LUNCH WITH GARTH HOGAN
Fast since six years of age
Garth’s passion for cars, especially those of the racing variety, was entirely due to the fact that his father, Ron, was a guru on the Auckland speedway scene, a man who could strip and rebuild a Ford flathead blindfolded. Ron Hogan’s expertise with Fords was such that he became the go-to man across all forms of motor sport for anyone using Henry’s V8. Such was this influence on his only son that Garth remains loyal to the blue oval to this day.
We meet for lunch at the excellent The Stables in Whitford in early November while Garth’s up from Wanaka for a few days. As we glance at the menu, he mentions he’s used his time in his hometown constructively by buying a new vehicle that morning. It’s no surprise to learn it’s a Ford — what else?
Garth was born in Auckland in the late 1940s and shared a tiny house in Point Chevalier with his parents and sister. “From the time I was knee high, there were racing guys around the house — colourful guys like Johnny Riley, Louis Antonievich, Garth Souness, and Red Dawson — and I just loved listening in on all their race talk. There were American magazines, mostly related to hot rods, so I seamlessly went from coming under the influence to total immersion. In our house, if you didn’t talk cars — flathead V8s especially — then you didn’t talk.”
Garth was already hopelessly addicted by the time his father “gave up motor racing as a mug’s game” in the late 1950s.
It becomes abundantly clear that Garth’s story is incomplete without reference to his dad.
“He was many things, including brilliant, highly principled, and utterly original. He was also bullheaded, opinionated to a rare degree, and almost pathologically incapable of expressing approval to anyone, particularly those closest to him. He never drank and his attitude to alcohol, like all his strongly held opinions, never changed.”
HOOKED ON SPEEDWAY
As for Ron’s enthusiasm for Ford products – “He believed that Ford products were sensibly designed for longevity and performance, the result of an evolutionary process. Henry Ford was irascible, easily irritated, egocentric, driven to the point where little beyond his work mattered to him and, of course, brilliant.”
Garth concludes that Henry was Ron’s kind of guy, and adds that “his jaundiced view of diesels of any brand was matched by his love of petrol engines”.
“Speedway was a big part of Dad’s life since the first races were held in Auckland before the war and his favourite drivers raced Fords. He had no ambition to be a driver; his fascination was with the cars and he was quickly identified as a handy fellow to have around.”
The entire Hogan family would be at Western Springs, and Garth says that from an early age he was absolutely hooked.
“At seven years of age I had a job distributing race colours to the motorcycle riders,” he tells me.
By the time Garth was in the top class at Pasadena Intermediate, the highlights of his life were Western Springs and the annual pilgrimage to Ardmore for the Grand Prix. However, as his interest in all things associated with the American racing scene intensified from the magazines he was consuming, he became convinced that “racing on banked ovals had to be a lot more interesting than the processions at Ardmore”.
“A lot of the racing had hot rodding at its core. The fact that this was all happening half a world from Pt Chev made it seem glamourous and exotic.”
I ask Garth if, after the indoctrination he’d had at the Springs, he’d dreamt of racing there himself.
“I loved watching speedway and the people who pursued it but I wasn’t interested in getting behind the wheel and becoming a speedway competitor myself. I presumed that one day I’d race something but that if I ever ended up racing a car it would have to be fast. In fact, it would have to be very, very fast.”
FAMOUS FOOTSTEPS
By the early 1960s Garth was in the top stream at Seddon Memorial Tech. He knew Bruce Mclaren had also done the engineering course there. He recalls, “Bruce’s successes were celebrated at Seddon where there was a sense that he was one of them, a boy who was expected to do modestly well if he applied himself. To know that he was actually doing brilliantly at the highest level in one the most challenging pursuits in the world was inspiring for all because, that year, 1962, he won the Monaco Grand Prix and finished third in the F1 championship.”
After passing his School Certificate, Garth expected his father would require him to leave school and get an engineering apprenticeship.
BACK TO SCHOOL
“To my surprise and relief, he said I might as well have a go at passing the University Entrance exam. Maybe he might have been curious to see just how far I could go academically, but whatever the reason it was a relief to stop welding trailers and cradles for Dad and go back to school.”
