Australian Touring Cars

Australian Touring Cars

Australian Touring Cars

The Australian Touring Car Championship has a long and chequered history. The first Championship was held in 1960 as a single race for Appendix J Touring Cars. This was due to the rising popularity of races held for passenger sedans as opposed to more purpose built open wheel racing cars, or sports cars. The original race was held at the Gnoo Blas circuit in Orange, New South Wales. The early years of the ATCC saw the once-a-year event visit mostly rural circuits, before finally visiting a major city circuit, Lakeside Raceway on the outskirts of Brisbane in 1964. This race was also the first race not won by a Jaguar saloon, with Ian Geoghegan winning the first of his five titles in a Ford Cortina. From 1965, the title would largely be won by drivers in American V8 powered muscle cars, most notably the Ford Mustang. The first victory by a driver in an Australian vehicle was by Norm Beechey, who won the title in a Holden Monaro.

A competition's first major change occurred when the championship developed from a single race into a multi-event series. The 'Supercar scare' that had rocked the build up to 1972 Bathurst 500 forced sweeping changes through touring car regulations, and led to new ones being implemented. The regulations which governed the ATCC, known at the time as Group C, were amalgamated with the more basic Group E Series Production Touring Cars regulations which governed the Bathurst touring car endurance race in a compromise between the two. This created a single class for touring car racing that would dominate Australian Touring Car racing until the introduction of Group A in 1985. This period was famous because it resulted in increasing conflicts between the manufacturers Holden and Ford, and also the era's two leading drivers, Peter Brock and Allan Moffat. Between them, Brock and Moffat claimed seven of the era's 12 championships and nine of the Bathurst victories.

Attention had traditionally focused on Holden and Ford, but that changed when European and Japanese manufacturers joined the Australian agents of the two big American companies; the trend starting in 1981 with BMW, Mazda and Nissan. The international Group A regulations, already utilised by European and Japanese touring car series, allowed them to compete on equal terms. Holden was forced briefly into a catchup phase, all but backing out of the sport in 1992. The ATCC continued to be used until the end of the 1998 season, after which V8 Supercar organisers altered the name of the series, eventually adopting its present identity, the V8 Supercar Championship Series. The winner of the V8 Supercar Championship Series is awarded the title of Australian Touring Car Champion.

All of the drivers involved in the ATCC however, all have years of practice behind them, and as such you should never try to replicate the speeds they reach. It's far safer to sit and watch them on television, as if the average driver tried to replicate the sort of skills that the professionals use, they'd be looking at windshield replacement prices at the very best, and a long stay in hospital (or worse) if it all really went wrong.

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