As you walk through the front door to Roland Dane’s luxury apartment overlooking the Brisbane River, it’s impossible to ignore one thing. It’s the bright and shiny line of eight Peter Brock trophies. They could hardly be more different from the original artwork of all kinds hanging from the walls.

One Brock trophy is special enough, but eight is a reflection of Dane’s incredible impact on Australian motorsport. He was the key figure in Supercars racing for more than 20 years, creating a towering dynasty with Triple Eight Race Engineering and his hand-picked driver line-up of Craig Lowndes, Jamie Whincup, Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney.

But there is much more to the Dane story than racing cars. The artwork on the walls, the extensive collection of books – including two hand-signed by Sir Winston Churchill – and the Boston Whaler sports boat tied up at the marina, prove it.

1

So, too, does his intelligent and argumentative approach to everything from modern history to fine wines and the best way to work a barbecue.

His father, Dr David Dane, discovered the virus linked to hepatitis B after serving with Britain’s Special Forces during World War II, his brother Thomas has contemporary art galleries in London and Naples, his brother Alex is a doctor in Alice Springs, and one of his sisters worked for many years for the Red Crescent – the Muslim world’s equivalent of the Red Cross – in Malaysia.

So, in some ways, Roland is the under-achiever in his family despite his huge intelligence and incredible ambition. And those trophies. Dane says he is officially retired at age 69 after selling his stake in Triple Eight and stepping down as chairman of the PWR automotive cooling company in Queensland, but he sometimes says things which are not completely true.

1

He is still advising the PremiAir squad in Supercars and can be found at Queensland Raceway whenever there are cars competing – even if it’s only humble Hyundai Excels with the next generation of young hopefuls.

The ambitious teens are unlikely to know even a fraction of Dane’s back-story. He has owned and run hotels and restaurants around Asia, once led the quirky Panther Car Company, and has been a genuine mover-and-shaker in the car world since the 1980s. For a time he was the largest non-official Rolls-Royce sales agent in the world and also one of the largest ‘grey market’ importers of second-hand Japanese cars into the UK.

He has also raced and won in yachts, and plans to sail The Great Loop around and through the USA next year, although he was less successful on motorcycles and never a chance in cars. Dane is clearly driven and tracks it back to his beginning.

1

“I do try, or have tried to do, a few things reasonably well. I don’t like the idea of being beaten when
I put my mind to something. I have been driven by the fear of failure, as much as anything else,” he begins.

“I can’t pinpoint any particular event or happening from my childhood, I just think I’ve always tried to make sure I didn’t come second.

“Growing up there were mechanical objects, so tractors, outboard motors, cars, a Honda step-through motorcycle. I pulled then apart, put them back together, and wondered why there were bits still on the bench.”

Dane was born in Belfast in Northern Ireland, although he has deep roots through ancestors in Australia in the 1800s. His middle name, Surrey, also reflects an historic connection to the English county.

“I’m a student of history in many ways, I enjoy it.”

1

His personal history lesson is tied, in many ways, to his father. It was both inspiration and intimidation.

“He thought I was a bit of a nuisance when I was young. Then gradually, after he’d retired, my relationship got better. I learned more about him, both from a point of what he had achieved professionally as a virologist, but also his war story.

“He was Parachute Regiment, then SAS. There was a famous operation that took place in France, behind enemy lines just after D-Day, called Bulbasket and many of them didn’t come back. His particular forte was clearing landing sites for extraction of people who had been parachuted in for ‘activities’. It was challenging, to say the least.”

1

Then he snaps back to the present.

“Almost everything we do pales into insignificance compared with what people went through in the last World War on such a huge scale. Being in the car business, being in motorsport for the last 50 years, is a privilege in itself. Many aspects of what I’ve done, to be honest, are as useful as chocolate on top of a cappuccino.”

His working life began when he left school at 18, picking up a job at a car company called Panther Westwinds.

“It was a lot of fun, especially in the early days, building almost-unique cars for almost-unique people,” Dane recalls. “Eight or nine years later I ended up as the general manager. I had plenty of examples of how not to do things. It’s not just a question of learning from successes, but learning from failures. That whole period had a lasting impact for me.”

