Doug Chivas
A full life
In an earlier era he would have been the sort of Aussie that General Erwin Rommel feared and respected – a bloke with an innate ability to think on his feet with great clarity, use whatever was at hand to get the job done, all the while cracking jokes.
“Man, that was wild!” Doug Chivas was ‘amped’, bouncing around on the balls of his feet, eyes wide as he gave a rapid-fire account of his ride in the Australian Unlimited Sidecar Grand Prix at Bathurst. It was a sunny Easter Sunday, April 10, 1977. ‘Chivo’ had just hopped off the passenger’s platform of Peter Campbell’s Kawasaki Z1000powered sidecar after what can best be called a torrid encounter with the top sidecar men in Australia. They had been in the thick of the action despite the four-stroke losing out down Con-Rod Straight to the TZ750 Yamaha-powered opposition.
When he found his way blocked by Stan Bayliss and Geoff Taylor in one run up Mountain Straight out of Hell Corner, Campbell went left, putting the sidecar wheel – and Chivo – out into the long roadside grass, a burst of dust marking the passing move. Chivo also related how at one point he had been looking down on Barry Fraser, Taylor’s passenger, as they negotiated the Dipper – Campbell ‘flying’ Chivo in the chair through one of the trickiest sections of the Mount Panorama circuit. There was no doubting how hard Chivo had been working; his hands were blistered and bleeding from the effort.
Winning in New Zealand
The preceding summer, Campbell and Chivas had won every sidecar race they started in the Marlboro International Series in New Zealand. Graeme Crosby recalls they travelled New Zealand in a Ford V4 Transit van with Ross Hannan’s Yoshimura Kawasaki Z1000 Superbike in the back while the sidecar outfit rode on a trailer behind. Crosby drove a borrowed Austin A40 Farina with his then girlfriend Brenda Jury.
“The A40 topped out a bit over 50mph on the flat but by slipping it out of gear on downhills, it would get up to 60,” Crosby recalls. “Sometimes we’d ►
get a ‘tap’ on the rear bumper – it was Chivo in the Transit, grinning like mad, telling us to speed up.” Something else happened in New Zealand that summer: Doug met fellow sidecar passenger Margaret Halliday at the Pukekohe round. By Timaru the chemistry between them was obvious: Doug captivated by the quietly spoken 20-year-old who would eventually join him in Sydney.
The Bathurst challenge
Bathurst had a special attraction for Doug. As an 18-year-old BMC apprentice mechanic he co-drove a Mini Cooper with his father Doug Chivas Senior in the 1966 Gallagher 500-mile car race. They finished 17th outright in a field of 53 starters, second in Class B.
It was his entrée into motor sport. Prior to that he had been a decent racing cyclist, making a breakthrough with a great gearing set-up. After rivals copied that he took up surfing and was pretty good at that too, as was his younger brother Neil, who was also racing motorcycles. Despite being married with a baby son, Doug was lured by the siren call of sporting two-strokes, buying a 350cc R5 Yamaha. His passion for motorcycles and racing saw him separate from his young family to follow a completely different path.
He got into Production racing – finishing ninth outright and fifth in the 500cc class with brother
Neil on a Yamaha RD350 in the 1974 Castrol SixHour. Doug was the ‘reserve’ rider but after Neil’s mate Erik Soetens was sidelined, Doug got the ride. This information got lost: the result sheet listed
Doug Chivas and Erik Soetens. In fact, it was Neil and Doug on the RD350.
The Unlimited C-grade at the 1975 Bathurst saw Doug racing a 750cc three-cylinder two-stroke Kawasaki H2, taking runner-up to Steve Klein’s Yamaha TZ350. In October he and Neil raced the Kawasaki to twelfth place in the 1975 Six-Hour at Amaroo.
Three-wheeling
During this period Doug met Peter Campbell at a party at Warren Willing’s Sydney home. Campbell persuaded him to try out as his passenger on his original Kawasaki-powered rig and Doug got bitten by the sidecar racing bug.
