The life Of Digby
Reflecting on the motor racing career of Digby Cooke, it is easy to believe it took him 20 years to become an overnight sensation in qualifying his Holden HT Monaro GTS 350 on the front row of the 1969 Bathurst 500. However, that would be selling his abilities way short, as it wasn’t until 1969 that Cooke got his backside into a truly competitive front line car. Up until then he was known as a Mini specialist, and yet during the Mini’s Bathurst pinnacle of 1965-66 he was driving the polar opposite – a lumbering Valiant!
From working for the legendary pre and post-war racer Tom Sulman, to preparing cars out of his Longueville (Sydney) petrol station, then operating a very successful insurance broking business to building a stunning replica of the Jaguar XJ13 racer, Digby Cooke has packed a lot into his 90 years. His 10 Bathurst 500 starts may not have yielded any top 10 finishes but there was a dominant class win in his last ever start in 1972.
Now residing on the Gold Coast in retirement with wife Gwen, he has just started winding down, having sold his V12 Ferrari last year. He still has the Jaguar, which he will never part with. So in accordance with strict social distancing measures, AMC set up a Zoom meeting and spoke to Digby (and Gwen) about his life with cars and motor racing.
The Beginning
Digby Cooke began competitive motoring in a cut-down Alvis 12/50, a sporting pre-war British car that was very popular with enthusiasts in the immediate post-war era.
“I started out in the Alvis in 1948 at the Hawkesbury Hillclimb,” says Cooke (the hillclimb was a winding stretch of Hawkesbury Road that climbs to