1

He set up Park Lane UK Limited (even though it was not in the famous Park Lane in London) in his late twenties. The business specialised in armoured Mercedes-Benzes and stretched limousines, renewing links he had opened at Panther into Hong Kong, Japan and Brunei. But there was more to come.

“It opened my eyes to the potential for a big parallel market in new cars, from UK and Germany in particular, for Asian markets. The local agents were often very ‘opportune’ with their pricing. I created a lot of relationships off the back of that. And the markets were growing very fast.”

While business was happening, with cars and cash rolling in, Dane was also getting big in motorsport. He was never a hero as a driver in one-make races with Honda and Ford cars, but he did it right when he helped found Triple Eight Race Engineering in the 1990s, which became the successful GM factory team in the booming British Touring Car Championship.

He made his first trip to Bathurst during the Super Touring era with Vauxhall cars, although he realised the category could never rival the homegrown Aussie V8s.

“Two people and a dog turned up and the dog got bored and went home. It was obvious that V8s were the way forward.”

Later, after his divorce, he packed his bags and bought a team from Brisbane car dealer John Briggs and started racing Ford Falcons. There was a switch to Holdens after he was fired by Ford Australia, one of the more bizarre episodes in his life, and eventually Triple Eight became the official Holden Racing Team with big-money backing from Red Bull.

The T8 headquarters at Banyo is jam packed with trophies, many hundreds of them. He took Australian citizenship and has a large T8 tattoo – he designed the logo – on his shoulder.

“I’ve been around here for 22 years now. The last 15 years have given me more success, frankly and in many ways, than I could imagine when coming here. A lot of it has been very – not only satisfying – but enjoyable. That’s a big thing for me. Enjoying life.”

1

His success has brought many great friendships, financial freedom, a couple of tasty road cars – a Cupra EV and an upcoming manual Porsche 911 – as well as a man cave with lovely toys including a replica Audi Quattro E2 rally car and a super-rare Ducati Desmosedici road-going version of a MotoGP bike.  

“As Mick Doohan said years ago, you have to be prepared to walk around the corner in Monaco and see a boat bigger than your own. I’ve got more than enough to keep me happy. One of the things I’m really proud about at Triple Eight is that a number of key people, including me, have left and still it’s as successful as it’s ever been. I have zero to do with it these days, but I like nothing more from a local motorsport point of view than to see Broc Feeney winning.

“There are a number of people who have been massively instrumental over the years in the success, but it’s the collective who made the difference and continue to make a difference.”

Dane highlights the work of his chief financial officer Nuri Paterson and engine builder Kenny McNamara at KRE, as well as his first superstar driver.

“Craig Lowndes believed in me back in 2004 when I sold him the idea of driving for us. That was a huge turning point because he was at the height of his powers.”

Then, just as we are wrapping-up, Dane recalls one last doozie of a story.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I sold a car to the CIA? Well, he didn’t say he was CIA, but he could have been from ‘central casting’, with the American accent, aviator sunglasses, dark blue suit, and built like an athlete.

1

“At the time I was selling some armoured Mercedes-Benzes to high-profile clients in the Middle East and Asia. I got a call from this American who wanted to look at a car that was in Germany.

“He flew in and brought a US military mechanic. He checked the car and fired bullets at some samples of the special glass. He said he wanted to buy the car. It was 500,000 Deutschmarks. The money was transferred in about 20 minutes. I even got a special call from a senior executive at my bank in London. Then next day we loaded the car into a military transport plane.

“As we were finishing up, I asked him what the car was for. He just said ‘Watch your television’. About a fortnight later I was watching the news coverage of Operation Desert Storm during the US war on Iraq, which was under the command of General Norman Schwarzkopf. He was arriving at his headquarters in Riyadh and getting out of my car.”

1

The article originally appeared in the October 2025 issue of Wheels. Subscribe here and gain access to 12 issues for $109 plus online access to every Wheels issue since 1953.