He was not done as a solo racer though, teaming with Neil in the 1976 Castrol Six-Hour, this time on a Kawasaki Z1-B, finishing eighth outright. At year’s
end Doug went to New Zealand with Campbell to dominate the summer sidecar racing, returned to Australia, raced as passenger at Bathurst and several other events and for a few months was a regular at the Sydney Showground, swinging on Paul
Mahony’s shrieking three-cylinder 750cc two-stroke Suzuki outfit. They made enough money at ‘the skids’ to spend idle days at local watering holes, playing pool. Doug was pretty good at that too… Doug and Marg were sharing a house in Bankstown with Croz and Brenda, and Mahony.
Doug later recalled that the only two blokes he knew of that had a head-on car crash in the street they lived were Crosby and Mahony, playing impromptu ‘chicken.’
By the standards of ‘normal’ suburban society, Chivo and his mates were pretty wild men who drank, played hard and raced motorcycles. The always well groomed, well dressed and softly spoken Margaret Halliday must have been a source of confusion for the neighbours. In the second half of 1977 she and Doug returned to New Zealand to start a new chapter in their lives, initially working at Josh Timms Motors in Timaru before moving to Mike Steele Yamaha in Hamilton.
Doug the constructor
In Timaru Doug built a sidecar chassis with a singlesided leading link fork using a Kawasaki H2R engine. The 750cc triple was plagued with ignition problems but their first season rewarded with third place in the 1977-’78 NZ Sidecar Championships and second in the 1978 New Zealand Sidecar TT. Another shot at long-distance Production racing had Doug paired with Timaru’s Peter Waters on a Suzuki GS1000SE to finish sixth in the 1978 NZ Six-Hour.
Doug and Marg were now a well-established part of the Kiwi motorcycle racing scene, with Doug always up for a prank. One of the most celebrated of these was sneaking into a campground under cover of darkness, hooking up the caravan in which Robert Holden was cavorting with another riders’ girlfriend, then towing them down to the main street of Timaru. There the caravan was unhooked, the ‘props’ folded down then Doug and team disappeared back into the night.
First titles
A TZ750 Yamaha engine replaced the Kawasaki triple and brought immediate success: the 1979
’80 New Zealand Sidecar Championship, the New Zealand TT and the NZ Grand Prix. Doug also had his final foray in Production racing, teaming with New Zealand veteran Trevor Discombe on a Yamaha XS1100 for a sixth-place finish in the 1979 NZ SixHour. The 1980-’81 NZ Sidecar Championship added to their tally, they returned to Australia and with brother Neil, Doug opened a motorcycle tyre retail outlet and repair workshop near Granville in Sydney. Chivas Brothers Tyres, commonly known as ‘Chivos’, quickly became a magnet for racers, sidecar and solo riders seeking advice, and help. It did not matter whether you were a club racer or nationally ranked rider, Doug was always available. Helping others, running a business as well as building, preparing and racing a sidecar outfit would stop most people in their tracks. Doug thrived in this environment. His ability to get things done was as legendary as his ability to make Tooheys New disappear down his throat – the workshop fridge was never empty. Once the business was established, Doug and Margaret were back racing.
Australian championships
In late 1982 Doug bought Peter Campbell’s 1981 World Championship sidecar contender. One of the early ‘long’ bikes with the passenger swinging out behind the sidecar wheel rather than in front, it was light and strong and provided sterling service. It had to be modified to accept the TZ750 engine in place of the TZ500s and in collaboration with Campbell and Warren Willing, Doug fitted Hoeckle crankshafts, piston-port TZ350 cylinders and flat-slide Lectron carburettors.
Multiple Australian Champions Taylor and Frazer were still hard to beat, Doug and Marg finishing second to them in the Australian Grand Prix in 1983 and in the Aussie title chase. At Bathurst in ‘84, Chivo finally achieved a long-held goal, to win on the Mount. He and Marg took Saturday’s sidecar feature, then won the 1984 Sidecar GP on Sunday, slicing almost a second off Taylor’s year-old lap record. That Australian Grand Prix win meant Margaret was the first woman in the world to win a motorcycle Grand Prix race.
