by prn31 » Fri Aug 26, 2016 4:47 am
I interviewed Horst Kwech for Australian Muscle Car (AMC) magazine back in February 2012.
I should tell the back story as to how this all came about as it might interest a few people here.
I first came across the name Horst Kwech when, as a keen Alfisti, I bought that fabulous book called Allegeritta, on the history of the Alfa Giulia GTA back in the 1990s (it helped that I worked for Motor Books in Sydney). There was quite a bit on Kwech and the fact that his car and helmet had the kangaroo insignia mystified me. Not long afterwards I bought John Medley’s book Bathurst: Cradle of Australian Motor Racing which mentioned Horst Kwech racing at the Mt Panorama between 1958 and 1960. It stated that Kwech was from Cooma, so I presumed he was an engineer on the Snowy Mountains Scheme. I was fascinated, but back in those pre-internet days, it was impossible to find out more.
It wasn’t until I joined The Nostalgia Forum (TNF) in late 2002 that I finally started to learn about the mysterious Horst Kwech. Problem was, even well-known Australian writers like Ray Bell and the late Barry Lake knew little about him. However a I guy called Brett (Beejay17) from Wollongong was helpful. However it was left to our American TNF friends to fill in the gaps. I learnt about the Allan Moffat connection and during an Alfa club night (in 2003?) when the great man was present, I asked him about Horst. To my surprise he wasn’t that complimentary, bringing up the Daytona 68 debacle.
It wasn’t until 2009 that I came across a guy called Bob Lee, also known as CanamBob (he used to own a McLaren M20 and M6B) who posted on TNF that he had constructed a Wikipedia page for Horst Kwech. At that time Bob had just finished restoring Horst’s 1966 Alfa GTA complete with green and yellow stripes. I made contact with Bob who confirmed that he was in contact with Horst and so began my quest to find out more about the great man.
Over the last five years I’ve written about 25 feature articles for AMC. But back in 2009 I was a green amateur who had only written for club magazines. At the time I was assisting contributor Luke West (now editor) with research and he got then-editor Mark Oastler to agree in principle for me to go ahead and interview Horst. Simple, really?
Bob Lee gave me an email address for Horst so I fired off an email. Months later after some encouragement from Bob I finally got a short response from Horst in May 2010. He didn’t want to do a phone interview! Problem was that Horst was in Chicago and I was in Sydney. Luke told me to abandon ship. Nevertheless Bob could see the merit of an Australian publication interviewing Horst and persisted. I got another email from Horst in August 2010 saying he was ready to chat, but not on the phone. Here we go again…
Another year went past and with Luke West now editor at AMC. A feature on Australian drivers competing at Trans Am reactivated the Horst Kwech story and so Bob Lee and I tried again. We still weren’t having much luck. Bob tried a couple of Horst’s contacts like Bill Knauz and James Weber. At one point, Bob even suggested I send him my questions for him to ask Horst.
We were all resigned to it not happening – I would have to write the article without any first hand quotes from Horst and then… Horst finally agreed to be interviewed!
So I found myself on early on a Sunday morning calling up Horst Kwech and for the next hour and forty five minutes we chatted. He was a lovely guy still with a broad Aussie accent who had a pretty good (though not infallible) recall of days gone by. Unfortunately I was up against it writing the story to Luke’s brief. My writing was still pretty green and I was getting ready to go to the Phillip Island Classic (my last race.) Nevertheless, I was happy with how it turned out.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the only Australian who has every interviewed Horst Kwech. The article surprised a lot of people, who knew the name but didn’t know he was Australian. As a bonus Paul Cross provided us with a great colour shot of the RM Spyder at Gnoo Blas too.
I’ve interviewed a lot of well-known Australian drivers since, but being able to interview Horst Kwech was a life’s ambition fulfilled.
Paul Newby
I interviewed Horst Kwech for Australian Muscle Car (AMC) magazine back in February 2012.
I should tell the back story as to how this all came about as it might interest a few people here.
I first came across the name Horst Kwech when, as a keen Alfisti, I bought that fabulous book called Allegeritta, on the history of the Alfa Giulia GTA back in the 1990s (it helped that I worked for Motor Books in Sydney). There was quite a bit on Kwech and the fact that his car and helmet had the kangaroo insignia mystified me. Not long afterwards I bought John Medley’s book Bathurst: Cradle of Australian Motor Racing which mentioned Horst Kwech racing at the Mt Panorama between 1958 and 1960. It stated that Kwech was from Cooma, so I presumed he was an engineer on the Snowy Mountains Scheme. I was fascinated, but back in those pre-internet days, it was impossible to find out more.
It wasn’t until I joined The Nostalgia Forum (TNF) in late 2002 that I finally started to learn about the mysterious Horst Kwech. Problem was, even well-known Australian writers like Ray Bell and the late Barry Lake knew little about him. However a I guy called Brett (Beejay17) from Wollongong was helpful. However it was left to our American TNF friends to fill in the gaps. I learnt about the Allan Moffat connection and during an Alfa club night (in 2003?) when the great man was present, I asked him about Horst. To my surprise he wasn’t that complimentary, bringing up the Daytona 68 debacle.
It wasn’t until 2009 that I came across a guy called Bob Lee, also known as CanamBob (he used to own a McLaren M20 and M6B) who posted on TNF that he had constructed a Wikipedia page for Horst Kwech. At that time Bob had just finished restoring Horst’s 1966 Alfa GTA complete with green and yellow stripes. I made contact with Bob who confirmed that he was in contact with Horst and so began my quest to find out more about the great man.
Over the last five years I’ve written about 25 feature articles for AMC. But back in 2009 I was a green amateur who had only written for club magazines. At the time I was assisting contributor Luke West (now editor) with research and he got then-editor Mark Oastler to agree in principle for me to go ahead and interview Horst. Simple, really?
Bob Lee gave me an email address for Horst so I fired off an email. Months later after some encouragement from Bob I finally got a short response from Horst in May 2010. He didn’t want to do a phone interview! Problem was that Horst was in Chicago and I was in Sydney. Luke told me to abandon ship. Nevertheless Bob could see the merit of an Australian publication interviewing Horst and persisted. I got another email from Horst in August 2010 saying he was ready to chat, but not on the phone. Here we go again…
Another year went past and with Luke West now editor at AMC. A feature on Australian drivers competing at Trans Am reactivated the Horst Kwech story and so Bob Lee and I tried again. We still weren’t having much luck. Bob tried a couple of Horst’s contacts like Bill Knauz and James Weber. At one point, Bob even suggested I send him my questions for him to ask Horst.
We were all resigned to it not happening – I would have to write the article without any first hand quotes from Horst and then… Horst finally agreed to be interviewed!
So I found myself on early on a Sunday morning calling up Horst Kwech and for the next hour and forty five minutes we chatted. He was a lovely guy still with a broad Aussie accent who had a pretty good (though not infallible) recall of days gone by. Unfortunately I was up against it writing the story to Luke’s brief. My writing was still pretty green and I was getting ready to go to the Phillip Island Classic (my last race.) Nevertheless, I was happy with how it turned out.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the only Australian who has every interviewed Horst Kwech. The article surprised a lot of people, who knew the name but didn’t know he was Australian. As a bonus Paul Cross provided us with a great colour shot of the RM Spyder at Gnoo Blas too.
I’ve interviewed a lot of well-known Australian drivers since, but being able to interview Horst Kwech was a life’s ambition fulfilled.
Paul Newby