CUSSO KING
Street Machine Magazine|Yearbook 2020
JIM KERR LIVED AN INCREDIBLE LIFE OF CUSTOMLINES, TOP FUELLERS AND RESTORED FORDS
DAVE COOK
CUSSO KING

SITTING under the stuffed head of a cape buffalo in a house full of the mementos of a life well lived, 80-year-old Jim Kerr regaled us with tales of hot rodding and drag racing exploits that began in the early 1960s. Now, a few months after Jim’s passing after a long battle with leukaemia, those stories paint a vivid picture of the formative years of the sport in Australia – from street-racing Customlines around the fringes of Sydney to near-200mph laps in a blown Hemi dragster.

Life for Jim had become quieter when we sat down with him back in 2018 to talk about those earlier times, but his advancing years saw no retreat into TV antiques shows and sleeping in comfy chairs. He was busy with a pair of restored ’34 Fords (a coupe and a roadster) and a Thunderbird, with a rare-model Mustang awaiting its time to be tweaked back into shape and a stack of replacement parts for sidevalve Fords that needed machining. Not to mention his engine-building work for fellow enthusiasts.

Jim’s life as a petrolhead really began when he was 19 in 1960. He’d seen a ’48 Mercury in a car yard in the Sydney suburb of Petersham, but a mate beat him to buying it. In frustration, he bought a ’46 Chev instead. But when he drove it up Parramatta Road that night, the bearings quit, so he soon traded it in on a Ford Customline – and became a Cusso man for life.

It wasn’t long before he was hanging out at the now-legendary fast-food joint and hot-car mecca Beefies on Parramatta Road. “That’s where I met a lot of the people I’m still friends with now, people like Flemmo [John Fleming] and the Shifters Hot Rod Club,” Jim recalled. “That’s where drag racing in NSW started.”

この記事は Street Machine Magazine の Yearbook 2020 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。

この記事は Street Machine Magazine の Yearbook 2020 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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