Dream team
In 1980 the combination of Bob Morris and Allan Grice had the makings of a touring car racing dream team. The reality turned out to be somewhat different, however, as the racing partnership between the two privateer heavyweights barely made it through the
The end of the 1970s were strange days for touring car racing in Australia. The 1980 season had been keenly anticipated, as it was set to feature all-new rules and new model cars, but best of all the return of Ford with an Allan Moffat-led factory team. Moffat’s works XD Falcons would face Peter Brock and the Holden Dealer Team, and top privateers like Allan Grice and reigning champ Bob Morris, all in new VB model Commodores, along with Kevin Bartlett in the Channel Nine Camaro. It was a tantalising prospect.
But that’s not how it happened.
Ford opted not to return, partly over its fear of a touted 350-Chev powered Commodore (which never eventuated). As a result, Holden also withdrew, the General concluding that there wasn’t much to be gained if there were no factory
Bob Morris and Allan Grice in a team run by Frank Gardner - it sounds like a recipe for success...
Fords for its new Commodore to beat. There was expectation among Ford fans that Moffat would continue as a privateer with a new XD, but Moffat’s team had been stretched to the point of
nancial breakdown after a disastrous ’79 season and was in no t condition to mount a campaign without serious backing. In any case, with Ford having deserted him again, he was already in talks with Mazda.
Of course, when crunch time came Holden didn’t really depart the scene at all. With Peter Brock buying John Sheppard out of the old HDT operation, and with a coterie of loyal Holden dealers coming to the party to support a reconstituted Holden Dealer Team, with a bit of backdoor Holden help (not to mention the ongoing Marlboro sponsorship), it was pretty much business as usual.
It was less so in the case of top privateers Grice and Morris, though. Faced with the cost of updating to new cars to suit new rules, and with Morris having lost major backer Ron Hodgson, the pair joined forces to form what in today’s
The Commodore was readied only just in time to make the trip to Tasmania for the opening round in March – according to Australian Motor Racing Year, ‘ten days before the event it was just a shell with the mechanics still screwing it together in Tasmania to get it onto the track’.
lexicon might be called a Dream Team. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but before long the dream of a Morris/Grice superteam would become more like a nightmare.
The new regs effectively downspecced Group C, mandating smaller ported heads that were more re ective of the government’s emission regulations for road cars. The new cars were less powerful and therefore slower than the previous year’s Group C Torana A9Xs and Falcon Cobra Hardtops – but in any case those cars weren’t allowed. Existing homologation specials were banned (curiously the new Commodore and Falcon racers were effectively homologation specials themselves – and arguably less legitimate, because they were mostly homologated via competitor submissions rather than by the actual manufacturers), although the Hardtop could run with the same ‘pollution’ spec The finishes touches were put on the Craven Mild Commodore in the pits at Symmons Plains prior to its debut in the opening ATCC race. Detuned ‘SS 5000’ Grice Torana sister team car can be seen in the background.
engine as the new XDs. Torana competitors were free to convert their A9Xs to ‘SS 5000’ spec, which meant the Commodore-spec 5.0-litre V8, no A9X bonnet scoop or rear spoiler – and drum brakes on the rear! Of all the A9Xs that had competed in the previous year’s ‘Formula Torana’ ATCC, only Allan Grice and Peter Janson (for one race) fronted with drum-braked, de-spoilered hatchbacks.
The championship kicked off at Symmons Plains in early March. There were just 14 starters, only half of which were V8s. And only four of those were new models – Commodores for Brock and Morris, and the Carter and Willmington Falcons.
While the rst half of the 1980s is seen today as a high-point in our touring car racing history for its legendary cars, on-track rivalries and vibrant manufacturer involvement, there was no sign of any golden era about to emerge when a paltry eld of 14 faced the starter on a rain-swept Symmons Plains for the opening championship race of new decade.
Strange bedfellows
If 1980 was an uncertain time for Australian touring car racing, it was particularly so for Bob Morris. With Ron Hodgson having decided to fold his team at the end of ’79, Morris was left with only a handful of additional sponsors, such as Channel Seven and Breville, but no cars, equipment, workshop or mechanics.
