His motorsport journey began with his uncle’s involvement in drag racing and his exposure to motor racing in Melbourne before a move to Brisbane when he was 14.
“My uncle ran a company called Warlord Performance, and he did a lot of drag car stuff with a gentleman named Wayne Road. They were the first guys in Australia to run 200 miles an hour in a door car,” Cam said.
“I was sort of privy at a young age to motor racing, and we went to the drags around Melbourne and stuff like that.
“I finished school up here [in Brisbane]. At the end of Year 10 said, I said to mum, I don’t want to go back to school. And she goes, well, you need to go and get a job.”
Living at Sunnybank Hills at the time, he hopped on his push bike, rode down to Moss Street and had a job that day. It was a wrecking business which he remained with for around six months.
The owner sold the business and put Cam in touch with Tony and Kathy Eales at Serco. There for about four years, he worked mainly on motorcycles, cylinder reboring and the like.
Next his parents opened up an automotive shop for repairs, a general garage. Their main mechanic went on holidays, and they needed someone to fill in.
“I had holidays, so I just started working to the shop, and began my apprenticeship with them, just as a mechanic.”
A couple years on, he went on to work at Craig Haystead Performance, finished his apprenticeship there, and stuck with Craig for nine years.
“He was a wealth of knowledge, a lot of hard work back in the day. And I guess when I was at Craig’s, that is when the racing side really become prominent in my life, because we were catering for boats, speedway cars and drag cars.”
Cam was building engines, cylinder head porting etc, which included dyno and mods in what was the early days of the performance industry.
“There was a lot of the old school values of the early mechanical style engines, I guess, which was good and spent a lot of time with Craig.
“I don’t regret any day of that at all, from what I learned from him. I wouldn’t be in a position I am today without Craig, from what he’s instilled into me and so on.”
When that nine years came to an end, he went into a business partnership which for Cam was a return into the standard, mechanical style of business. There was an engineering shop as well for engine reconditioning. That occupied the next four or five years and he was also moonlighting a lot on people’s cars.
“Come five o’clock, I’ll go home, well not even straight home at times, as I be off and tuning someone’s car or building an engine somewhere.”
All this put a fairly heavy strain on his relationship with his wife, so they made the move to Rockhampton for five years where Cam worked on big blasthole drill rigs at the mine sites.
When the GFC hit, the mining industry among others, slowed and Cam felt it was time to return to Brisbane, and he was missing the car scene. Moving back, he spent a couple years working for Peter Robinson at his Hy Performance Fluid Power business when TA2 came along over six years ago.
“He had an OzTruck, and I was helping him with that. Then we imported a Gen 5 Camaro from Howe Engineering and that was the first TA2 to come into this country. It was just for a bit of fun at QR; Peter would race the TA2 car, and I would peddle around the OzTruck.
“After Pete drove the Camaro, he just said, we have to get more of these things, so that’s how it all started.
“The Oztruck was sold and we brought four TA2 cars in. Went out to Lakeside, had people looking and I think Russell Wright was the first to buy one, then Craig Harris, Bob Thorn and Greg Willis brought cars.”
Twelve to 18 months went by. Cam had resigned from the hydraulic shop as was working fulltime at TA2 headquarters.
“I remember at Bathurst for the first time, there would have been 18-odd cars on the track, and it was a good feeling for me. I knew every single one of those cars. I’d unloaded, pre-delivered, fired them up for the first time and did the first test to them. It was a surreal moment for me!”
Cam has a personal attachment to all the cars. Each have a name and there is over 100 of them now that have been bought in between the East Coast, the West Coast and New Zealand. Naturally with the change of owners since it started, Cam says it is a bit of battle to try and keep up with each.
He also raced the cars, daunted initially when he first strapped into a Mustang at QR. But he quickly came to grips with the car and has now raced at Bathurst three times and even picked up a class trophy.
He had his youngest daughter Lauren on the headsets and Cam says his whole family is fully engaged with what he is doing.
Day to day means spending a fair amount of his time on the phone. He is at the shop five to six days a week but doing most of the business is over the phone which is always on. Those calls can come at any time, often out of normal hours as many work during the day and then attend their cars at night.
He cites Darwin last year as a major achievement, where they had to deal with the heat. But it worked well as he was able to turn laps in the two-seater ride car.
The other major event or series of events was the Trans Tasman TA2 Challenge. He missed the first round as he was with Trans Am.
“New Zealand was a tough thing to organize, logistically, and everything, all that. It was awesome to do it. I unfortunately didn’t make the first round, as I was with ARG for the first round.
“It was well worth doing that for sure, very satisfactory and catch up all the New Zealand guys over there and try to get the series going a bit more in New Zealand.”
Later in the year, there was another clash with Trans Am at The Bend and TA2 racing Morgan Park.
“We had to split our resources to cater for the customers. Send our truck to Morgan Park and we loaded a trailer up and sent parts to The Bend and then flew down there to support them.”
He has to balance the two different groups where he has to be a politician at times. It hasn’t been an easy road.
“There is what I call the big end town or the big show, because it’s a lot more corporate orientated. There’s a lot more engineers, a lot more heavy hitters involved within that [Trans Am] series.
“With TA2, we don’t want to lose the aspect of why we bought the cars in the country, and that’s to have like-minded people going and doing their racing and doing it for fun.
“Pete has always been a businessman. He’s been successful in his business, but he likes sharing that success with everyone. That’s what TA2 was all part of that. He has the sort of drive to try and keep the cost down and keep it affordable, and not just get caught up in a lot of other stuff.”
Outside of the business, Cam owns a camper trailer, a 42-year-old Java pickup truck which he has owned for around 30 years and likes to get to the odd car show, and an Ultima GTR which he doesn’t use nearly enough.
“I don’t think we actually realised the impact that these TA2 cars were going to have on the motor sport scope in this country, and in the future.
“I have met a lot of good people and continue to meet good people.”
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