This was Doug and Marg’s ‘purple patch’. Over the course of the 1984 season they won 32 of the 37 races entered and finished runners-up in the other five. They also broke ten lap records, three of these twice. By season’s end they had won the Australian Sidecar Championship as well as the ►
Victorian, New South Wales and Queensland state titles and were nominated for the Australian Sportsmen of the Year awards. Not quite done, they popped across the Tasman to win the summer international series for the second year running. It was an amazing year that saw plans hatched for a World Sidecar Championship campaign.
While they worked on that, they won at Bathurst again, taking Saturday’s sidecar feature before winning the ‘85 Grand Prix. Then it was off to Europe to take a crack at the 1985 World Sidecar Championship, Yamaha TZ500 engines back in the Peterbuilt. On the way they stopped in the USA and won at Sears Point, Loudon and Road America, setting lap records.
The World Championship was another level though: Doug and Marg did not qualify for the first three rounds they entered: Assen, Spa and Le Mans. Before the Silverstone round they had bought the ex-Jock Taylor Windle, but torrential rain saw the race cancelled. The only ‘pickings’ they had from Europe were an eighth-place finish in the British Championship round at Snetterton and a fifth-place finish at Oulton Park. Chastened, they returned to Australia to re-group.
Highs, and lows…
With the fast and reliable TZ750 engine back in the Windle, they were on the front row for the 1986 Australian Sidecar GP at Bathurst. In a rare mistake, Doug stalled at the start but after a lap and a half they had passed more than 30 outfits and were up to 11th. Doug was on fire. From there they worked their way to sixth with a lap to go, latching onto the tail of Vince Genova who was chasing Queenslander Greg Neal. Doug got by the pair of them, grabbing fourth in one of the most inspired rides of his career. Four months later they were both in hospital in Queensland – Doug with a broken leg, dislocated hip, badly gashed knee and considerable bruising while Marg was badly concussed and had torn a lot of skin off the top of her foot after her boot was ripped off when she went sliding along the abrasive Surfers Paradise track. They had hit oil, spun, then flipped. That kept them out of racing for almost ten months with Doug in and out of hospital to sort his hip. Still limping he was back in action for the preBathurst meeting at Oran Park in 1987, which he and Marg duly won, then later in the year they sold the Windle to fund the purchase of a used LCR outfit for their 1988 European campaign.
Shortly before they were to leave, Doug went to Bathurst at Easter to watch and help where he could and through a complicated set of circumstances, ended up back in the Windle’s driver seat in practice. Entering the newly built chicane at the end of Conrod Straight, a rod-end in the rear suspension broke. The resulting crash was big – Doug sustaining a broken pelvis and broken femur among other injuries. Again ignoring medical advice, he signed himself out of hospital, then had his femur pinned at St Vincents in Sydney. Margaret pleaded with him to put their European plan on hold for a year to allow him time to properly recover. Then in his 41st year and with the engines, tools and Marg’s brother Tom already in Europe, Doug decided the die was cast and refused to agree to Margaret’s entreaties. It was a big mistake.
With profound concerns, Marg flew to Switzerland with Doug who required a brace for his lower back. There they took delivery of the LCR and were met by Tom, along with a loaned bus. They had missed the first two rounds of the championship and failed to qualify for the German GP at the new Nurburgring, scene of the German round. Austria was next, the frightening, Armco-lined Salzburgring. They raced in an Austrian national championship race the week before the GP, finishing eighth, but in practice for the GP, engine problems slowed them. Margaret somehow borrowed a set of exhaust pipes and Doug tried out a set of Hans Hummel cylinders. They still did not make it past qualifying. Next was Assen, the almost six-kilometre version. They had one of the Hummel cylinders fail, then later went off the track in practice and ended up under a fence. While Margaret was taken to hospital, Doug, Tom Halliday, Andre Bosman and Dave Kellet got to work on the badly bent LCR. Using whatever they had on hand – car jacks, a block and tackle and ropes – they got it straightened out.
