Bob Jane
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Robert "Bob" Jane (born 1928) is an Australian former race car driver and prominent businessman. A four-time winner of the Armstrong 500, the race that preceded the prestigious Bathurst 1000, Jane is perhaps known best nowadays for his chain of tyre retailers, Bob Jane T-Marts.
Jane grew up in Brunswick, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne. In the 1950s, he started Bob Jane Autoland, a company which distributed parts for Jaguar and Alfa Romeo. Through this venture, a love of cars and motorsport blossomed and he first entered competitive racing in Australia in 1956; by 1960, he was racing with some of Australia's top sedan drivers.
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[edit] Racing career
In 1961, Jane and co-driver Harry Firth won the Armstong 500 at Phillip Island, Victoria, driving a Mercedes-Benz 220SE.
On the track, Bob Jane was racing hard, early in his career along with Firth, won the race again the following year, the last before the event moved to Mount Panorama at Bathurst, New South Wales (but retained the Armstrong 500 name).
Jane won the first two of these races in 1963 and 1964, the first with Firth and the second with George Reynolds as co-driver.
Despite the change of venue, Jane is officially credited with winning Australia's most famous endurance race four times in a row, something no other driver has ever done.
Jane won the Australian Touring Car Championship (now known as the V8 Supercar series) in 1962, 1963, 1971 and 1972. Of the 38 races he started in the ATCC, he finished on the podium 21 times.
He retired from racing in 1986.
[edit] Bob Jane T-Marts
Jane's passion for motor racing also carried with it a vast knowledge for choosing the right equipment for his race cars.
He had a particularly keen interest in tyres and his expertise made him well-known in racing circles. Through his parts business, Bob Jane Autoland, he imported high-performance tyres from Germany. Not only were these tyres snapped up by his customers, but they gave him a competitive edge in Australia as racing tyres were not as heavily regulated as they are today.
In 1965, Jane opened the first Bob Jane T-Marts store in Melbourne. The company remains an independent, family-owned business to this day; Bob's son, Rodney Jane, is the current CEO.
From 2002 to 2004, Bob Jane T-Marts held the naming rights sponsorship for the Bathurst 100022, the race Jane dominated early in his career. The company also holds the naming rights to Bob Jane Stadium, home of South Melbourne Football Club.
Bob Jane T-Marts is the only major tyre retailer in Australia to not sell retreads, the reason behind that is Bob Janes daughter died in a car accident due to a retreaded tyre blowing out.
[edit] Contributions to Australian motorsport
[edit] Australian Grand Prix
From 1980 to 1984, the Australian Grand Prix was held at his Calder Park Raceway in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. Although from 1981 the races where run under Formula Mondial regulations, Jane succeed in attracting many of the best Formula 1 drivers of the era, setting the stage for the first ever Australian Formula 1 World Championship Grand Prix, which has held in Adelaide in 1985.
[edit] NASCAR
Jane is credited with bringing stock car racing to Australia. Long resistant to oval racing (seeing it as dull and monotonous when compared to circuit racing), Australian motorsport fans finally had their own superspeedway when Jane spent $AU54 million building the Thunderdome on the grounds of Calder Park Raceway. Opened on August 3, 1987, the Thunderdome played host to the first NASCAR event held outside North America on February 28, 1988. Several prominent drivers from the United States came to Australia for this race including Bobby Allison, Neil Bonnett and others from the Winston West Series
[edit] Personal LIfe
On February 23, 2007, Bob Jane was granted a 12 month intervention order against his estranged wife, Laree Jane. At the time, she was 39 and they had been married for 20 years. He has accused her of threatening to shoot him and threatening him with a kitchen knife. [1]
