AMSCAR: the Group A years

Last issue we recalled the early, Group C years of Amaroo Park’s AMSCAR Series, a made-for-television tin-top competition supplementary to the main touring car championship. In this second and concluding part, we revisit the ‘Amaroo Super Cars’ Series’ Gr

Part two of our feature on the old Amaroo Park AMSCAR Series.

The 1980 CRC 300 was a ground-breaking event, on two levels. For one, it was the race in which Dick Johnson properly emerged as a serious outright touring car contender. The then-privateer fronted at Amaroo Park with a brand new XD Falcon and proceeded to make Peter Brock’s HDT Commodore VB look second-best until the big blue Ford cooked its tyres. This race, a couple of months before the 1980 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 and the rock incident, was a clear sign of what was to come from the Queenslander.

The other ground-breaking aspect of the 1980 CRC 300 was that it proved that a touring car endurance race around the tight, twisty little Sydney circuit was actually feasible.

Amaroo’s mid-year pre-Bathurst enduro would continue through most the rest of the decade, doubling as the nal round of the AMSCAR Series. Likewise when Amaroo hosted ATCC rounds (as it did in ’85 and ’86, and then from ’89 onwards) the championship race almost always counted as an AMSCAR round. That meant that for some seasons late in that decade, there were only two sprint AMSCAR rounds.

It was probably the logical thing to do, but it took away some of the AMSCAR Series’ unique essence. No longer was it the stand-alone alternative touring car series it had been.

It was different in other ways, too, the opening