MOTORSPORT: One-time BRW rich-lister Ross Palmer broke
High-flyer from steel industry, long-time Dick Johnson sponsor and Procar founder declares bankruptcyQueensland businessman Ross Palmer, a backer of Dick Johnson in his racing heyday and later the driving force behind Procar, is bankrupt.
Business Review Weekly (BRW) magazine listed Palmer in 2002 as being worth $180 million.
Palmer recently sought bankruptcy with debts estimated at $800,000, according to a three-paragraph item this week in the City Beat column of Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper.
It said bankruptcy trustee Nick Combis from accounting firm Vincents had confirmed the move. Combis said the debts were mainly to financial institutions.
City Beat columnist James McCullough said Palmer had not responded to calls about the matter.
Palmer made his fortune in steel company Palmer Tube Mills, a business that sponsored five-time Australian touring car champion and three-time Bathurst 1000 winner Johnson for many years.
Palmer sold out of that company 20 years ago.
He famously fought legal battles against Australia’s largest company, BHP, Australia’s once richest man, the late media magnate Kerry Packer, and – on a much smaller scale – the Courier-Mail over a cartoon in 2009 that he argued depicted him as a failed businessman.
Palmer founded Procar Australia, which ran race series for GT and production cars and utes for a decade, but it collapsed in 2004.
Towards the end of that era Palmer financially backed two 24-hour races at Bathurst won by 7.0-litre Holden Monaros.
He had become a close friend of Australia’s greatest sedan racer Peter Brock, who was killed in a crash at Targa West in WA in 2006.
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