The Wheels Interview: Nigel Tait, one of the Aussies behind Jack Brabham's F1 success

Monza, September 4, 1966. A day like no other in Formula One history, and a day like no other in Australian history.

It was on this day that British driver John Surtees retired from the Italian Grand Prix on lap 32, his Cooper Maserati suffering from a fuel pump failure, handing Australia’s own Jack Brabham the third of his three Formula One world championships.

It was a significant win in more ways than one. Yes, it was Brabham’s third championship, following on from his 1959 and ’60 triumphs. But significantly, it was the first F1 championship victory for a driver in a car of his own construction, bearing his own name. It’s a feat that will – likely – never be repeated.

But more than just Brabham driving a Brabham, the BT19 that carried him to victory was the result of a distinctly Australian effort. The car itself was designed by British-born Aussie, Ron Tauranac, while the 3.0-litre V8 that powered Brabham to victory in four of the season’s nine grands prix, was designed and built by a small team, led by legendary engine builder Phil Irving, in Repco’s engine shop in Melbourne.

Nigel Tait was part of that small but dedicated team. Freshly minted with a pair of diplomas for mechanical and automotive engineering from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Tait’s first job – in January 1966 – was in Repco’s engine shop in Richmond, where the V8s that would go on to power Brabham to his third world title were being developed.

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“I applied for the job as a cadet engineer,” Tait recalls with a hint of mischief in his eyes. “And I told them all these lies about my previous history, making cars and engines and all that. And that was lucky, because I managed to get a job as a cadet, and to be at Repco.”

Tait may have, by his own admission, been a touch frugal with the truth on his job application, but he did undersell his mechanical experience just slightly.

A tinkerer from an early age, Tait was building home -made billy-carts from the age of 10 (“They were more than billy-carts. One was almost like a car. It had a roof, everything…”) before graduating to cars while still at school.

An old Austin 7, bought for £10 in around 1958 or ’59, was soon transformed into a race car.

“I took the body off, chucked it away and made a race car with a view to running it in the Austin 7 Formula,” Tait says.

This was in his last year of boarding school in Geelong and as Tait admits, the school’s chapel services were an especially productive time.

“I was able to use the time usefully by polishing things and bits [for the car],” he chuckles.

In a case of impeccable timing, Tait completed his high school studies in 1960 just as RMIT was about to launch – in 1961 – its first ever Fellowship Diploma of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering.

“It was the first time they ever had that course available and as it turned out, there were only two of us doing it,” he says.

Four years later, and armed with his diplomas, Tait – in yet another case of superlative timing – joined Repco in January 1966, just as the Australian automotive engineering business was about to become a global Formula One powerhouse. The significance of that sublime piece of timing wasn’t lost on Tait.

“I joined at the beginning of ’66, and there we were working on engines for Jack Brabham. Now, I was only a cadet, and I was under the stewardship of some of the more senior guys,” he recalls.

“But it was wonderful to be there, where we were building the engines that won the championship for Jack that year. Extraordinary.”

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That those world-beating engines were made in what amounted to little more than a tin shed in a dim laneway in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond makes this story even more remarkable.

“When you consider that year, our engines – I was only a cadet, remember – but our engines powered Jack to his third world championship. And the next year Denny Hulme won and Jack came second,” Tait looks back with pride in his voice.

“So for two years on the trot… Repco was known all around the world, all of a sudden. Who’s this company, Repco? Where are they making their racing engines?” he continues. “Well, it was an old tin shed in ‘Lavatory Lane’, Richmond.”

The colourful street name has passed into motorsport folklore, a colloquial address used by Repco employees because the building’s toilets could only be accessed from the laneway.

“Truly,” reveals Tait. “If you walk down the little lane off Burnley Street, on the right-hand side, there’s a chem lab, and then there’s an office where my boss sat, and then the next thing was a door into the washer and toilets.

“And then the other side of that little laneway was the doors of the tech centre, which we called the engine lab. And that was where the racing engines were born.”

