Australian Muscle Car 2020-02

www.autosportsltd.com
Paul
Newby
In this caper interviewing retired racing
drivers is all in a day’s work. Nine times
out of 10 the driver is easy to deal with but
there is always someone who is, let us say,
challenging... Expatriate Australian Trans Am
racer Horst Kwech, who sadly died in December
at the age of 82, was one of those drivers. Not
that Kwech was difficult to deal with. On the
contrary, I can’t think of a more engaging guy
over a long distant call. It was just hard to pin
him down for an interview. Let me explain.
As a lifelong Alfisti I became aware of Horst
Kwech when he wrote the forward for the
definitive tome on the Alfa Romeo GTA racers,
Alleggerita. His exploits in the giant killing
GTAs really helped establish Alfa Romeo as
the enthusiast’s marque in the States. Not long
after I read John Medley’s authoritative Bathurst,
Cradle of Australian Motor Racing and Kwech’s
name was mentioned again. Was it the same
guy? Did that American GTA racer really drive
at Bathurst in the late 1950s? In those preinternet
days it wasn’t always easy to decipher
such information.
Then I read Allan Moffat’s Scrapbook that
mentions his dices in his Lotus Cortina against
Kweck’s (sic) Alfa GTA. I wasn’t even aware
of the connection with the DeKon Chevrolet
Monza that Kwech and Lee Dykstra developed
and Moffat raced. At an Alfa Club meeting
where Moffat was a guest speaker I peppered
him with questions about Kwech to his chagrin,
though he took it in good humour and still
signed my book.
It wasn’t until I discovered The Nostalgia
Forum in 2003 that I began to understand
Kwech’s career stateside. Apart from the
Alfas, there were Trans-Am Mustangs, a
F5000 Lola, Ford Capris, the aforementioned
Monzas and even single seater Can Am
racers. AMC’s very own Brett Jurmann had
some knowledge but veteran journalists like
Ray Bell and the late Barry Lake knew very
little. One thing was certain, none of them had
ever interviewed Kwech.
Things went quiet for a number of years
until ‘CanAmBob’ on the AlfaBB Forum
decided to create a Wikipedia page for Kwech
in late 2009. CanAmBob, otherwise known as
Bob Lee was a collector who owned the GTA
that Kwech had raced in the 1966 Trans-Am.
Finally here was someone who knew Kwech!
So began a two year process of emailing Bob
and trying to email Horst. My first response
from Kwech came in September 2010 whereby
he fobbed me off saying there was plenty of
information about him on the net. Tellingly most
of it was contradictory.
Another year went by and by this time
I was writing for AMC with an outstanding
commission for an article on Kwech. Bob Lee
was ever helpful trying to make things happen –
I developed an interview plan and sent him a list
of questions, trying to convince Kwech to speak
to me. But nothing. Then editor Luke West hit
upon the idea to do a feature on Aussies in
Trans-Am and the need to interview Kwech
became imperative. Lee suggested that he ask
Kwech my questions, transcribe the answers
and email me the results. But that was never
going to work.
It really looked like the AMC feature would
proceed without
any first person
quotes from Kwech.
Then finally in late
February 2012,
only weeks from
deadline, Kwech
agreed for me
to call him at
his Lake Forest
(Chicago) home.
So early on
Sunday 27th February 2012, I spent
100 minutes interviewing Kwech about pretty
much everything. I was circumspect not to
mention the Mustang wreck at Michigan in
1969 (Kwech’s Mustang slid off the track into
a parked car in the spectator area, killing its
occupant) but everything else was on the
record. Including his uneasy rivalry with
Allan Moffat.
The original brief was to cover Kwech’s
muscle car Tran-Am period, which amounted to
only two seasons in 1968-69, but there was so
much more to his career that it became a mini
muscle man feature for AMC #61. The material
was later used for Aussies in US F5000 (#98)
and Aussies in single seater Can-Am (#96)
feature articles.
It was a major coup for me to speak to Horst
Kwech and a real highlight personally. Through
dogged perseverance and sheer determination
I had interviewed one of my heroes, the only
Australian journalist to do so, resulting in
you the reader learning about an unknown
Australian motor racing legend.
Bob Lee
Alfa Romeo tragic Paul Newby is a lifelong motor racing enthusiast, and a long time contributor to Australian MUSCLE CAR magazine.
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