BMW E36 318I
FAMOUS BATTLE — ON AND OFF THE TRACK
It’s an incident that, thanks to the all-seeing eye of the television camera, has become part of Australasian folklore: the day that Tony Longhurst jumped out of his distinctive yellow BMW E36 318i super tourer and threw three solid punches through the open driver’s window of teammate Paul Morris’ similar car (you can check it out for yourself on Youtube at youtu.be/xj9bqmzax4u) after a wheel-tangling clash at the Winton round of the Australian Class II Touring Car Championship back in 1994.
Longhurst would go on to win the
1994 championship title in the genuine BMW Motorsport–built, former Team Bigazzi E36/A 053 93 car now owned by Christchurch businessman Lindsay O’donnell and driven in the local Historic Touring Cars series by his son Matthew.
Like most of the other Group A, Group C, and Super Touring models running in the series, the car has a fascinating competition history that started in 1993 in the Italian Super Touring Championship (the Campionato Italiano Superturismo) and also took part in the season-ending FIA Touring
Car Cup Challenge at Monza that year.
The E36 318i was very much the car to beat at the time, with German ace Joachim Winkelhock leading home BMW Motorsport teammate Steve Soper to win the 1993 British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) and Venetian Roberto Ravaglia reclaiming the Italian Superturismo title that he had won twice before in an E30 M3, behind the wheel of a Cibiemme Engineering–run E36 318i that same year.
Having driven one himself in the inaugural FIA Touring Car Challenge event at Monza in Italy in October 1993, where he finished 22nd overall, Tony Longhurst obviously knew how good a 318i was, so it should come as no surprise that, despite being disqualified from the round at Winton for his fisticuffs with teammate Paul Morris, he added his own name and the 1994 Australian Manufacturers’ Championship title to the model’s period provenance.
Before onselling the championshipwinning car to young gun Steven Ellery at the end of the year, Longhurst also entered John Blanchard and Warwick Rooklyn in it in the 1994 Tooheys 1000 at Bathurst, where, in a mixed field of V8 Falcons and Commodores and two-litre super tourers, it came in 12th, and was also the third two-litre car home.
After updating the bodywork to 1995 spec, Steven Ellery ran the car in his family company’s Chelgrave Contracting yellow and red colours in the 1995 Australian Super Touring Championship, finishing sixth.
Later that year, Ellery sold the E36 to Cameron Mclean, in time for the latter to run it in the Clipsal Super Touring Car Trophy support races at the season-ending Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix meeting in Adelaide, where he finished eighth in the first race but failed to finish the second.
Mclean gave the car a sequential gearbox and ran it in his — again yellow-based — Greenfield Mowers colours in the 1996 Australian Super Touring Championship, finishing ninth.
With Mclean upgrading to a later model Holden (Opel) Vectra for the 1997 season, the E36 was sold to Aussie Jim Cornish and Australia-based Kiwi Nigel Barclay, who teamed up with Christchurch driver
Blair Smith to contest that year’s two-litre-only AMP Bathurst 1000.
Cornish and Barclay in turn sold the bynow five-year-old car to Anthony Robson, who contested the Australian Super Touring Championship in 1998, as well as the second two-litre-only AMP Bathurst 1000 race with Sydney driver Ric Shaw.
Robson also raced the E36 at early rounds of the 1999 Australian Super Touring Championship, before upgrading to a later model Honda Accord, plus a pair of early rounds of the BOC Gases–backed 2000 series before parking it up and eventually selling it to Lindsay O’donnell in 2003.
Once it was in New Zealand, in Christchurch, O’donnell had the car rebuilt and re-liveried in its original Warsteiner (a popular German beer) BMW Team Bigazzi ‘war paint’ — white base with multicoloured chequered flag over its hind quarters — and he and his son Matthew used it at events such as the South Island Endurance Series and the Skope Classic.
With interest in a dedicated Historic Touring Cars series for cars such as the E36 growing at the time, the O’donnells decided that the car needed another ‘birthday’, so, in 2015, it was again completely stripped; rebuilt; and, this time, re-liveried in the distinctive Longhurst colours it wore when it won the 1994 Australian Manufacturers’ Championship title — and appeared, of course, in that video on Youtube (which, by the way, has now been viewed more than 94,000 times).
To say that the E36 still looks great, and every millimetre a racer, is an understatement. With its modest aero package and slick-shod 18-inch Dymag racing wheels tucked deep up into the standard wheel arches, it, and cars like it, stands as a tribute to the intent of the original Super Touring rules: to provide a showcase for manufacturers to sell on Monday showroom examples of a model of car that won on Sunday!