Muscle Man
Introduction
The best Australian driver never to have raced at the Bathurst 1000? Well, if you take the obvious candidate – former F1 driver Mark Webber out of the equation, who have you got? Maybe the late Niel Allen, the McLaren Formula 5000 driver who held the outright lap record at Bathurst for over 30 years? Or what about Kent Youlden, the two-time Australian Production Car Champion who came second in the Bathurst 12 Hour, in a … Ford Laser?
Kent Youlden, who sadly passed away last year at the relatively young age of 71, was a very accomplished racing driver, who pragmatically put his family and his lifelong career as a production engineer at Ford ahead of his racing aspirations. His early years were in rallycross and rallying but he transitioned to circuit racing in a Torana XU-1 Sports Sedan and a terrifying TE Cortina with a thunderous F5000 Chev V8. In production car racing, perhaps only Peter Fitzgerald and Mal Rose were at the same level as Youlden. In later years he built a HQ Monaro GTS 350 for historic racing and cleaned up – so much so that he sold the car as it was no longer a challenge!
In this Muscle Man profile, AMC speaks to the two successful racers who were closest to the hirsute Youlden, affectionately known as ‘The Bear’ due to his resemblance to Yogi Bear, brother Brett and (Bathurst winning) son Luke. Through their reflections we learn more about Kent Youlden the racer and the man.
Early days
Kent Youlden was born in 1952 in Melbourne. He was one of three brothers; Ray was four years his senior, Brett was eight years younger. The family grew up in Montmorency, a northern Melbourne suburb not far from Greensborough, the hunting ground for a young Peter Brock. Kent shared a bedroom with Brett in the family’s modest three-bedroom home.
Like older brother Ray, Kent went to Watsonia Technical School at the age of 16 to study a trade. He didn’t get far in his mechanical engineering course before he packed it in for a job at Ford Australia on the production line. In what would turn out to a job for life, Kent worked as a production engineer in the body assembly plant responsible for about 15 employees.
The Youlden boys were crazy about cars and motor racing. No more so than a wide eyed nine-year-old Brett. Let him take up the story: “I was a big fan of Bob Jane when I was a kid. I wrote about four or five letter to him and heard nothing. Then all of a sudden, we got a letter back. It was probably written by the PA, but it said ‘would you and your brother like to come down and take a look at the Bob Jane Racing workshop at Bree Street, Brunswick?’ Kent had just got his licence and had an FE Holden. So, we went down, and I remember sitting in the McLaren M6B and seeing his red Mustang in the flesh. It was 1969.”
Inevitably, Kent’s FE Holden was soon