It’s an origin story a world removed from the high-octane environment of Formula One. But it’s all so typically Australian, too, a tale of smart people with clever ideas taking on what must have seemed like an insurmountable challenge and doing it with a blend of typical Aussie humour and ingenuity.

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“That was where it all started, and we had, at that point, only one of [Repco’s] four dynamometers being used for the racing project,” he explains. “And [Repco engine builder and dyno technician] Michael Gasking and myself and others were the only ones building the engines… and, you know, it was hand to mouth.

“There was one time with Jack, during ’66, we were hand-to-mouth getting engines to him. One night we had to work all night, Michael and I, to finish an engine off, run it on the dynamometer and check it all out. And we had to get it air-freighted from Essendon Airport to Jack in England.

“So I took it out to Essendon Airport behind my old Rover on a trailer that I’d built myself,” says Tait before adding, “Jack’s engine! I don’t know for sure which of the four grands prix that he won that year, but certainly that engine went into his car, the BT19, and it won the championship. He won the championship.”

Even 60 years on, it still feels like Tait can’t quite believe his luck, his stories told with more than a hint of ‘pinch-me moments’ that it is impossible to not be drawn in by.

And looking around his workshop today, a discreet building in suburban Melbourne that offers no hint of the history that lies beyond its shuttered doors, it’s clear his passion for Brabham, the man and his cars, runs deep.

Tait remained at Repco even after the company stepped away from supplying F1 engines at the end of 1968 with a perfect record. Two seasons, two drivers’ championships, two constructors’ titles.

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“Formula One had moved on,” says Tait of Repco’s withdrawal. “More people got involved, Cosworth came into it and it would have become prohibitively expensive and difficult, logistically, to run a Formula One program from [Melbourne].”

Without an F1 engine program, Repco continued to design and build engines for a number of Australian series, tasting success, mostly with Frank Matich, in sports car racing and later in Australia’s premier open-wheeler category, Formula 5000.

“Matich was an extraordinary driver,” says Tait. “And had he gone into Formula One, he would have been a contender for Formula One championships, I’m sure.”

But by April 1974, Repco had called time on motor racing, its energies turned towards its core – and growing – automotive parts business. Fast forward to 1986 and Repco, no longer manufacturing engine components, was looking to offload its remaining engine parts division. Tait stepped in as part of a management buy-out, setting up what would become known as Automotive Components Limited (ACL) which at its peak employed around 1000 people.

The buy-out deal included Brabham’s championship-winning BT19 as well as Matich’s fearsome all-conquering Repco-powered SR4. He still owns the SR4 today, but the Brabham BT19 is back with Repco (“they paid us a nice amount of money for it”) and spends much of its time on display in the foyer of its Melbourne headquarters, although Tait – as the official caretaker – remains very hands-on with the car he helped build.

“They wanted me to still be connected [to the BT19],” says Tait, “and also the knowledge [I have].”

But it’s more than just “knowledge” that underscores Tait’s place in history. Tucked away in a nondescript office, a filing cabinet overflows with drawings, documents, and paperwork that painstakingly detail the Repco-Brabham’s history, from concept to development, and engine test logs with meticulously recorded handwritten notes that detail specific engine outputs through the rev band. There are dates, times, places, a full historical and handwritten record of every component, every screw, nut and bolt that went into the Repco engines that conquered the world two years running.

Tait acknowledges the significance of the legacy housed in that discreet office with what I’ve come to learn over the course of an afternoon is a genuine humility.

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“I’m nothing really in the scheme of things,” he says, “but it’s just wonderful to me to think that I’ve been lucky enough to put this stuff together. And I’m taking steps to make sure it stays together.

“It’s not mine, but I’m trying to make sure that it never gets seen on a footpath, you know? I would regard this as Jack’s still… I inherited most of it by looking after it during the Repco days. And I think I’ve done the right thing by making sure that it’s here.

“If it wasn’t here, it wouldn’t be anywhere.”

This story first appeared in the September 2026 issue of Wheels magazine, now on sale. Subscribe here and gain access to 12 issues for $109 plus online access to every Wheels issue since 1953.