COLIN Bond remains a legend of Australian motorsport, the only driver to have won the Australian Touring Car Championship, Australian Rally Championship and Bathurst’s ‘Great Race’, when it was a 500-miler back in 1969.
During the mid part of the 1980s he was onboard an Alfa Romeo GVT6 and the little 2.5-litre V6 Italian machine sure did sound the part.
Although it didn’t turn out to be an outright contender, Bondy had it zinging along on plenty of occasions, including podium finishes in Australian Endurance Championship rounds in 1986.
The car he drove in that season has lived on for many years with current owner Hugh Harrison, whose son Trent spent some time behind the wheel of the yellow Ignis car at Calder Park in Melbourne last week.
The right-hand-drive Alfa Romeo was Bond’s car during ’86 and was a re-shell of the left-hand drive ex-Luigi car he and Alan Jones had driven at different stages of the previous season.
Bond and this Alfa finished runners-up to Tony Longhurst in the 1986 AMSCAR Series at Amaroo, neither won any of the races, though were able to take advantage of a points scoring system that favoured the smaller capacity cars.
Peter Fitzgerald co-drove this particular Alfa with Bond at Sandown and Bathurst in ’86.
Fitzgerald joined us on the V8 Sleuth Podcast early in 2024 to talk about his amazing career in motorsport, during which he touched on this period of driving with Bond.
The Harrison-owned car is the same one that Valterri Bottas jumped behind the wheel of at last year’s Adelaide Motorsport Festival.
WATCH: Hugh Harrison puts the Alfa through its paces at Calder Park:
