A dream came true in 2002 when Julian Ford shook hands with Possum Bourne at Adelaide Airport

The late Possum Bourne is remembered as a rally legend in his home country of New Zealand, across the ditch in Australia, and around the world. The popular Kiwi ragged generations of Subaru’s finest equipment through the bush like nobody else and left a legacy of success through his own racing operation.

Possum Bourne put together one of the highest-performing teams in any form of motorsport. He was front and centre in some famous periods in Australasian rally history with the support of brilliant mechanics, publicists, commercial minds and logistics gurus.

Julian Ford was part of that team at the height of Possum Bourne’s success Down Under. A signwriter by trade and a self-taught mechanic, Julian got the call up to join the Subaru factory-supported squad in 2002. We had the pleasure of reflecting on this period with Julian last Thursday evening, and he took our call surrounded by Subaru rally memorabilia at his Long Beach home near Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand.

In this article, Julian shares some incredible stories from his stint at Possum Bourne Motorsport and details how the team transported its equipment to all the big rally events in Australia and New Zealand on a hectic schedule.

Love at first rally

We started off by asking Julian how he got into the rally scene in New Zealand.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t a mechanic by trade,” laughed Julian. “Like most Kiwis, we tend to teach ourselves. I started in the back of a garage tinkering with stuff, and as you progress, you learn a bit more, but I didn’t think it would amount to anything.

“My introduction to rally came when I was working in Auckland. A friend of mine, Craig Marshall, was building a rally car and team. Craig asked me if I’d like to be involved. His father was Mike Marshall, who is famous in New Zealand motorsport for racing Ford Escorts.

“I went along with Craig, and that was it - I was hooked,” recalled Julian. “I just loved being part of the team and building the cars. I even tried a little bit of co-driving, but it absolutely wasn’t for me! I was quite happy bolting tyres on when the car came out of the bush and keeping it going.”

Julian found his feet in the sport and more opportunities came his way.

“After a couple of seasons, I moved up to help Todd Bawden, then worked for Geoffrey Argyle and went over to Australia. I then went to New Caledonia with Craig Marshall and did a few other events around the place. It was a lot of fun.”

A life-changing phone call

Rally was a passion for Julian, but it didn’t pay the bills. That was, until Possum Bourne’s manager dialled Julian’s number in the lead up to an Australian Rally Championship event in Adelaide.

“When you’re in a sport for awhile, you eventually start to get recognised,” said Julian. “I did the Rally of Canberra with Geoff Argyle, and then the Rally of Rotorua. Soon after that, I got a call from Possum Bourne’s manager, who said they were short of a crew member and asked me to fly to Adelaide the following weekend. I said, ‘yeah, of course I can!’

“I jumped on a plane and flew to Adelaide, not knowing anyone in the team,” he recalled. “Possum picked me up from the airport. I couldn’t believe it! It was a dream of mine to work for Possum Bourne Motorsport.

“I’d never met Possum until we were in the car in Adelaide. As it turned out, he’d done his research on me. I was a signwriter at the time, and he put me straight to work doing signwriting on the car. We ran three cars for Subaru Australia for Possum, Cody Crocker and Deane Herridge. I went straight onto Possum’s car, looking after the right rear.”

We asked Julian what he could remember of the event in South Australia.

“It was a fantastic experience from start to finish. We won the event, and I recall we had a team bus that took us from the hotel to the prizegiving. I was a bit green and sat on my own in the bus, and Possum came and sat down next to me.

“I shook his hand and thanked him for the opportunity to be a part of the event,” said Julian. “And then he said something that has stuck with me to this day; ‘do something while you enjoy it, and when you stop enjoying it, don’t do it.’”

Working on a world-famous WRX

Julian didn’t drive the transporter from the get-go, but he had his hands full during every event.

“There were six guys on Possum’s Subaru WRX for each service, and you specialised in your area. The car would come in, I’d take the tyre off and do a full spanner check of the right rear. You’d have around 20 minutes to do the service. We’d get two or three of those services each day, and then a 40-minute service at night.

“Because we were a factory team, the cars had to leave the next day looking brand-new,” continued Julian. “That meant new bonnets and bumpers, and our truck was full of them. It was effectively a new car every morning. 

“We had a big budget. It was very much a case of win on Sunday and sell on Monday, and Subaru was doing very well out of it.”

Both sides of the Tasman

With bases in both Pukekohe and Melbourne, Possum Bourne Motorsport never stood still for long.

“We were closely linked with Subaru Australia to run the team in the Australian Rally Championship,” explained Julian. “Everything came out of our Possum Bourne Motorsport workshop in Pukekohe, but we also had a base at the Docklands in Melbourne. We used to fly cars back and forth all the time.

