John Bowe’s achievements in local motorsport are enviable after two Bathurst 1000 wins, an Australian Touring Car Championship and multiple Touring Car Masters titles since retiring from the top line in 2007.
However, without the support of Elfin Sports Cars founder Garrie Cooper this might not have been possible.
Coming from a family well ensconced within the Tasmanian motorsport scene led by father Brian, Bowe made a less than impressive debut to his motor racing career at the Baskerville circuit as he detailed.
“I qualified fourth for my first race and ran out of talent on the fifth corner at Baskerville where I ended up in the paddock where the engine swallowed a heap of dirt,” he recalled.
“That was the end of that and it wasn’t a very great debut. Over the off-season, my dad and I rebuilt the car, painted it before starting the new season at Symmons Plains.”
Bowe won the Tasmanian Formula Vee title in an Elfin 500 before going halves with his father to purchase a 600 Formula Ford from future Formula 5000 rival Bruce Allison.
It was through this loyalty to the Elfin brand where an opportunity for Bowe was opened.
“How I got to race outside of Tasmania is because of Garrie Cooper,” said Bowe. “He helped and took a shine to me.
“Garrie was a great guy, very clever and he got me out of Tassie otherwise I would have been here forever. My dad became quite good friends with him and by that stage I’d had three Elfins and was racing a 700 Formula 3 with a Ford engine.
“I raced only in Tasmania, but the Cheetah team of Brian Sampson, Brian Shead and Peter Macrow all came over to compete, and I was faster than them even though the Elfin at that stage was not the flavour of the month.
“From then on, I think Garrie took an interest in me and he said ‘if you sell the 700 and you buy a new chassis, I’ll build the engine and run it out of Adelaide as a factory car’.”
And the rest is history.
After racing nationally in Formula Ford, Bowe progressed through the Elfin factory team to be its lead Formula 5000 driver from 1978 until the class finished in 1981.
Two Australian Drivers’ Championships followed in 1984 and 1985 as success before a transition to touring cars followed, first with Volvo, then a longstanding partnership with Dick Johnson Racing lasting more than a decade.