Let the politics begin

Having accepted the challenge of taking the RX7 racing, Moffat went to Japan and met with the father of the rotary engine, Kenichi Yamamoto (later to become company president), then travelled to the US to test an IMSA-spec factory car that had won its class in the Daytona 24 Hour. He drove this car for several days at a track just outside Washington and was staggered that over the course of 700km, the crew never needed to lift the bonnet. With the Falcons, he noted sardonically, he would have been lucky to do 7km.

Moffat was convinced the rotary-engined RX7 with its lithe handling and braking could be turned into a winner in Australia. It could compete with a V8, he thought, despite its little 1.2-litre engine (officially 2.4-litres with the 2.0 equivalence factor applied by the FIA/CAMS). The problem was that its 270hp was produced at very high revs and there was very little torque. The IMSA car’s power-boosting modi cation called peripheral porting, which pumped fuel and air into the outside of the miniscule rotor housings rather than from the rear like the road car, was vital.

Conventional piston-engined touring cars bene tted from modi ed camshafts, valves and rocker arms – all items the simple rotary engine didn’t have – so Moffat gured this would be a reasonable request. He would soon discover that many thought otherwise.

Moffat continued campaigning his old XC Falcon on a shoestring budget in 1979, and after yet more expensive engine failures at Bathurst he was virtually broke. He was forced to put on

the market some of his beloved cars – including the Cologne Capri and Dekon Chevy Monza – to clear a spiraling overdraft. He told me: “The bank has started making polite statements (but) it won’t be long before they get impolite!”

A month later, after being told that a potential deal with BMW had gone the way of an old nemesis, Frank Gardner, Moffat realised that Mazda was his only option. He ramped up the previously secret lobbying and gave me the exclusive story as the editor of Auto Action.

Under the banner ‘I want to race an RX7’ – demoted to secondary status on the front page only by the shock news that Holden had dumped the HDT – Moffat revealed his hopes of racing for Mazda in 1980, and the need to get approval for peripheral port (PP) so the car could compete for outright wins, not just class victories.

“This is not a technical argument, it is a political argument,” Moffat said. Little did he know how long it would rage.

Despite initial opposition from the Australian Touring Car Association, on which Moffat himself served as a committeeman, the National Council of CAMS (which had initially rejected PP in June) approved it on December 20, impressed by Mazda Australia’s commitment to supporting privateers with discounted cars and parts.

However, the approval was subject to objections, and they came thick and fast, mainly from Toyota and Celica racer Peter Williamson, who quit ATCA when it reversed its opposition. Toyota claimed a more potent RX7 would distort market perception of cars they said competed in showrooms, while Willo argued that other class cars should be permitted similar freedoms, like an F2 race engine for his Celica.

“Toyota didn’t want Mazda to be seen as the top car from Japan,” says Horsley today. “But they were talking about things they didn’t even make.” Once the Mazda deal was set in stone, Moffat travelled to Japan to meet the father of the rotary, Kenichi Yamamoto, before continuing to the US to test an IMSA-spec RX7 racer.

Within days, the NCC folded and rejected the Mazda deal. Ironically, in order to prove that a standard RX7 would in fact match a V8 Commodore, Auto Action tried to organise a private match race, in which Moffat and Brock agreed to drive, only to discover Holden had stopped making manual 5.0-litre Commodores and none could be found by GM-H, Brock or eight dealers we contacted.

Not helping Moffat’s cause was a deepening CAMS governance crisis. The National Council had created a new independent body to run circuit racing, the Australian Motor Racing Commission (AMRAC), and it opposed peripheral port. AMRAC arrived at its decision after consulting Phil Irving, the legendary engine tuner and the brains behind the Repco-Brabham F1 1966/’67 world championship winning 3.0-litre

V8 engine. Irving’s expert opinion was that allowing the RX7’s 12A rotary engine to run in peripheral port trim was in conventional piston engine terms the equivalent of upgrading from single-cam, two-valve con guration to twin cams and four valves.

So while Moffat raced an RX7 in the Daytona 24 Hour in February, AMRAC came up with a scheme to approve the RX7 – as requested by its NCC overlords – but without peripheral ports, so it remained a three-litre class car.

AMRAC again rejected PP in April 1980, but the following month the National Council turned around and announced “nal” approval. However, the very next day the AMRAC members served an ultimatum over the issue, and a showdown meeting between the two committees was scheduled for June 7. Again the NCC caved in, but tried to save face by sacking AMRAC chairman Richard Cousins. I went into print attacking such “mismanagement”, calling them all inept and contemptible. Ah, the brashness of youth.

Mazda Australia was now at wits’ end and sold off the batch of 10 ‘Custom Special’ models (stripped of air-con and sound system) it had set aside for racing, and a distressed Moffat even expressed doubts about racing in Australia again. You could hardly blame him after being treated as a political football.

Moffat kept sharp by winning the Australian Sports Car Championship in a Porsche

934, and the Winton promoters presented him with a bottle of ‘Peripheral Port,’ inscribed with: A ne homologation of grapes pressed in the latest rotary presses, but not eligible for Grape One consumption. This wine exceeds the 100-octane rating and should only be used as directed by the

NCC. After sensationally racing an MHDT Commodore at Sandown and then his own quickly cobbled up XD Falcon at Bathurst, Moffat imported the Daytona RX7 for a Sandown meeting in December 1980 to demonstrate it and give his rivals a chance to drive it. Brock, who surprisingly supported the Mazda Moffat imported the Daytona RX7 to demonstrate at Sandown, inviting sceptical rivals to inspect and drive it. bid, was the only one who took up the invitation and came away convinced it wouldn’t be the rocketship detractors suggested.

In the meantime, the NCC resolved the political impasse by disbanding the AMRAC and instructed its newly installed Executive Committee to approve the PP Mazda for racing. And so, on January 27, 1981 – two years after the whole saga began – the green light was nally given. And this time it was nal. Allan Moffat Racing was back in business.