What you need to know about the Brabham BT62

I have a question for all the fellow Australians out there: What on earth have you been doing?

Forty-odd years ago, we had coal-fired power stations and mines bursting with uranium. This was well before the time of the mental-enviro lobby, so it was still okay to be industrious, and we were. We churned out the steel and wheat and merino wool and Cadbury chocolate. And cars. Lots of cars.

There was Holden and Ford of course, but Toyota, Mitsubishi, Leyland, Triumph, Nissan, Renault and Volkswagen briefly all had factories here as well. We even made a few thousand Volvos and Peugeot 505's. Admittedly, as a big desert in the middle of the sea with some high rises on the side, there wasn't much choice. Importing was too expensive.

By the late 1980's however, the scene was rapidly changing. One by one, for many complicated economic reasons, the car companies all began to pack up their tools. And over the following decades, we gave our public service to the Pakistanis, everything else to the Chinese, and settled down to a life of WeetBix and 'the races'. On the 20th of October 2017, the last factory lights finally flickered off.

Well, until now.

This is the new Brabham BT62. It might not look like a Holden Commodore or a Ford Falcon, and that's because it's nothing like a Holden Commodore or a Ford Falcon. It costs $1.8 million (AUD), it only has two seats, and you can't drive it on the road. It is made in Australia though.

But first, a spot of history. It all started in the 1940's with 'midget car' racing. These were basically glorified four-cylinder go-karts, and watching them crash around dirt ovals was immensely popular in Australia at the time. It frequently drew crowds of up to 40,000 people, and in one of these was a young man who thought the drivers "were all lunatics". His name was John Arthur Brabham.

Up to this point, John - or Jack as he's always been called - had been working as a motorbike mechanic on his parents' back porch, and then as an aircraft mechanic for the Royal Australian Air Force. But now, he knew what he really wanted to do - race midget cars.

So he did. And then he started street racing. He did both so well, it wasn't long until he had attracted the attention of John Cooper and the Cooper Car Company over in Britain. Jack moved there and got an under-the-table job tinkering with Cooper's Formula One cars and eventually racing them. Which he also did very well.

Over the next couple of decades, he went on to win three Formula One world championships, one of which made him the only man to win in a car of his own making. He and fellow Australian mate, Ron Tauranac, started one of the largest racing car construction companies in the world. And he became a Sir Jack Brabham, AO, OBE. By the time he eventually retired in the 1970's, his wife was "scared stiff" every time he got into a car. A job well done then.

This new Brabham is basically a cake and party poppers for all of that. One of the brand's offices is based here in Adelaide and the other in the UK, to celebrate the "Anglo-Australian marriage" part of it. The car's name starts with "BT" and the paint is green and gold, just like Sir Jack's racing cars. And only 70 will be made, to celebrate 70 years since the mechanic joined the "lunatics" and started crashing midget cars around dirt ovals. You get the idea - the BT62 is marinated in motorsport.

Time to see if it's any good...

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Forgive me if I say "extremely" a lot. It is extremely powerful, extremely light, extremely fast, and extremely grippy.

Brabham likes to say the engine is all their own doing, but it's not; it most likely started life in a Ford. Whatever, it's a 5.4-litre V8 that produces 522 kW, or 700 bhp, and that's not like any Fiesta I know of.

Brabham doesn't want to give the 0-100 km/h time or top speed either, but I think we can do the maths: an extremely small number followed by an extremely big number. The body panels are made of carbon fibre, the chassis is a steel spaceframe, and the wheel housings are made of a mix of carbon and Kevlar, all of which means the whole car weighs less than a tonne. It's like a pencil with a jetpack.

At the extremely big top speed - whatever it is - all the huge and scary aero bits are pushing the car down with a force of over 1,200 kg, so there's no need to worry about pinging off into a gum tree and a sleeping koala. The brakes are six-piston carbon affairs, so it does stop too. Well before everything inside your body does.

There's no doubt it is a mighty machine. So fortunately, whenever its mortal owners take it to a track, Brabham will give them a pair of Brabham racing overalls and a Brabham racing helmet to help them manage it. And then a Brabham squadron of engineers, drivers, and mentors, who "will work with them to create a personalised plan which will give them the inspiration, motivation and confidence to push themselves to the limit". Excellent, for $1.8 million.

However, there is a bit of a problem. You can only drive it on the track.

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Yes, you can have it converted for the road, but that requires sending it over to the UK for an Indepentent Vehicle Assessment. And then sending it over again when it needs another one, which is every year.

Besides, the BT62 was made to be a track car. Don't be fooled by the normal-looking exterior with its road-spec lights and mirrors. Inside, it's like an old pub - cramped, hot, and noisy. The bucket seats are... well, exactly that, and the steering wheel is more like holding the control panel of a stovetop. There's no boot, or air conditioning, or sat nav, or anything remotely resembling comfort and convenience. The suspension is hard, and because foam is very heavy, there's no sound-deadening either.

If you want to live with all of that everyday, you have officially got leprosy. It's very quick, very expensive, and very painful, and because of that, I think the Brabham BT62 is more something to look back at from a distance and say, "Yep, we built that".

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$1.8M (AUD); 5.4-litre V8; 522kW/667Nm; 6-speed sequential gearbox with flappy paddles; RWD; 0-100 km/h and top speed unknown; fuel economy completely irrelevant.

PHOTO CREDIT: NetCarShow.com