Full Tilt: A champion's story of Ford, Holden and the defining era of motor-racing, by John Smailes, chronicles the life and career of one of Australian touring car racing’s all-time greats.
Bond won the Great Race in his first appearance with the Holden Dealer Team, before going on to form a ‘dream-team’ HDT partnership with Peter Brock that continued until the end of 1974. Bond was Australian Touring Car Champion the following year.
It wasn’t as glamorous as it looked, however: as Bond explains in the book, in 1970 he and Brock were paid by HDT boss Harry Firth $20 a day to drive and work of the cars – but Firth was billing GM-H for the drivers at $20 an hour!
Bond also talks extensively – perhaps for the first time – of his two-year stint with Allan Moffat: the soaring highs in 1977, and then everything that went wrong afterwards.
Versatility was a hallmark of Bond’s career – and in the book he describes himself as ‘first and foremost’ a rally driver. He was a multiple Australian Rally Champion and held his own against some of the world’s top rally aces when they competed down under in the ‘70s in the Southern Cross Rally.
Rallying was different back then, and Bond recalls hair-raising adventures in the forests that seem unbelievable in 2025: rallies that went right through the night, often held on only partially closed back roads.
The book is a terrific memoir of a stellar career, and an insightful inside perspective of top-level motorsport, both rallying and racing, from the 1960s through into the 1990s.
It’s out now and available widely, for $36.99.
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