Steve Normoyle

IIt was mid-August when we were putting the nishing touches on this issue of AMC. Normally about now many of us are starting to think about the upcoming Bathurst 1000. But as we went to press I don’t think any of us was sure that there even is going to be a Bathurst 1000 in 2021. All of a sudden this year is feeling a lot like last year – only worse.

It’s bad, but it’s not all bad. While there’s not much good to be said about Covid-19, it has indirectly led to some good things. Like the magni cent Monaro racecar on the cover of this issue – without the pandemic, this car simply wouldn’t exist.

As our cover story explains, this has to be the ultimate lockdown project. What began as a cleanup exercise out the back of Garry Rogers Motorsport – just something to keep the crew occupied while they weren’t going racing in 2020 – ended up in the construction of a replica of the team’s Bathurst 24Hour winning Nations Cup Monaro 427Cs.

You’ve got to hand it to Garry Rogers and his son, Barry. They could have laid staff off, they could have put the business into hibernation for the year – and no one could have criticised them for it. Don’t forget that GRM’s main focus these days is not Supercars but rather the TCR touring cars and S5000 openwheelers. While Supercars did manage to put a season together last year, after the aborted Australian Grand Prix meeting the TCR cars and S5000s did not turn a single lap of racing in 2020. What is a professional race team if there is no racing?

Rather than batten down the hatches, GRM dared to dream. Those Monaros in 2002-03 represented a fantastic period in the team’s history, a truly magical time, and the intention at the time had been to build another car for Garry Rogers himself to race. So in the cleanup when they started discovering all these spare 427C Monaro bits they’d forgotten they still had, Barry Rogers got the idea – and Garry said, why not?

The car has since been sold, and therefore the team has recouped on its investment. However, as our story outlines, this was far from a simple case of knocking up a car from old parts stored out the back. A fair slab of cash and a lot of time and a lot of hard work went into building this thing.

It was as much a tribute to the GRM workforce as it was a means of giving them something to do. As it happens, many of the guys involved in the replica had been there back in the day, back when the original cars were done. This new 427C, therefore, is part of their own history, and something they can take personal pride in as a result.

And what a thing it is. A brand new, purpose-built and ready-to-race 7.0-litre Holden – or, as Garry Rogers himself likes to think, the last new Holden ever built.

What it also is, is a brand-new racecar which almost certainly will never be raced.

There is nowhere to race it. No category exists in 2021 for it – the closest would be Sports Sedans, but the 427C’s 7.0-litre V8 engine is some 2.0-litres over the Sports Sedan engine capacity limit.

But in a way that just makes it even more special. It exists for no reason other than because, well, why not?

And if we ever rid ourselves of the damned virus, this car will be more than just a Bathurst 24 Hour Monaro 427C replica. It’ll be a reminder of the bold and brilliant way one small business in Melbourne negotiated its way through the pandemic.

Elsewhere this issue we’re celebrating 50 years since the running of what some still say is the greatest race meeting ever held in Australia. It was Oran Park’s rst hosting of the Australian Touring Car Championship, and it attracted a crowd so big that all roads into the track on race day were blocked until early afternoon.

It certainly makes for an interesting counterpoint to the Covid-affected Supercars series half a century on, where the size of the crowd is something largely determined by government health experts!

Our look back at that ’71 Oran Park encounter also shows just how far our touring car series has evolved in 50 years – compared to today’s polished, highly professional travelling Supercars circus, the eld of Improved Production cars that lined up at the Sydney circuit that day looks ragtag and uncompetitive.

Still, that Oran Park race also proved the old motor racing maxim that it only takes two cars to make a race. And when those two cars are Bob Jane’s Camaro ZL1 427 and Allan Moffat Trans-Am Boss Mustang 302 (along with Norm Beechey’s Monaro GTS 350 and Ian Geoghegan’s Mustang), well, you don’t need much else.