An Icon of Australian Drag Racing, Ben Gatt Celebrates 50 Years of Quarter-mile Mayhem This Year
Ben was born in Malta and was three when the Gatt family arrived Down Under in 1950. There were only five young ’uns then. Parents Nina and Paulo initially set up home in Sydney’s Smithfield, but eventually Paulo built a house at Fairfield Heights to house the ever-growing family.
Long before he could reach the foot pedals, Ben was pulling apart engines and machines under his dad’s watchful eyes. Paulo loved cars and owned an immaculate ’39 Ford.
“Dad had that car over 30 years; polished the paint off it,” Ben says. Paulo also had a passion for rods. “He had a ’39 Ford, a ’38 Ford, a Tank Fairlane, lotsa hot rods. And he had a VW Kombi to move all us kids. We often had to share the back seat with the pigeons.”
Pigeons? Yep, believe it or not, this drag racer could have easily been racing pigeons! Of his many brothers and sisters, five flew down the drag track while others dedicated themselves to racing of the feathered variety.
Paulo made sure that both Ben and older brother Joe carefully disassembled every mechanical thing they attempted to fix.
“‘Take your time,’ he would tell us. ‘Memorise what’s in front of you, go slow,’” Ben recalls. “We pulled everything apart. If it didn’t work when you put it back, you had failed!”
この記事は Street Machine Magazine の August 2017 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は Street Machine Magazine の August 2017 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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