MOUNTAIN MAGIC
FOMOCO TRACK TRIBUTE
For a young tacker who loved motorsport, the late-60s and early-70s were brilliant, with meetings held every month at either Sandown, Calder, Winton or Phillip Island and all offering a huge variety of categories.
While the Australian Touring Car Championship was contested by highly modified Mustangs, Camaros, Porsches etc. and run over a number of sprint races, the Ford-Holden rivalry was born through Series Production endurance races featuring cars based closely on those sitting in showrooms around Australia.
It started in 1967 with Ford’s XR-GT Bathurst win followed by the Holden Monaro GTS 327 victory the next year.
With a win apiece to the rival factories, 1969 saw Series Production racing f lourish with Ford and the General having direct or indirect factor y teams competing for the first time.
Ford debuted the 351ci XW Falcon Phase I GT-HO – not to be outdone the General fronted with a grunty Monaro, its V8 engine now 350ci. Fifteen of the 60 starters at Bathurst 1969 were GT-HOs against six Monaros. But after 500 miles of racing it was the Holden Monaro GTS 350 of Colin Bond and Tony Roberts, run by Harry Firth’s Holden Dealer Team, that triumphed after the Falcons suffered a spate of tyre failures.
This race ignited a popularity explosion for Series Production racing, simultaneously igniting a blowtorch under the tribal Ford vs Holden fan support-base that continues to this day.
For the 1970 season Holden changed tack, dumping the V8 Monaro for the lighter, nimbler 186ci six-cylinder LC Torana GTR XU-1. Joining the fray was Chrysler, lobbing in with the
245ci Hemi-Six-powered Valiant Pacer with either a two or four-barrel carburettor.
Ford, still smarting over the previous year’s drubbing, made its intentions known with the Phase II GT-HO, an even faster XW Falcon.
At this time I was earning pocket money at Booran Holden in Caulfield, sweeping the workshop f loor, cleaning bench tops and tools, and tidying the mechanics’ lunchroom.
Around mid-year Holden launched the LC Torana and I remember walking into the showroom and seeing a lime green GTR XU-1. What a beauty!
A fortnight later it was in the workshop, fitted with a ver y basic roll bar, a fire extinguisher, racing harness, louder exhaust and a few decals. Overnight the showroom T’rana had become a race car and looking back, it was amazing how little work, money and few components that entailed.
Running it in consisted of the service manager taking it on a few blasts at night and it being driven to Bathurst.
By now it was early October and I watched the XU-1 drive out of Booran Holden, its numbers covered up, its interior and boot full of spares, a jack, tool kit, fuel churns and a sole mechanic behind the wheel. It still wore its number plates. For the record, the late Brian Reed and rally ace Bob Watson took this dealer-funded, virtually stock Torana to fifth in class and it was the third GTR XU-1 home.
No surprise that I sat glued to the telly for the whole race, ready to catch every glimpse of the lime green Booran Holden racer. The week after Bathurst it sat proudly in the showroom once more, exactly as it had finished the race – covered in muck and bugs. After milking its run at Bathurst for a few weeks, it made way for a Kingswood or Premier and I helped pull the stickers off it. I don’t know what happened to it, but I remember people pressing their noses against the glass to see it.
Back to the race itself and my boyhood hero Allan Moffat, driving solo, proved unbeatable taking his and the GT-HO’s first Bathurst crown, both at their second attempt, cementing the fast Falcon’s legendary status.
By 1971 every race meeting had a Series Production race and the Ford vs Holden rivalry formed the backbone of event advertising. If you wanted a crowd you had Series Prod cars on the fixture. Simple.
The big three were also using racing to f log everything from new cars to accessories and services.
Chrysler was first to release a race machine for the 1971 event, pulling the wraps off its RT/38 Bathurst-ready Charger, accompanied by the famous “Hey Charger” ad campaign. Meanwhile Holden elected to soldier on for a second year with the LC Torana XU-1.
Then Ford trumped everyone with the Phase III Falcon GT-HO now in an XY model body. The GT-HO looked like a race car with its cold-air ‘shaker’ sitting on top of a more powerful 351ci engine, bold stripes and an adjustable full-length boot lid