One option for the reigning series champion was to try to carry on with the former Hodgson team Torana A9Xs.
“Ron offered me the two cars,” Morris says, “and at a pretty good price. But because the regulations were changing, I didn’t know how it would affect those cars – I thought the rules would probably hobble them.
“But I didn’t think I had enough money to run my own team anyway. And [Peter] Molloy was off doing other things…”
Meanwhile Allan Grice and Frank Gardner had ordered a pair of white Commodore shells from Holden for the new season. Like the Repco Trial cars, these were specially walked down the
Drama at Calder where the two Craven Mild team Holdens inadvertently clashed. Morris challenges Brock at Surfers Paradise (above) but for the most part the ‘80 championship was a contest between the HDT Commodore ace and Kevin Bartlett’s Camaro.
In the first corner crush Morris got hit from behind and was pushed into Grice’s Torana, which then spun and got clobbered heavily by a Mazda.
production line with extra seam welds and no sound deadening or body sealer.
“The shells weren’t free,” Allan Grice says, “but they were pretty cheap. I think that all they charged us was a small fee to cover the cost of the seam welding.”
The original plan was to prepare one car for Grice to race in 1980, the second shell serving as a spare. But those plans changed.
“Grice offered me a deal to run a Commodore with them, with Frank Gardner running the team,” Morris says. “It sounded good…”
“He had his other sponsors but no car or mechanics,” Grice says, “so for us it was just a case of multiplying everything by two and putting another mechanic on.”
So for the championship sprint races, Morris would run the new Commodore and Grice would revert to one of his old A9Xs detuned to the new rules. Later on the two would pair up to share a single car at Bathurst; Grice and Morris in the one car would have made one of the strongest – if not the strongest – driver combinations in the race. It was a tantalising prospect, and one which surely would have given Brock cause for concern.
While Morris thought the Toranas might struggle in the ATCC under the new rule framework, Grice was more optimistic:
“It was a proven car. The Commodore was new and there was no guarantee it was going to be better, although it did turn out that way.”
The Commodore was readied only just in time to make the trip to Tasmania for the opening round in March – according to Australian Motor Racing Year, ‘ten days before the event it was just a shell with the mechanics still screwing it together in Tasmania to get it onto the track.’
In the 100km series opener Grice nished a distant third, more than half a minute adrift of winner Brock, while Morris was a lap down in
fth. If that wasn’t the most auspicious of starts for the new ‘superteam,’ in the next round, at Calder, the two cars clashed at the opening corner!
Top: The CRC 300 was the only race in which Morris and Grice shared the Commodore. Morris won the final round at Oran Park, where Grice wrote the Torana off against the Sydney track’s unforgiving turn one wall.
In the rst corner crush Morris got hit from behind and was pushed into Grice’s Torana, which then spun and got clobbered heavily by a Mazda. Morris later joined Grice in retirement, following an engine failure. It was the rst of some half a dozen engine blowups Morris would suffer during the eight-round series.
This was a real sore point as far as Morris was concerned and was a big part of why the partnership barely lasted half the year.
“On the face of it,” Morris says, “it sounded like good deal, but in effect it wasn’t a good deal. Ultimately there probably wasn’t enough money to do the two cars.
“It wasn’t the car that was the disaster, it was the team that was a disaster. There was ill will between Grice and Gardner, and I was feeling sort of left out because I was getting bad engines – I think that with the engines, Les Small did a great job with what he was given, but he wasn’t being allowed to buy the right stuff.
“The car wasn’t all that good to drive. Frank did the setting up, which wasn’t really to my liking – a big, soft wallowing setup, but also being a new car we were trailblazing it.
“Looking back, I just wonder whether a properly sorted Torana would have been the car
to have that year.”
Indeed, the Torana SS5000 was in some ways the surprise performer of the championship. Grice’s Torana was generally the more competitive (and more reliable) of the team’s two Holdens, and if CAMS’ decision to force the Torana to run rear drum brakes was aimed at preventing it from beating the newer Commodore model, it was a measure which failed. Grice’s team gured out a way around the problem of rear drum brakes.
