Vale Geoff Paradise

The automotive world will be a lesser place with yesterday's death of journalist, publisher and public relations professional Geoff Paradise following a motor vehicle accident on the NSW Central Coast last week.

Geoff, who was 57, died after it was decided to turn off life support systems that had kept him in an induced coma since he was admitted to hospital six days earlier.

The accident, in which his company car collided with a school bus on a narrow road in Matcham, near Terrigal in NSW, reportedly occurred not long after he had left home.

Emergency crews needed to cut the roof from the car to free him before he was transported by helicopter to hospital. Reportedly the occupants of the school bus escaped without injury.

Geoff Paradise had a long career in the auto industry, beginning with his editorship, at the age of 19, of the magazine Australian Hot Rodding Review in the early 1970s and followed by subsequent positions in the role of journalist, editor and publisher.

He had a love affair with the USA and spent a number of years working there before returning to Australia in the early 1990s.

Although he stepped sideways from his publisher/journalist role and recently became the senior manager of public affairs for Daimler Truck and Bus at Mercedes-Benz Australia Pacific, Geoff Paradise is possibly best known as the founder of the highly successful magazine Street Machine in the 1980s.

The magazine, which morphed from Van Wheels and Street Machine, subsequently became Australia’s top-selling automotive title, outstripping even the prestigious Wheels magazine in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

After moving from Street Machine Geoff Paradise established a number of automotive titles including Performance Street Car and Fast Fours & Rotaries before migrating to the transport segment where he became the publisher of Transport Today in 1997.

This title subsequently became Transport and Trucking Today and, along with Coach and Bus magazine, he steered the ship before selling up to move into his role at Mercedes-Benz in late 2014.

Geoff was an engaging, immensely personal man who was known for his often irreverent, no-holds-barred wit and was widely admired and respected by all who knew him.

He is survived by his wife Jacqui and his three children; Nick, Amy and Maddy.