Managing Moffat
One of Horsley’s honorary roles within CAMS was as official measurer for the ATCC. He determined whether a prospective new model ‘measured up’ as a touring car. The rotary-engined Mazda RX7 was released in 1978 and was ostensibly a sports car. Not that this was necessarily a problem as ‘sports cars’ like the Chevrolet Camaro and various Alfa Romeo models were eligible. However, its fate lay with the measuring tape.
“Nobody had bothered to measure the Mazda and I went down to the docks in Melbourne to measure the RX7 and it measured perfectly,” he recalls. “There was no reason to stop it racing.”
CAMS tentatively gave the RX7 the greenlight in late 1979 but over the next year ruminated over that decision, leaving its chief proponent, Ford exile Moffat, in limbo. It wasn’t until midway through 1981 that the pieces began to fall in place.
What Moffat proposed was for Mazda Australia to own all the assets, including the cars and equipment, whilst he built the cars and operated the team. Mazda had one proviso. It wanted to appoint a manager to oversee the program. In what could be seen as a ‘gamekeeper turned poacher’ scenario, given his role in the RX7’s homologation, that man was Allan Horsley. “I was called the team manager, though liaison officer would be another description. I worked for Mazda, not Moffat. The Peter Stuyvesant sponsorship was a separate Moffat deal (that paid his salary).”
From 1981 to 1984, Moffat’s Mazda RX7 team competed in four endurance championships (including Bathurst and three ATCCs. Moffat won the ATCC in 1983 and his best Bathurst results were a pair of thirds in ‘81 and ‘84 and second in ‘83. It was often said that the nimble RX7 was not suited to Bathurst’s unique topography, a point that Horsley disputes.
“I wouldn’t say that. It was particularly good at all of the tracks we raced. We were always well up on the grid and the RX7 was bulletproof. One year we ran our Bathurst engine at the Surfers Paradise endurance round.” As for Bathurst ’81? “We should have won that race if it hadn’t been stopped.”
In 1984 it was announced that international Group A would replace the current Group C touring car class. What to do? Moffat and Horsley sourced a Mazda 929 and put a Ford V8 engine in. “It was done at the Moffat’s workshop in Melbourne,” he recalls. “The V8 fitted perfectly and the gear stick came through the same hole. We took it to Sandown and it sat there with twin exhaust pipes and nobody twigged at all. The plan was to continue racing with Mazda in Group A but homologation was incredibly expensive and Mazda Japan didn’t want to do it.” The 929 was converted back to a road car.
The final hurrah for the Mazda RX7 program was the 1985 Daytona 24 Hours, where Kevin Bartlett and Peter McLeod joined regulars Moffat and Gregg Hansford. Despite impressing the Americans, their RX7 crashed after 482 laps. Horsley and Mazda Australia wound up the team. “Not all RX7s were sold at auction, but all engines, spares and pit equipment were sold,” he says.