising the car for sale, for 4600 pounds, a princely sum in those days. If he could sell it, he could buy himself another, later model Ferrari.
But Australia wasn’t ready for cars such as this. Those who could afford to race on the magnificent road circuits of the day would be interested, but the main racing of the day was for open-wheel cars. Closed cars and sports cars were only of novelty value in racing at the time.
So, throughout the 1950s, most Ferraris to come into the country were for the race circuits, where they continued to build the legend. In January 1954, Englishman Peter Whitehead brought his 1949 Formula 1 Ferrari 125 to New Zealand for that country’s International Grand Prix. Sydney racer and stock broker, Dick Cobden, bought the car and looked a winner in the Australian Grand Prix at Southport, Queensland, that year, until he spun his Ferrari while lapping a slower car.
That Ferrari continued racing in Australia for some years. It was joined in 1955 by a 1952/53 Ferrari 500 Formula 2 car, up-rated to beyond F1 specifications with a 3.0-litre sports car engine. Peter Whitehead and expatriate Australian Tony Gaze brought two of these cars for the New Zealand Grand Prix and Gaze’s car was sold to Australian driver Lex Davison.
In Davison’s hands, the car became one of the most successful cars in Australian racing history, including winning the Australian Grand Prix in 1957 and again, at Bathurst’s Mount Panorama circuit, in 1958. When, years later, it was being restored at the Donington Collection in England, it was found to be the car used by Alberto Ascari during his world championship-winning years of 1952 and 1953.
Two more racing Ferraris came into Australia in 1956, a 1951 model 212 Export Berlinetta for Sydney textile importer and Italian consul, Nino Sacilotto, and a 1954 750 Monza Sports for NSW hand tool manufacturer Stan Coffey.
At Melbourne’s Olympic-year Australian Grand Prix meeting in 1956, bolstered by the two sports cars and two modified F1 cars raced by visiting drivers, there were no fewer than eight Ferraris in action.
In 1959, Australia’s severe import restrictions on cars were eased and the 250 GT of the era was a more practical road car than most of the earlier Ferraris had been, as well as being built in greater numbers. Bill Lowe bought one for his own use, and sold the odd one or two more. One of these went to wealthy Sydney yachtsman Tony Oxley, who allowed David McKay to race it on a couple of occasions in 1961.
McKay, incidentally, had applied for a Ferrari agency for NSW at about the same time as Bill Lowe did for Victoria, back in 1951, but did not have the finances to carry the deal through.
But by 1960 McKay had his own racing team, called Scuderia Veloce, and it was growing well, backed by good corporate sponsorship. By 1962 McKay also had opened a specialist service and repair business called Scuderia Veloce Motors. In 1964 he went to Italy to buy one of the fabulous Ferrari 250 LM cars - LM for Le Mans, a race the model was to win in June 1965.
McKay made a similar deal to that of Lowe a dozen years earlier, becoming NSW agent for the cars (but these had to come via W H Lowe and Co, which now had become the Australian distributor).
McKay’s 250 LM, initially in the hands of Spencer Martin, later of numerous other top drivers, was extremely successful in Australian racing throughout the next four years, including winning two 12 Hour Races at Surfers Paradise.
In his autobiography, McKay noted that the arrival of the 250 LM, “…didn't spark a rush of Ferrari orders…” but it added to the already huge profile of the marque in Australia and, eventually, that would sell a lot of Ferraris.
In 1968, McKay’s 250 LM was joined by a later and faster 330 P4 sports car that was to set the fastest speed ever set on a race circuit in Australia to that time, 291 km/h on Mount Panorama’s then narrow, bumpy and humpy Con-Rod Straight.
New Zealand GP driver Chris Amon contested the 1968 Tasman Series in a beautiful little Ferrari Dino 246 Formula 1 car. A year later he came back with two similar, but upgraded cars, he and Derek Bell taking a 1-2 victory in the final race and Amon winning the Tasman Series overall.
New Zealander Graeme Lawrence bought one of these cars and won the Tasman Series with it in 1970.
In 1969, Scuderia Veloce Motors had been reorganised as a more serious company with new shareholders, much greater capital, and it was moved into more suitable premises in Lindfield, north of Sydney. As well as Ferrari, the company had franchises for Volvo and Porsche cars.
All the recent Ferrari race victories began to pay off in the 1970s. In Italy, in 1969, Ferrari had captured the attention of a much wider market when it released the beautifully-styled and less costly Ferrari Dino 246 road-going coupes. But it was to be some time before the car was widely available in Australia.
Ralph Lowe, who had by now taken over the reins at W H Lowe and Co from his father, approached Ferrari asking for right-hand drive models. Ferrari said there was insufficient demand. The company needed a firm order for around 50 cars to make it viable.
The UK distributor, since 1960, had been Colonel Ronnie Hoare’s Maranello Concessionaires. Hoare had raised the profile of Ferrari in Britain by entering the company’s latest competition cars in local races with top-line drivers, and winning a lot of events. He grew the road car sales year by year.
