“I’ve done probably 1000 laps around Phillip Island, done the Nürburgring, done the Spa circuit,” he starts out without taking a breath.

“I’ve got a whole collection of cars of Sunbeam Tigers, E-Type Jaguars, five Porches, so you could say it’s a passion.”

But when taking to the road this week for the fifth time, Graham notes nothing compares to Targa Tasmania.

He only drives the best of his three Sunbeam Tigers for such a special occasion.

“I have not seen anything like this in the world,” he says.

Graham built engines and gearboxes observing from a photographic memory.

Five decades on, his new passion is taking Porsche driver days on Phillip Island.

But not before a love affair that almost never blossomed.

“When I was 16 years old, I bought a race car out of dad’s checkbook,” he says.

“It was an open-wheeler race car, but was pretty scary for me when he found out.”

That attraction to the race track pulled Graham into the Australian touring car scene.

“Only in the connection of Brocky, Larry Perkins, people like that,” Graham tells.

He reminisces: “oh, it was another world back then”.

The Melburnian came up with the Toranas A9X flares that became iconic for years.

Peter Brock joined him in building a HZ GTS Monaro that thrilled petrolheads.

“But Peter never knew what he wanted,” he explains.

“He only knew how he wanted the car to handle.

“From the engineering point of view, Larry was and is still the master in my mind of everyone who ever had raced in that era of cars.

“He built the car, he drove the car, he did things that are out of this world.”

From designing brake calipers that didn’t need changing to modifying carburetors when drivers went big.

Brock would win Bathurst nine times, but Graham is convinced Perkins should be credited for 13 titles given history that team owners once took over the wheel.

“But no-one ever talks or knows about that,” he says.