Given that a top drag racer is part daredevil and part scientist, I’m intrigued when Garth tells me the subjects he took in 1964.
“My courses consisted of pure maths, chemistry, English, physics, and ‘ad maths’ — a cross between maths and physics. “My maths teacher had outlined my choices: I could work diligently to secure an academic career or I could take it easy. I elected the latter, the reason being deeply rooted in the notion that the old man had always told me I was useless. Academia was something reserved for those who were outstanding — superior people who belonged in a different world to mine. I assumed that the academic world offered me nothing and there was no chance of becoming a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or architect. Becoming a scientist was beyond comprehension.”
For Garth, engineering held some attraction. “It was more the practical side that appealed, not operating lathes and drill presses to produce something like the old man.”
However, those hot rod magazines had had a profound effect.
SCHOOL BOY DREAMS
“It was unavoidable. All my reading, from about the time I could read, was about American motor racing: the Indy 500, Bonneville, Nascar stock cars, dirt track oval racers, and eventually drag racing.” It was the latter category that captivated the young Garth even more than the others.
“The question anyone who’s ever raced anything always gets asked is ‘How fast does it go?’ In drag racing top speed is what it’s all about and that’s what attracted me.”
Not that Garth ever became one-dimensional in his love of motor sport. He’s just as comfortable discussing modern Motogp racing as he is talking about the evolution of Formula 1 and then in a flash we’re back to Indy roadsters.
“I still consider an uncaged Kurtis Offy the most beautiful racing car of all time — well, I guess I thought that until I saw the Lotus that Jimmy Clark won the ’65 Indy 500 with.”
With mention of that car, Garth starts recounting the day he met the shy Scot.
“I had a holiday job driving a spare parts delivery van. I walked into the John Andrew Ford lunchroom one day in January 1966 and there he was. My eyes went out on stalks. The older mechanics engaged him in conversation, calling him
“He was many things, including brilliant, highly principled, and utterly original. He was also bullheaded, opinionated to a rare degree, and almost pathologically incapable of expressing approval to anyone…”
Jimmy as if they’d known him all their lives. I just sat and ate in silence, watching and listening. It never occurred to me that I should speak to him.”
The year 1964 left quite an impression on Garth.
“In January Bruce Mclaren won the New Zealand Grand Prix, and things just got better. Ford brought out the Mustang; the GT40 was coming; there was the 427 Galaxie; and Jim Clark was taking on the Indy establishment with the quadcam Ford V8. I was 16 turning 17, in a Ford house, reading all of this in the magazines and I’m in heaven!”
NOT JUST DREAMING
Garth recalls that it was while watching Clark at Pukekohe in 1966 that it dawned on him that he might find the motor racing fix he was seeking in drag racing.
“I wanted something violently fast, something that was exciting in the same way that a huge explosion was. In drag racing, the contest determined a winner and a loser in a matter of seconds and the speeds attained were incredible.”
I mention that at that time there were no official drag racing strips in New Zealand.
“The nearest you could get to it was streets between traffic lights and illicit street drag races that happened only rarely. Hot rods guys spoke the same language as drag racers. Quite how I would go about getting into it and in what capacity was another matter. I’d grown up reading the language and understood the connection between hot rods that cruised and drag cars that did not. In their own ways, both were a celebration of horsepower, acceleration, and, most of all, individuality.”
Garth increasingly wanted to be part of that fraternity.
“If I couldn’t drive a drag car then I wanted to be a hot rodder.” A lack of funds meant neither was immediately likely as he’d enrolled at the University of Auckland in Engineering Intermediate, which consisted of papers in pure maths, applied maths, physics, and chemistry. After what he describes as a “very social year” he vowed to be more diligent in 1967, a year that would see Garth join the newly formed Queen City Rodders, revel in the launch of New Zealand Hot Rod magazine, and attend New Zealand’s first official drag race meeting in an open-cast mine at Kopuku.
PLANNING
Garth recalls driving home from that event with a feeling of frustration.
“I really wanted to be part of it but I had no idea where to start. My father had had a lifetime of projects stalled through a lack of money and a little part of me wondered if that might be my destiny as well.”