“The logistics behind the operation were huge. Each car had three engines and six gearboxes which were in constant rotation between New Zealand and Australia depending on when and where the next event was.

“In between events, there were six of us who would go wherever the three cars did,” said Julian. “We would ship everything to an event and get it ready on a Wednesday. Then at the event, we’d have a team of 36.

“We’d test on the Wednesday, rebuild the car on Thursday and then it was straight into the event on Friday. We’d then fly as many people as we could out on a Sunday night and Monday morning to keep the hotel bills down. The six of us would then pack everything up and head back to Melbourne or the next event.”

In the deep end in a Volvo FH12

Julian settled into life as a mechanic and signwriter at Possum Bourne Motorsport, but the opportunity soon arose to become one of the team’s transporter drivers. However, he had never driven a truck anywhere near the size of the state-of-the-art Volvo FH12 transporter.

“This is a typical Kiwi thing, and it’s 100% true,” said Julian, grinning. “I got my heavy trade license the day before I got to Melbourne, and we were supposed to driving the transporter all the way to Perth.

“We got to Melbourne to meet the Volvo which was being unloaded at the dock, and there was a huge hiccup that day,” Julian recalled. “The truck didn’t get cleared because there was a stuff-up with customs. We forgot to mention that there was a car in the trailer. That meant we didn’t leave Melbourne until about 10pm that night.”

That’s where Julian faced a sink or swim moment as the team scrambled to get the gear across the Nullarbor in time.

“I had a problem,” laughed Julian. “I had never driven a truck anything close to that size before. Colin Campbell, who I drove the truck with, basically told me how to split the gears and then hopped into the bunk to go to sleep. I left Melbourne late that night heading west on a road I’d never seen before to a place I’d never heard of in a truck I’d never driven. It’s fair to say I learned how to drive that truck very quickly.

“I got to Port Augusta the following morning and started to feel like I’d gotten the hang of it, but there would’ve been some truckies in Australia that night who would’ve wondered what they’d seen.”

Julian had spent time in Australia before, but the trip across the Nullarbor was an eye-opener for another reason.

“It shocked me how big Australia actually was. I’d done a whole night of driving and looked at the map thinking we’d be well and truly on the way. But we might as well have gone backwards! It took us something like 45 hours to get across to Perth on that trip.”

Inside Possum Bourne Motorsport’s transporter

We asked Julian about the history and layout of the Possum Bourne Motorsport Volvo FH12 race transporter.

“The Volvo came to Possum Bourne Motorsport as a prime mover, and they extended the chassis. It had the driver’s compartment with a bunk in the back. From there, you could go through into the body of it where there was an office in the front. Behind that, there was a full workshop with Snap-On roller drawers and spare parts hanging from the ceiling. In the very back of it, we had storage for fuel and a ladder to a roof compartment with all the spare panels including bonnets and doors.”

But that was only half the transporter.

“The trailer unit had a tyre machine in it as well as over 150 tyres. At the back, we used to stack two cars, one on top of the other. And we also had 1000 litres of water in the belly of it, which was for washing the cars down during the event.

“The transporter was state-of-the-art at the time. It was very well thought out. We could set up at any carpark and have a full workshop with a marquee.”

Kiwi quirks

The Possum Bourne Motorsport transporter was built and registered in New Zealand, and that meant it had some unique considerations on Australian shores.

“That Volvo was a New Zealand truck, so we didn’t have a huge diesel capacity for the big Australian distances,” explained Julian. “When we used to go to Perth, we’d have the two belly tanks on it, but we’d also have to carry an extra 210 litres of diesel and hand-pump it into the tank because we didn’t have the capacity to get between service stations on the Nullarbor.

“We’d pull into some truck stops in Australia and the guys would scratch their heads because it had a New Zealand number plate and registration on it,” continued Julian. “But it was standard for a New Zealand configuration. At the time, that was the maximum length we could have, but that’s since been extended.”

The Volvo also went on plenty of trips across the Tasman.

“We could drive it on the ship at Tauranga in New Zealand and then straight off in Melbourne. That truck was pretty much based in Australia, but we used to bring it back for the International Rally in New Zealand. It meant we could do all the events in Australia and use it in New Zealand when we needed to.”

But that wasn’t the only New Zealand-registered truck in the Possum Bourne Motorsport fleet.

“We also had a five-speed diesel Hino,” noted Julian. “It was Possum’s truck when he had the WRC car. It was the original service truck before the Volvo came along. When they shipped the Hino to Australia, they could put the rally car in the back and put a car trailer upside down on top of it, so it took up very little space on the ship.

“It was a classic truck. It was called the HRT, which stood for Hino Racing Team. It was a bit of a handful to drive. You’d go from that old thing to the beautiful Volvo, which was just like driving a car.” 