“It was Les (Small’s) or Pip (Barker’s) idea,” Grice explains, “I can’t remember which, but what we did was cut and grind the 1103 pad material we used on the front and glued and riveted them onto the rear shoes. I think there were about four pieces per brake shoe, so there was plenty of cross-sectional pad area. That worked well, the drums generally weren’t a big issue for us.”
Grice’s single victory that year came at Wanneroo (after missing the previous two rounds while the Calder damage was repaired), which earned him the distinction of being the last driver to win a major Australian touring car race in a Torana.
Morris at least ended the series on a high, with victory in the Commodore at the nal round, at Oran Park, where the Torana met its end after heavy contact with the wall of the end of the straight.
By then, though, Grice’s SS 5000 was surplus to requirements. The ARDC, perhaps fearing that an ‘old’ Torana like Grice’s might embarrass Ford or Holden by beating the newer cars at Bathurst, decreed that only current-model cars would be eligible for the 1980 Great Race. In any case, Morris was parting ways with the Grice/Gardner operation, leaving the Commodore for Grice to drive for the rest of the season.
There wasn’t even any need to keep the spare Commodore shell, either, as the Craven Mild team’s BMW deal for 1981 was already locked in place. The spare was sold in August to Paul Gulson, who hurriedly set about preparing it for a race debut at Bathurst that would result in a surprise third outright.
The Grice/Morris Bathurst ‘dream team’ thus never happened, although the pair did combine for one race, the CRC 300 at Amaroo Park. They
nished a distant 10th after the Commodore was delayed badly when a rear wheel parted company during Grice’s stint.
Morris went off and organised an XD Falcon with Bill O’Brien, while Grice recruited John Smith (inset left) to co-drive at Bathurst (as we saw in AMC #111, Smith had co-driven the previous year with Ralph Radburn’s ex-Craven
Mild A9X four-door, and as that car was run under the Grice team banner, Grice was well aware of Smith’s ability).
Grice did the Sandown 400 solo, the car sporting new Craven Mild livery and presented in VC trim. It was an early retirement due to a split gearbox.
Grice and Morris never got to share a car at Bathurst but they did share the same row on the grid that year. Grice was fth fastest in qualifying, which put the Craven Mild Commodore on the inside of the third row – right alongside none other than the new Falcon of his erstwhile team-mate. Grice ran solidly near the front early on, and led the race for almost an hour, but later on Smith had a drama under brakes at Murray’s Corner and ended up stuck in the sand trap. Smith returned to the pits and Grice resumed, only for the car to catch
re under the dash going up the mountain. Grice pulled up at a ag point and a marshal extinguished it. They soldiered on but had fuel pick up problems for the rest of the day. Grice and Smith placed seventh, seven laps down.
That was Grice’s last start in a Craven Mildsponsored Holden. The very next weekend he was aboard the Craven Mild BMW 318i Turbo for the penultimate round of the Australian Sports Sedan Championship. Grice’s BMW sojourn had already begun.
After Grice
With Allan Grice linking up with BMW for 1981, there was no longer any requirement at Craven Mild Racing for a racing Commodore. So the car was sold, to young Queensland driver Neil Cunningham for $30,000.
Grice remembers selling it to Cunningham, noting that the youngster ‘did one of the very rare things that most people don’t do’, which was to listen to Grice’s advice about how the car was set up.
“I never ever stuffed around with the car and taken my tricks out of it,” Grice explains. “I always sold the car exactly as I had driven it. But the people who bought my cars invariably would have a smartarse mechanic who knew everything, and he would assume things and say, ‘nah, Gricey wouldn’t have run it like this,’ and they would detune the car straight away and it’d never be any good after that.
“I said to Neil Cunningham, ‘don’t change anything, this car is exactly as I’ve raced it; just keep doing the wheel alignment to the specs I’ve
given you.’ And he did that, and he had a very successful car. For a young bloke to jump into a one of those things for the rst time, he had a very good run with it.”
The 18 year-old – who at the time did not even have a full racing licence – did perform well in it despite running on a miniscule budget. In what was probably his rst start in the car, Cunningham was voted ‘Kaiser Stuhl Man of the Meeting’ at Lakeside in March after nishing second to Dick Johnson’s XD Falcon in the local state touring car championship round. Later in the year at Surfers Paradise he was a handy fth in the ATCC round, before going on to nish eighth in the Sandown enduro. At Bathurst his entry (with New Zealander Rod Coppins as co-driver) was listed as rst reserve (possibly on account of his Cunningham’s youth and rookie status), but they failed to qualify.
