CLASSIC WHEELS
AORC 2010 Finke Desert Race
The Finke Desert Race in central Oz is known as the Bathurst 1000 of off-road racing. Glenn Butler risks the mother of all lung oysters to report from the eye of the storm.
Cars of 1966: Bill Tuckey remembered
It was the prerogative of successive Wheels editors to provide a highly personal account each December of the cars they had driven that year.
Bill Tuckey reflects on the cars of 1966
In a Wheels tradition that lasted nearly five decades, editors summed up annually in a personal column all the cars they had driven. Here is the late Bill Tuckey’s view of 1966.
Remembering Bill Tuckey: Holden Monaro drives around Australia
A Holden Monaro, flexible speed limits and the open road; the joys of driving around Australia in a by-gone era, as only Bill Tuckey could describe it
1990 Lamborghini Diablo: retro series
It took Lamborghini 17 years to reprise the legendary Countach
Remembering Bill Tuckey: Quints drives a V12 Jaguar
Everyone loves a roadtrip. Even more so when someone possessing the talent, passion and appreciation of prose as when former Wheels editor Bill Tuckey was moved to take up the quill. Part Hunter S Thompson, part Kerouac, but so uniquely Tuckey, sit back and re-live Romsey Quints’s classic piece of longform motoring journalism from 1977 – Long Day’s Journey into Johtown.
Nissan GT-R in the Shaky Isles
Who said you need to fly halfway around the world to find mind-bending mountain scenery mixed with class-A driver’s roads? We crossed the ditch, grabbed a Nissan GT-R, and went in search of blacktop to rival Europe’s finest. Choice, bro …
Alfa Romeo 1750 Berlina in Italy
In 1968, a former Wheels editor scored what was then a very rare invitation on an international launch. Here’s what unfolded in that Alfa Romeo 1750 on Italy’s Amalfi Coast.
Alfa Romeo 1750 Berlina review
Press conference, Italian style
Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ: Wheels Car of the Year 2012 Winner
The engineering may be conventional, but the execution is exceptional. The Toyobaru twins’ focus on affordable, involving driving enjoyment propelled them, with tail-out attitude, into the COTY winner’s circle.
Wheels’ 1972 Holden HQ Kingswood consumer test
Peter Robinson puts the Holden HQ through the toughest consumer test imaginable.
1972 Holden HQ Kingswood road test
Holden was annoyed the HQ didn’t win 1971’s Wheels Car of the Year. To show Peter Robinson how tough it was, Holden sent him on a day trip to Bourke. And back.
Subaru Legacy takes on the Australian Outback
What do you think would happen if Wheels brought in a Subaru Outback from the US and drove it in the Aussie outback?
Classic Wheels: Left-hand-drive Subaru Outback bush lark
The Americans had a problem: Where should they test their new Subaru Legacy Outback? John Carey was part of the obvious solution.
The Greatest Australian Car – EVER
How could Australia’s only contribution to the world’s vocabulary of automotive styles not make this list? Young Lew Bandt was the only designer employed by Ford Australia in the early 1930s, when the company’s management thought…
Classic Wheels: Vanishing Point
History holds some epic drives against the road, the conditions or the clock. Or all three. Such an adventure made headlines in 1951 when two Queenslanders wrote a record for Darwin to Alice Springs, 1500 km at over 145 km/h
In search of ‘The Italian Job’ in a Lamborghini Miura
Former Wheels editor Peter Robinson takes you behind the scenes of his 1997 feature An Italian Job, when he searched in a legendary Lamborghini for the Alpine setting of its most famous crash
Classic Wheels: An Italian Job
This is the story of a beautiful car, a great road and the classic movie that brought them together
Classic Wheels: Le Mans Meets the Aussies
In 1984 Peter Brock and Larry Perkins took on the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a Porsche 956 sponsored by Bob Jane, and Wheels was along for the ride – literally. Here is how it all came about
Classic Wheels: Albury-Melbourne in two hours in a Ford Falcon GT-HO
Covering 200 miles in two hours in a Ford Falcon GT-HO Phase III was always going to generate a compelling yarn. But even in 1971, on the no-limit Hume Highway, a photo of the speedo showing 145mph raised eyebrows
HO down the Hume
Wheels’ 1971 review of the Ford Falcon GT-HO Phase III was written straight, withholding details of the author’s high-speed research. Here is the story of the Hume Highway drive behind it, originally published in sister magazine Sports Car World four years later.
Classic Wheels: Car Design for the Next 25 Years
In 1978, for the 25th anniversary issue of Wheels, we asked the leading engineers and designers from Ford and Holden to contribute their thoughts to the future of the car
From the Wheels archive: Wings across Australia – driving a Datsun Bluebird from Adelaide to Darwin
From the the July 1981 edition of Wheels, when we piloted Datsun’s then new Bluebird from Adelaide to Darwin in 30 hours to discover if the most Japanese Australian car yet was up to the challenge.
Classic Wheels: A Dilambda in a Cave!
It reads like a film script … this, I SWEAR, is exactly the way it happened
