Peter Brock in pictures

PETER Brock was a man whose name and achievements still resonate with motorsport fans almost a decade after his untimely death in Western Australia. That year, 2006, was terrible: in quick succession, Australia tragically lost both wildlife crusader Steve Irwin and then, unthinkably, Brock – the King of the Mountain.

Brock was our hero: a man that stormed Mount Panorama, with nine Bathurst victories including two hat-tricks, and one that took on the world at Spa in the 1980s and even had a few cracks at Le Mans. He also won nine Sandown 500s – seven in a row – and proved no tar-baby in his rallycross XU-1 (nicknamed ‘The Beast’) by winning the 1979 Repco Around Australia Trail – a feat he claimed his biggest accomplishment.

Brock also spawned a thriving high-performance road car business – the Holden Dealer Team Special Vehicles operation out of Bertie Street, Port Melbourne. Building some of our most potent performance cars, it was the forerunner of today’s Holden Special Vehicles business following the infamous Energy Polarizer debacle that saw Brock officially split from Holden, ruining his business – and his reputation.

Today, the man would have turned 70. Scroll through our gallery of archived Wheels images as we say a sad "happy 70th" to arguably Australia’s biggest motoring legend.