Garth was soon a committee member of the New Zealand National Hot Rod Association and was starting to meet kindred spirits of the small but dedicated fraternity here. One of the more influential ones was from Lower Hutt.
“Grahame Berry had already created some of the most iconic hot rods in New Zealand and was already well known via the pages of New Zealand Hot Rod. He was a colourful guy and I quickly realized he was more interested in racing than show cars. Sitting watching racing with him at Kopuku was the start of a long and rewarding friendship.”
UNREALISED DREAM
Garth’s father never tried to disguise his contempt for hot rods so it was more than a little surprising that Ron Hogan agreed to his son’s suggestion that a 1940 Willys coupe resting in his yard would make a good basis for a rod.
“I sourced an Oldsmobile Rocket 88 engine from a wreck, added a Chev front end and Ford Ranch Wagon rear but sadly it became yet another project that would never be finished because Dad insisted on doing everything before losing interest after the initial flurry of activity.”
BRANCHING OUT
Garth was driving his dad’s tow truck most Friday and Saturday nights but was still no closer to his dream. Late in 1968 he decided to join some mates bound for Sydney. “It was first extended time away from home and my first trip overseas.”
The trip also provided Garth with his first taste of proper drag racing — cars running with nitromethane known as ‘top fuellers’.
“I’d made various connections from my time on the New Zealand Hot Rod Association, including the manager of Castlereagh International Dragway near Penrith. He told me I’d be most welcome to attend and arranged for me to get a ride out there. For me it was like being transplanted to Disneyland.”
After waiting for years to see and hear top fuellers, after reading about them for so long, the time had come and Garth wasn’t disappointed.
“I had an LP record that I’d nearly worn out, so I was prepared for that brutal crackle of a supercharged 392 running with a big percentage of nitro, but knowing it and experiencing it were two quite different things. The ground shook and the noise was so deafening that, even though I didn’t want to, I had to cover my ears.”
Prior to flying to Australia, Garth was already a partner in The Speedshop in Auckland, and made contacts while there to import flame-proof paint. He had a gut feeling that “demand would far outstrip supply”. It was another step along the way of developing Garth’s business acumen as he set about discovering all he could about import licences.
“I was back in Auckland for the start of the 1969 university year. By then I had already decided my future would not be in academia but, with no other options, I sold my share of The Speedshop to my two partners and re-enrolled.”
PLANNING
Garth’s duties as secretary of the NZHRA gave him much greater pleasure than his studies.
“More temporary strips were being used, including Bay Park, Napier Airport, and Ardmore’s main runway, but the most famous was Kerrs Road in South Auckland, where spectator numbers were huge, but an accident highlighted the need for a permanent facility.”
Garth’s need to build a drag car, even if it meant sharing with someone else, was all-consuming. Hot rodding was growing in New Zealand and the opening of the drag strip at Meremere gave the sport a permanent home. In the early 1970s Garth was a busy boy with his newly acquired licence to distribute VHT here and attendance at hot rod shows all over the country.
“I’d look at all the chrome on cars at shows and wonder when I’d find the time to build my own, and, despite my enthusiasm for them, the old man’s disdain for hot rods hadn’t softened.” Garth well recalls the day his chance of going racing crystallized. “My friend Geoff Larsen dropped in and told me he’d reached an impasse with his racing because he couldn’t afford to keep up with the technology or repair any damage. An idea formed: what if we collaborated?
“The plan was for Geoff to own the engine and I’d own everything else. We’d start on alcohol and move to nitro and split the driving.”
For Garth there was only one man to turn to for the construction of the car — Grahame Berry.
“He accepted the commission and I outlined the general dimensions.”
Garth was delighted with the finished product, which was painted deep red with virtually no visible chrome, as per Ron Hogan’s mantra: “Chrome doesn’t make a car go faster.” Garth won the toss to race it first and he recalls the date instantly: “26 January 1975 at Champion Dragway.”
Next month we’ll tell you how he got on and continue the incredible story of Garth Hogan, drag racer, businessman, aviator, car collector, hot rodder, and family man.