By the time Marg got back from hospital, the
LCR had passed a scrutineering check – much to the amazement of the officials – and was ready to go for another practice session. If Doug had been subject to a check-up as thorough, it is unlikely he would have been cleared to race. He was in a lot of pain, the accident aggravating his previous injuries, and was taking pain-killers, not all of them prescribed. Again they did not make the cut.
Then it was the Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps. “Andre (Bosman) crashed at Bus Stop, but we didn’t qualify,” is all Halliday remembers of the Spa event.
End of an era
By now things between Doug and Marg had reached an extremely low ebb. On returning to their Swiss base, they split. Doug continued on, now with a Swedish passenger, but failed to qualify for either the French or British rounds. Then came a break-through.
At Anderstorp he managed to qualify, and finished the race 15th, so gained a world championship point. Not long after he returned to Sydney. Marg stayed in Switzerland before returning to Australia later to sort what was left of her belongings, moved out of the house she had shared with Doug for seven years and shifted to Queensland. It was the end of an era in sidecar racing and left Doug in what many friends characterise as a “very dark place.” His beer consumption increased alarmingly and there was general concern for his welfare.
Time can be a great healer. Eventually Doug was back to his chirpy self, but it was some ten years before he raced again. His body needed time to repair and he was more interested in helping build up the sidecar racing fields and getting more young people racing. In the early ‘90s he went to Britain to help Gavin ‘Big Gav’ Porteous at the Isle of Man TT races over three consecutive years. “He would work night and day if we had to,” Porteous says. “His input was priceless and I would trust his mechanical ability with my life.” In practice at the ‘94 TT, Big Gav had a monumental crash that put him in hospital for some time. Dave Cullen remembers arriving on the Island from Italy to find Doug had tidied everything up for Gavin and his wife Ann, sold the racing tyres and fuel and had all the loose ends sorted.
The Banana Bike
Back in Sydney Doug had another project on the go, a shorter version of the long European sidecars. The idea was to build it as light as possible so a single cylinder two-stroke CR500 Honda engine was fitted. Construction took years, proceeding in fits of activity followed by long periods of contemplation. In 1998, Chivo finally tested the new outfit and discovered the Honda motocross engine vibrated terribly. It was removed and replaced with a supercharged Honda CBR600 motor. Doug reversed the cylinder head so the intake was at the front, the exhausts exiting rearward. This was a ‘Doug design exercise’.
In 2002 he finally rolled the revised outfit out to test. Along with passenger Mattie Johnson he got it sorted and raced it a few times, happy to start from the rear of the grid due to the engine being 100cc outside the technical regulations. This outfit was dubbed the ‘Banana Bike’ due to its distinctive chassis shape. It had wishbone suspension like an LCR but with a completely different shape of chassis. The platform was tiny. During one of the regular after work sessions, Doug was looking at one of
Darrin Treloar’s Yamaha R1 speedway engines and opined that it would fit in the Banana Bike. The R1 engine was ‘mocked-up’ but with no set deadline, it again took a while to be finalised. When it was, it proved competitive with anything in Australia and was the most powerful machine Doug ever raced. At the 2004 Boxing Day event at Wanganui, Chivo won both races and set a lap record that stood for some time. His best lap was also faster than most of the solo riders managed. Not bad for a 57-year-old.
Renewed motivation
With two-time World Sidecar Champion Steve Abbott racing the 2005 Australian Championship, Chivo was buzzing. He was back to his enthusiastic best, travelling the length and breadth of Australia to race, often qualifying on the front row. At the WA round at Wanneroo, Doug bested the rest in Australia to finish second to the world champ. A stunning achievement – let alone for a 58-yearold racing his own chassis.
Eventually the Banana Bike was sold, Doug resurrecting the TZ750-powered Peterbuilt for Classic races. He reckoned his reflexes were no longer up to the speeds the R1 could achieve. Mitchell Cluff, Doug’s second apprentice who had ►
Darrin Treloar remembers
Doug Chivas’s first apprentice, Darrin Treloar, started at Chivos in 1987.
