Book review: Idle Torque for spinning a good yarn

Even among the blessed lot who label themselves motoring journalists there are some who are more blessed than the rest.

Alex Forrest is one such person. Employed by the RAC in West Australia and writing a weekly column – ‘Idle Torque’ – for The West Australian, Forrest was privileged to drive all sorts of exotic machines and meet so many daring drivers during the 21 years the column ran from 1997.

Forrest has now brought together around a hundred or so stories from his collection of over 1100 published columns for a new book, which shares its title with the columns.

By its nature, ‘Idle Torque’ the book is episodic, each double-page spread devoted to a topic unrelated to the previous pages, before the book skips to a different subject again with another turn of the page.

That makes it breezy reading material that can be consumed during the ad breaks or waiting for your Pfizer shot, but the subjects will certainly occupy the readers’ attention.

Space in this format is a problem. The constraints of a newspaper column translated to a book means there’s no room for anecdotes to bloom into a true long-form story, although the occasional sidebar helps. And it’s hard on occasions to pin stories down to specific dates they were originally published in the newspaper.

So Gordon Hayes’ Mad Max Falcon interceptor replica (pages 26, 27) was followed by 11 other replicas up to 2015, as the sidebar notes, but the timing of the first remains unclear. That would have been explicit in the original column, but hasn’t carried through to the book.

Each story benefits from having been researched by the writer and sub-edited at the time of original publication, so the words are accurate and the text is free of typos and misplaced punctuation.

The stories vary in flavour and tone, sometimes focused on a classic car, or a venerable driver. It’s an eclectic collection, occasionally throwing in some personal philosophy from the writer.

Forrest gets into stride with his all-too-brief history of Brian McDonough’s GT 350 Shelby Mustang on pages 10 and 11. It’s a nicely topped-and-tailed story that includes enough local colour and history to be a good read in itself.

Forrest’s description of spending a day in the company of a Lamborghini Huracán is highly relatable. Why waste a day fanging it around a track when you can swan around in it, showing off to friends, your child’s school friends and studiously disinterested coppers at the local convenience store? And then take it to the track afterwards...

An outstanding story is that of Dame Nellie Melba’s Renault, with Forrest recounting some fascinating facts about both the Renault and its operatic owner.

The book also features the odd affecting story, such as the Argentinian family that travelled the world in a 1928 Graham-Paige for an odyssey that lasted 17 years and informed the childhood of the six kids.

The book isn’t exclusively retrospectives, but on page 39 Forrest makes an impassioned call for Alfa Romeo to re-establish its heritage for the modern era by rebooting the lovely 105-series models from the 1960s. In an age of EVs and hybrids, that call may be too late.

From the east coast, few of the names are familiar, other than the occasional touring car legend known to us by 3rd or 4th degree. All of that lends the book a feel like the first time attending a meeting of a new car club – lots of friendly-sounding names and plenty of classic-car talk.

At a price of just $39.99, it would make an ideal Father’s Day present for the enthusiast dad in your life. ‘Idle Torque’ is available for sale online at Fremantle Press.

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