Now, Hoare combined forces with Lowe to place an order large enough to persuade Ferrari to build RHD Dinos. Lowe had expected to sell 15 of the cars per year - already way above anything they had achieved before this. But reality exceeded his expectations. In 1973, around 50 of the cars were sold in Australia. It was, by far, the biggest year for Ferrari sales in the country.
Even after that initial surge, sales stayed strong, with official industry figures showing 36 Ferraris sold in Australia during 1975 and 39 in 1976.
At last, Ferrari was established as a road car in Australia. By now the country’s road network had improved and expanded, but the main thing was the magic of the name. If you drove a Ferrari, people knew you had made it in the world.
In the meantime, there had been big changes on the business side. In 1974, due to his hugely successful forays into the UK market with the Ferrari marque, Colonel Ronnie Hoare was awarded, by Ferrari, the distributorship for all right-hand drive markets in the world. Maranello Concessionaires bought out W H Lowe and Co and it was through the British-based company that Scuderia Veloce now had to deal.
Ferrari last made the popular 246 Dino in 1974. It was succeeded by the sleek 308 GTB and the squarer 308 GT/4, a better and more practical car and quite handsome in retrospect, but the styling of which was less loved than the 246. These were joined by the more expensive 365 Boxer followed by the 512 BB Boxer and later the 308 GTS.
By the mid-1980s all these mid-engine cars (a trend begun by the Dino) had been joined by the big, front-engine Ferrari 400i.
More changes were afoot on the business side. During 1983 David McKay had tried to sell Scuderia Veloce Motors to one of his former drivers, Bill Brown and a cousin of Brown, but the deal never quite came together. Late that year, Laurie Sutton, CEO of the Suttons Motor Group, originally formed by his father, stepped in and bought SVM outright.
Sutton has admitted it was a decision based on a passion for the marque, rather than it was the best investment he could make at the time. However, despite a shaky start, it ultimately turned out to be a good investment - even more so when Sutton eventually also bought out Maranello Concessionaires’ Australian distributorship in 1997.
Sales were sometimes erratic. In 1985 official figures show 54 Ferraris sold in Australia, in 1984 this was down to 29, in 1985 it was back up to 59. After the stock market crash of October 1987, sales of expensive and non-essential cars dropped off. By 1991 Ferrari sales were down to 27, a year later only 13.
Since the mid-1990s, however, the numbers not only improved, but levelled out, year to year. From 1995 to 2004, the sales have remained between a low of 50 and a high of 82.
But the important thing was the investment the Suttons Motors Group put into the company. Premises had been improved, parts and service facilities expanded, and dealerships upgraded.
Fiat had bought a half interest in Ferrari in 1969. When Enzo Ferrari died in August 1988, aged 90, Fiat’s ownership grew to 90 per cent, with the remaining 10 per cent having been left to Ferrari’s son, Piero Lardi-Ferrari.
From that time on, with tighter control of the company and a greater financial interest, Fiat worked hard at improving the breed while maintaining the magic that Enzo had breathed into the cars.
In the ensuing years Ferrari cars have grown even more exciting. At the same time, great effort has been put into making them more driveable, more practical, reliable, and built to ever-increasing levels of quality.
Before the advent of the Dino, all Ferraris had their engines in the front. And most of them were powered by V12 engines. But Enzo was more willing to move with the times than some have suggested.
After the Dino, the major models all moved to mid-rear engine layout - although the availability of traditional front-engine models has continued. And the engine range has broadened. There was the Dino’s V6 engine, then came a V8, to complement the traditional V12.
But a major move from convention was the flattening of the V12 engine to flat, horizontally-opposed, or what became known as the “boxer” engine.
The inspiration for this engine layout came from the world of Formula 1. Lowering the centre of gravity has always been a priority in F1. It was perhaps inevitable that Ferrari’s glorious-sounding V12 Formula 1 engine of the late-1960s and 1970s would one day be developed as a flat-12 to bring the weight down closer to the road.
The idea was a winner. The boxer engine was the power plant for F1 Ferraris throughout its most consistently successful era - until the arrival of the Todt/Brawn/Schumacher steamroller, that is.
For nine and a bit seasons, from late-1970 until the end of 1979, Ferrari’s Flat-12 engine cars won 37 world championship GPs (of a total of 169 races) and three driver’s world championships (Niki Lauda in 1975 and 1977, and Jody Scheckter in 1979).
If proof was ever needed that motor racing sells cars, this was it. In 1973 Ferrari introduced a flat-12 engine in what was originally a 365, but which evolved into the 1976 Ferrari 512 BB. In 1984 it was succeeded by the dramatic looking 512 Testarossa - or “red head” a name coined by Ferrari in the mid-1950s when his then sports racer was given new heads, which happened to be red, for better performance. The 512 BB continued successfully through to the end of 1995, a 22-year run for the flat-12 in Ferrari road cars.