KB’s Keepsakes

Kevin Bartlett takes AMC through his personal mementos, curios and souvenirs from his equally eclectic racing career.

Kevin Bartlett is your tour guide in this fascinating look at his memorabillia collection.

Kevin Bartlett’s distinguished career spanned an incredible five decades. He considers himself a former open-wheeler driver first and foremost; one that just happened to move into touring cars. Bartlett’s 15 years pedalling ‘real’ racing cars netted a pair of Australian Drivers Championships (1968 and ’69) and took him to New Zealand, Asia and the United States. The latter included a drama-filled 242mph crack at the Indy 500 and a series of competitive showings in F5000 on the classic American tracks.

The highlight of his time in tin-tops was an outright Bathurst victory in 1974 with John Goss. However, his touring car record includes ATCC round wins, two Bathurst pole positions and campaigning myriad makes and models over three decades. To most Aussie race fans KB was the courageous, tough-as-nails steerer of the Nine Sports Camaro during the early 1980s.

Unsurprisingly given the length and depth of his time in motorsport, KB has amassed a fairly substantial collection of memorabilia. We’d wager that he has won enough silverware alone over the years to fill an entire room. Kevin kindly agreed to display a selection of keepsakes from his time at the wheel at the recent Muscle Car Masters – and AMC was among the privileged fans at Sydney Motorsport Sport Park who got to see it.

The collection included more obvious items of driver equipment, matched in number by an assortment of rewards and treasures from a bygone era – pennants, ribbons, plates, medallions and sashes.

His collection of racesuits stretched from his earliest single-seater days through to the one worn at his last Bathurst start (and competitive start fullstop) in 1990. This was when he and rookie co-driver Russell Ingall were nearly cooked during the race due to the interior heater erroneously directing hot air from the engine into the cabin. KB would have been forgiven for burning that GIO branded suit, but there it was, 28 years later, displayed in a dedicated suite at SMP along with scores of items for trackside punters to feast their eyes upon.

Over the following pages Bartlett provides fascinating reflections about some of the items on show.