Charlie Aust visits our Motor Museum

The below is an excerpt from the April 2026 Edition of the Museum Musings.

We were privileged to have a visit from Charlie Aust, the son of Harry Aust who together with Dale Koenneckie designed and built the Veskanda C1, mid engined racing car which is on display in the Ricciardo Hall and pictured below.

Charlie was on a day trip to Perth from Adelaide and took the time to come and visit the vehicle his father assisted to build.

To say he was as little emotional when he saw the car after so many years is an understatement.

The ‘Veskanda’ as it is more commonly known, was built in 1985 to CAMS Group A Sports Car specifications. Powered by a Chevrolet V8 engine, the car is generally regarded as the fastest sports car ever built in Australia and remains Australia’s fastest closed-top circuit race car ever.

Veskanda is an anagram of its history – “Van Elsen Special K AND A”.

Australian Sports Car Championship competitor and professional photographer, Bernie van Elsen commissioned Adelaide based engineering firm K&A Engineering run by Dale Koennecke (a former engineer for Garrie Cooper’s Ansett Team Elfin) and Harry Aust to build a ground effect racing sports car that not only complied to CAMS Group A rules but also to the FIA’s Group C rules.

The result was the Veskanda Ci, Monza style race car.

The Veskanda was driven in classic sports car events in Europe (including the very wet Le Mans Legend race in 2012 where the car attained the top speed on the Mulsanne Straight with 259 km/h (161 mph) on its way to 8th place).

It was also driven by Western Australian driver/enthusiast Paul Stubber, driving in the Group C – C1 historic sports car series and raced at such tracks as Le Mans, Silverstone, Donington, Nürburgring, Imola, Paul Ricard and Spa-Francorchamps. Paul finished in 10th place in 2012 and 5th place in 2013.

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