Graceful Gazelles, swift Sierras
Masterton Racing closed up shop and Stewart was left looking for a drive for 1986. This time an old friend came calling. John Giddings was a Nissan dealer in the NSW Southern Highlands. His father Peter had previously sold Datsuns and indeed was a sponsor in the W.H Motors days.
Giddings bankrolled the two-litre Nissan Gazelle program that Fred Gibson of Nissan Motorsport had developed. This little car would launch multiple ATCC and Bathurst champion Mark Skaife in the following year, but for 1986, Giddings and Stewart would face off against the works Toyota Corolla AE86 Sprinters. It was just like the old days. Stewart has fond memories of the little Nissan.
“The Gazelle was a brilliant little car. But the race was another one that got away. We should have won the class but the alternator broke. We didn’t have a spare. By the time we replaced the battery we were miles behind the class winning Corolla. We then took it to the Wellington 500 in 1987 and won the class nishing eighth outright.”
In a similar way that Masterton had taken Stewart from a class co-driver to outright contender, when Giddings bought into Don Smith’s Oxo Supercube Ford Sierra team in 1987, the veteran return found himself further up the front of the grid.
“The Sierra was a handful,” remembers Stewart. “You had to have your wits about you. At 3000rpm it had 150 horsepower and at 3100rpm it was 550! It was like a light switch, but once you got used to it you were right. Some guys were left-foot braking but in the corners as soon as I came off the brakes I was hard on the throttle to get the boost up and then off again to control it. In the rain (at Bathurst) on slicks it was very interesting…”
The Giddings/Stewart combo nished a respectable 13th overall among the internationals in what would be the only World Touring Car Championship round held at Bathurst. The following year the duo were ensconced in Colin Bond’s Caltex Sierra team for Bathurst, a consequence of Giddings lending his Sierra to Bond for the 1988 ATCC.
The two-car Caltex Sierra team had a strong Bathurst result in 1988, with the lead car of Bond/Alan Jones nishing third and Giddings/Stewart a strong fth place. So impressed was Bond that when the Caltex team returned to Bathurst in 1989, it was Bruce Stewart who scored co-driving duties with the team leader. Alas, the team had major engine dramas that year and only completed 131 laps.