VALE BILL TUCKEY – A Giant Of Australian Automotive Media

One of the brightest and most interesting chapters in the history of the Australian automotive industry – and of the media which reports on it – closed over the weekend with the death of journalist Bill Tuckey at the age of 80.

Your TMR correspondent’s career in this business started in the early 1980s, and over the journey I worked alongside Bill, and for him… fortunately never against him. Because Bill was an old-time newsman and fundamental to being a ‘newsbreaker’ was to be first with the news.

So when stories broke – as they often did in the early days before PR Managers invaded the industry and began steering filtered messages from brand boardrooms – Bill was at his irascible best battling rivals in the race to file a story, and just as quick to share a beverage afterwards.

Yes, fighting Bill for a story wasn’t fun, but in his time steering Wheels magazine, launching Business Review Weekly magazine and in later years launching Car Australia magazine and covering the Bathurst enduro for Ray Berghouse’s Chevron Publishing, Bill’s zest for life made him many friends in the media, in the industry and in motor sport.

I was part of the team for a couple of those Bathurst books, and, as many of us know, while the days covering the lead-up to the race and the race itself were hard work, the nights with Bill holding court at his favourite restaurants were also long, but immensely entertaining.

In those days of the classic race at Mount Panorama, major Holden Dealer Team sponsor Phillip Morris hosted a dinner on the Friday for a small team of journalists in the nearby historic gold mining town of Sofala.

Racing