CHIC Henry, the founder of Summernats, has died. He was 75.

He ran Summernats from 1988 to 2009.

The Summernats burnout pad grandstand was named in his honour earlier this year

Chic had battled prostate cancer over the last few years. At Summernats 34 earlier this year, his contribution to the event and wider street-machine scene was recognised with the naming of the burnout pad grandstand in his honour.

Under his stewardship, the Summernats won the Major Festival or Event category of the ACT Tourism Awards four times.

Chic stood for the ACT Legislative Assembly twice – with the Australian Motorist Party in Ginninderra in the 2012 ACT election and again in Ginninderra for the Belco Party in the 2020 elections.

“Our thoughts go out to Chic’s wife Deb and family at this sad time,” said Belco Party Convenor Bill Stefaniak.

“It was an honour and a privilege to know Chic since 1989 and to have had the opportunity to work with him during the 2020 local election campaign. The Belco Party almost got a seat and it was out of me and Chic who would get it. I would have loved to have seen Chic get up. He would have been a fantastic member of the Assembly.”

Surprisingly, Anthony “Chic” Henry, was more interested in swimming than cars when he was younger. 

He told “CityNews” reporter Danielle Nohra in 2017 it was his friends who spent most of their time doing up cars and it wasn’t until he was 22, living in Sydney, when he started messing around with his ’64 Holden.

“I had an interest in cars, just not my whole life. Sport had played a big part in my life growing up,” Chic said. 

Chic remembered looking forward to getting his first car but couldn’t have one at the Balcombe army base, where he was an apprentice, until his last year.

“Dad bought me a really tidy green Austin A40 for when I was home on leave,” he says. 

“The street racer in me made me paint a white racing stripe over it and fit a copper exhaust pipe.”

When Chic went back to base his dad painted over the stripe and took off the exhaust. 

The first car of his own was a Morris Oxford panel van. He threw a mattress in the back and decorated it with some of his mum’s handmade, satin curtains and it on weekend surf trips. 

During Chic’s army career he found himself in Townsville where a drag strip opened and whet his appetite for high-performance street cars, which he says are still his favourite. 

This led him to join a car club while living in Brisbane in the ‘80s.

“I liked the club aspect and I loved being part of the committee, and that developed over the years to my becoming the first national director of the Australian Street Machine Federation,” he said.

In 1985 he moved to Canberra after he seeing a business opportunity that later turned into the staging of Summernats. 

Two years later he built a dedicated burnout track at Exhibition Park and held the first Summernats there in January, 1988. 

Chic, who got his nickname as a schoolboy from the Looney Tunes character “Henery Hawk”, says Summernats wasn’t just a car festival but a “party” with competitions for burnouts, parades and a Miss Summernats quest. 

“Because of the very nature of the Summernats, it was like putting on a party that I’d like to go to myself,” he said. 

“You’d never be able to put on an event like that these days, with professional strippers and wet T-shirt competitions!

“It turned out to be one of the largest, most successful, privately run events in Canberra.”

And even though the fun never ran out, after more than 20 years it became too overwhelming, especially in its last six years, which became costly. If it had ever rained the week before or the week of the event it would have sunk Chic financially. If anyone had ever been seriously hurt or worse, Chic says he wouldn’t have been able to handle it emotionally.

In 2009 Chic sold Summernats. 

“What the Summernats was to me at that time was a baby that I brought into the world. I brought it up, shaped it and then adopted it out, and now I can still see it,” he said.

Chic is survived by his wife Debra Henry daughter Georgia Henry, son Kody Henry and Kody’s wife Filia Henry, daughter Angela Henry, Angela’s partner Jason Pettet and granddaughter Lauren.

Chic’s family ask that in lieu of flowers, that supporters consider donating to the Canberra Cancer Centre, here.