Jobs for Bob
Bob Watson is best known for winning the 1970 Australian Rally Championship at the wheel of a little Renault R8 Gordini. But many forget that the bespectacled Bob started life as a Holden man and, far from being just a rally specialist, he has a couple of pretty significant circuit racing successes to his name alongside his rallying achievements. Not only that, but along the journey Watson provided some significant engineering input into the brand they once called Australia’s Own.
In 1968, Bob, then a chassis development engineer at Holden, teamed up with fellow GMH engineer Tony Roberts in a Holden Monaro GTS 327 when they entered themselves, in what was really their first major motor race, the Sandown 3-Hour, and proceeded to blow away the best specialist touring car drivers in the country to win the pre-Bathurst enduro.
It was an extraordinary start to circuit racing after years of rallying. Three weeks later the Roberts/Watson Monaro finished in third in the Hardie Ferodo 500, in the rally duo’s in their first ever time at Mt Panorama.
For many drivers, such early success in circuit racing would have kicked off a longterm career on the tarmac. But not for Bob. He finished the ‘68 Bathurst 500, collected his trophies and walked away to concentrate on his first love, rallying.
“It just didn’t turn me on that much,” Bob says of circuit racing. “It was all too repetitive for my liking. Having said that, I did like the longer distance races and did a few more events in the ‘70s with Brian ‘Brique’ Reed, Roger Bonhomme and Lawrie Nelson, but it was always rallying for me.
“The thing about rallying is working out every corner for yourself, and even more so at night when we used to do all our, rallying.”
In the beginning
Bob Watson caught the car bug at a young age. At 15 he had saved up enough to buy an old ‘Baby’ Austin 7, in which he competed in motokhanas, mud trials (above) and later, when he got his licence, night-time observation rallies.
“When I got it, I tore it apart, and put it back together again. It didn’t have a body on it and we used to tow it out to do motokhanas and autocrosses even before I had a licence,” Bob says.
“I was interested in rallying and the Austin 7 Club used to run mud trials and also night navigation trials, which I really enjoyed, and I ended up putting a body back on the Austin 7 and did quite a few events in that.”
Young Watson went ‘modern’ after that and bought an Austin A30. At this point there are some parallels with another bloke who a few years later would be a well-known motor racing champion.
“The A30 was a big step ahead,” Watson says, laughing sarcastically. “I put up with the A30 for a while and then I graduated from engineering and was hired by Holden as a young engineer. So naturally I bought a Holden – a 48-215 to be precise.
“It was a natural progression