A stop-start trip to Caloundra

Julian recalled a particularly frustrating trip north in the Possum Bourne Motorsport transporter on a tight schedule.

“One of the events we had to do was in Caloundra north of Brisbane. It was at the stage where Australia was having a lot of problems with diesel bug. It took us nearly as long to get from Melbourne to Caloundra as it did to Perth, because you’d drive for an hour and then all the filters would clog up.

“We’d have to tilt the cab and drain the whole system, drive for another hour and wait for it to inevitably clog up again,” explained Julian. “You’d be driving along and feel the engine closing down. That was particularly stressful because we only had a couple of days to get up there, and it took us forever. That was one trip I’ll never forget.”

Frequent flyer points

The transporters played a key role in moving Possum Bourne Motorsport by road, but air travel was just as important for the team and equipment.

“Possum’s sister Christine was in charge of the logistics, and she was very good at it,” said Julian. “We used to fly the cars between Australia and New Zealand quite often. For example, if the car was really bad in Perth, we’d chuck it on the plane over to Pukekohe, and by the time we got back to Melbourne in the truck, the car would be coming back to Australia. It was incredibly efficient.

“We racked up the miles, too. In one of the seasons I did with Possum, I did something like 260 nights in Australia and the rest back in New Zealand. The guys who had families were flying back and forth between New Zealand and Australia, but I quite often stayed in Australia and took care of what I could at our Docklands base. I was just a small cog, and the Possum Bourne Motorsport and Subaru partnership was an incredibly well-oiled machine.”

A tragic end

At the peak of his powers, Possum Bourne was gravely injured in a road accident in April 2003.

“I remember the day as clearly as anything,” said Julian. “We’d just done an event in Perth and headed back to Melbourne to prepare for the Rally of Canberra. Meanwhile, Possum had flown from Perth back to New Zealand to do a hill climb.

“We were unloading the truck in the Docklands workshop, and we knew people on the hill back home. I remember we were getting phone calls because there had been an accident. There must’ve been about eight of us back in the workshop. The reports coming through weren’t good, but we just hunkered down and tried to focus on Canberra the following week.”

Under duress, that’s exactly what they did.

“We’d gotten all three cars ready, because Subaru was sponsoring the event and we had to go. We packed the transporter with Cody and Dean’s cars and travelled to Canberra. It was an amazing event because we won it without Possum there. The media were following us the whole time until the last service.

“After the event, I was driving one of our service vehicles back to Melbourne on the Hume Highway, and they gave us all a phone call to say that they’d turned the machine off. Possum had died.”

Life after Possum

The team carried on without Possum Bourne in the years following.

“I can remember we went to the Rally of Tasmania in Hobart and won the championship without him, and I stayed on with the team for a little longer after that. But the main driver in Possum had gone, and they had to lay off a lot of the team. I ended up pulling out soon after. The dream had gone.

“I returned to New Zealand and went to Queenstown with my partner. I did a couple of events in Indonesia for a Mitsubishi team, but it just wasn’t the same.”

Julian and his Possum Bourne Motorsport colleagues all experienced grief, but it manifested in different ways at different times.

“It’s quite ironic, because when we got back to New Zealand, all the guys were offered counselling and some extra support,” said Julian. “As typical Kiwi male blokes, we said we didn’t need it, but speaking to a few guys since, it’s certainly hit us later in life.

“I suffered from severe depression, lost a relationship and a couple of businesses. That was when I turned to art. I did some drawings and paintings and they went quite well. I did a pencil sketch of Peter Brock, and then got an email from his brother, Phil Brock, asking if he could get the first print if I ever sold them. He’s got one of my pencil sketches of Peter. It’s a crazy old world sometimes.”

Julian continues, “I’ve also done quite a bit of work for Hayden Paddon, so in a roundabout way, I’m still involved in top-level rallying, albeit through a paintbrush.”

A legacy that grows with time

Looking at his Subaru Rally Team Australia and World Rally Championship overalls on display in his living room, Julian reflected on Possum Bourne as a person.

“He’d come in from the forest and the car would be a mess. We’d get stuck into fixing it, and Possum would be on the ropes talking to the spectators. The team manager would eventually have to get him to have something to eat in the caravan and relax. He really was a people person, and he instilled that in all the crew.

“Looking back, it was the pinnacle of my career, and the guys who were in the team keep in regular contact. We still pinch ourselves about how lucky we were to be a part of that history.

“There was a saying that Possum could get normal people to do incredible things. He had something about him that just brought out the best in people and the team.”

Another big thank you to Julian for sharing his experience from a famous era in motorsport, and to Joel Strickland for the transporter photos you see in this story.

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