“He was hard but a fair man to work for,” Treloar says. “He taught me how to go racing and set up a racing sidecar. He was very knowledgeable. He could fix anything. He was amazing like that. Nothing was too hard and he taught me how to fix things – as Doug would say ‘it’s only nuts and bolts’. “Neil was here too in the beginning and both were at the top of their game when I started so I learned an awful lot. During business hours you’d hardly get a grunt out of Doug, but when the day was over, and we were sitting around having a beer, he was a very funny man. Always cracking jokes. He also taught me how to drink Tooheys New, and he had a nick-name for everyone.”
Treloar was told he would get the business when Doug stepped away, and that’s what happened, with Darrin taking over on September 1, 2019. A measure of how much interest Chivo took in his first apprentice’s speedway racing can be gauged from the fact that after Treloar clinched his first Australian Championship in Darwin in 1993 and was out celebrating, he was passed a telephone.
“It was Doug, calling from the Isle of Man to congratulate me. There were no cell phones let alone social media back then so I do not know how he knew, but he did. He was like a second father to me,” Treloar recalls. In his time with Doug, Treloar won an astounding 11 Australian Speedway Sidecar Championships and is without question the most successful speedway sidecar racer ever. Not only that, Treloar’s son Jake is now racing speedway sidecars. That is just part of Doug Chivas’ legacy.
ridden on the R1-powered machine many times, says Chivo was still able to beat riders half his age with no apparent bother.
“Doug was a very clean, tidy racer,” says Cluff.
“He taught me heaps. With Doug, half the fun going racing was driving to the tracks. He was a very smooth and fast driver. Most of the time you would not guess how fast we were going. Racing with Doug was one of the best times of my life. He was always there to help people.”
That help was reciprocated after his tyre shop burned to the ground in September 2009. Doug’s many friends rallied around to help. He had been living in a flat above the shop. All he salvaged was the clothes he was wearing and the Peterbuilt. Scrap books filled with photos, race reports and results, were gone. It was another bleak time. Dave Cullen remembers that after the fire, “Doug traded his way back into business. It was a big effort but with assistance from his many friends, he was back.”
Chivo was also back racing. Trying to chronicle the events and classes he contested in his final years would take more space than is available here. A highlight came in 2011 when he raced the Schleizer Dreieck Sparkassen Classic Grand Prix with 17-year-old apprentice Matt McKinnon, scoring 3-2 in the two races to take second overall, the entire trip arranged and paid for by Brett Gilbert, long-time sponsor of Darrin Treloar.
Later Doug described the speed of the Konigs he’d seen at the German event. This got the attention of Warren Thomas who bought one of the flat-fours and had Peter Selke build a tubular steel chassis. Doug did all the sorting and fell in love with it, so Thomas sold it to him. Chivo also managed to acquire a Norton Rotary engine and “built a chassis for that out of what was laying around,” Peter Campbell recalls. “It used a short tubular steel frame with rear passenger exit. Doug called it
‘The Taxi’. He rode it a while but never got it right. It’s now in the Bathurst Museum.”
The Peterbuilt TZ750, which Chivo had first raced 33 years beforehand, had its final outing at the last Barry Sheene Festival of Speed at Sydney Motorsport Circuit, Eastern Creek in 2016. By then
Doug had been diagnosed with bowel cancer. After treatment he reckoned he was “brand new” and carried on racing, sometimes referring to the cancer as his “rusty tailpipe.” The cancer did not go away though: it spread to his lungs. Around a month before the 2019 Australian Historic Championships at Collie, one of his lungs was removed, but at the age of 71 Chivo’s indomitable spirit saw him contest the WA event where he finished second in the Period 4 class on the Konig.
Doug had run his last race. He died at his mother’s home in Morrisett on August 20, 2020. ■
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The author thanks the following people for their help: Steve Hamilton, John Forsyth, Margaret Halliday, Peter Campbell, Dave Cullen, Graeme Crosby, Clive Watson, Evelyne Scholz, Matt McKinnon, Christine Williams, Darrin Treloar, John Watson, Vincent Goffin, Jürgen Müller, Gavin Porteous and Mitchell Cluff.