Then Cunningham changed direction and went Formula Ford, which took him on a path that would lead to a career in the UK. The exGrice car was sold for $19,500 to Bernie Stack.
South Australian Stack ran the Commodore in selected Group C events. Probably his best performance in the car came on home soil in the Adelaide round of the ’82 Australian Endurance Championship. After problems in qualifying saw him start last in the 22-car eld, Stack was up to 11th place as early as the second lap. But three laps later he was in the pits to change two at spotted front tyres. In the end he nished sixth, two laps down.
Bathurst that year ended for Stack and codriver Tony Parkinson after the ve-hour mark when the car made heavy rear-on contact with the Armco at Murray’s Corner. By then they were struggling with a low brake pedal, although according to that year’s official Great Race yearbook, there was ‘some substance to the suggestion that he was helped on his way by [Ron] Wanless in the second Re-Car entry, which went straight behind the pits to x a smashed radiator. Either way, it was the end of the only South Australian entry.’
The damaged rear end was subsequently repaired, but as the pics show, the quality of the work left a little to be desired.
Stack returned to Bathurst the following year, this time with fellow South Aussie, journalist/ racer Bob Jennings. They had a fraught week, with an engine that wouldn’t rev past 6400rpm in practice, and rear tyres rubbing on the guards (which was suitably ‘adjusted’ with a big hammer). Racing Car News’ race report catalogued their tale of woe: ‘…they were waiting on a new diff being picked up from Sydney by a crew member at 8pm. After a cam change the car was still no better, and air had crept into the brakes.’ They’d quali ed 32nd but their rst of many pitstops came as early as lap six. They replaced the gearbox mid race, and when the new diff gave up so too did the exhausted Stack team, with just 68 laps completed.
In ’84 Stack sold the car to James Rosenberg, the Gawler-based businessman/racer who later would be instrumental in the race careers of fellow South Aussies Mark Poole and Tim Slade. Rosenberg painted it blue and raced it as a Sports Sedan.
Later Rosenberg put the Commodore up for sale, along with a second Group C Commodore, the ex-Barry Lawrence car (although in the case of the latter, it was little more than a stripped and repainted bare shell).
Neither Commodore sold, but then in mid-1987 Rosenberg did a deal with James Bartsch that saw him swap both the Grice car and the Lawrence shell for Bartsch’s Torana Sports Sedan. Later that same year Bartsch
was forced to offload both Commodores due to family commitments.
ACT resident Daryl Day purchased the Grice car as a rolling chassis in October, ’87. Day tted a 350 Chev with Saginaw gearbox and ran it in hillclimb events and Sports Sedan races before entering it in the Sports Sedan support races at the 1990 Australian Grand Prix on the Adelaide Parklands circuit. Day practised the car on Thursday but that night died of a heart attack.
Day’s estate sold the car along with all the spares and equipment – wheels, trailer, tool boxes etc – to Geoff Searl of Singleton, NSW, for $20,000. Searl drove in it at the annual King Edward Park hillclimb in Newcastle in 1992. That was its last competition appearance.
After that the car was put to use doing Camp Quality charity work. It was painted up as a Brock HDT racer and was used to take kids with cancer out for hot laps at Oran Park and Eastern Creek. As a funds raiser for Camp Quality, the car was variously displayed in shopping centres and Holden dealers (with Searl at one point apparently receiving a legal letter asking him to have the tobacco company signage on the sides of the car covered up or removed).
Then in 1993 Searl sold it to Victorian Stephen Lunn for $10,000. It was purchased minus the 350 Chev and Saginaw gearbox, fuel tank, and even the wheels, which Searl retained. It was apparently Lunn’s intention to restore the car but this never eventuated. Lunn ended up selling it to Gary Chick some nine years on, more or less as he’d purchased it, but minus the bonnet, which had been autographed by Peter Brock near the 05 number. Lunn apparently still has the bonnet.