Allan Moffat's Most Excellent Trans-Am Adventure

So for my birthday this year I was given Allan Moffat's new book, Climbing The Mountain, and it's pretty damn good if I may say so. The life and career of the first of Australia's great Ford heroes was always going to be an interesting read, and although I'm not even close to finished, I have to recommend it. Whether you lean toward Ford, Holden or neither, it's a ripping read that's already done a marvellous job of clearing up some of the more confusing parts of his career.

This post not sponsored by Allen & Unwin, though I'm open to offers, Allan. Er, "Allen..."

I mean, let's be honest here: we all know he came to Australia because his father worked for (no muscle car jokes, okay?) for Massey-Ferguson, who transferred Moffat Sr around the world as needed. And we all know he burst onto the local tintop scene in early 1969 in that iconic Coca-Cola Mustang, a modern Athena seemingly born fully-armed and ready for war. But in between is half a decade where it gets awfully tangled thanks to his habit of flying back to the States whenever the opportunities ran out here. If you're only reading the Australian race reports he seems to flit in and out like a ghost, contesting this or that important weekend and then disappearing again for months – not well-known enough for his absence to warrant an explanation, and therefore simply not mentioned, as if he never existed.

But that mid-1960s period, with one foot on each side of the Pacific, is probably the most interesting stage of Moffat's career, and it just happens to tie in with the silver age of Indianapolis and the early days of Trans-Am, two of the greatest racing eras the world has ever seen.

1964: Birth of a Dream
Moffat was bitten by the racing bug before he even moved to Australia, while his father was still working in South Africa: his first taste of motorsport came at Grand Central Circuit near Johannesburg, an outdated track soon to be replaced by Kyalami. In Australia, he had his first actual steer in a Triumph TR3A in 1962, though this was strictly as a hobby while studying at the newly-opened Monash University (named after Sir John Monash, the famed Australian general of the First World War – had the war continued into 1919 he'd been tipped to receive a Field Marshal's baton and become the next supreme Allied commander, and his plans for that campaign season apparently looked a lot like blitzkrieg, but that's another story). After failing in his studies he was booted out of the university and limped back to Canada, where he worked door-to-door selling cookware.

Moffat's TR3 chasing Rocky Tresise's MGA at Calder Park. Holden might've conquered the mainstream, but in 1963 a performance car was still British. (source)

But then in May he took a trip to see the Indianapolis 500, and his fate was sealed. On the grid that year was our then-double F1 World Champion, Jack Brabham, driving the John Zink-Urschel Trackburner (an Offenhauser-powered derivative of his latest Brabham F1 car). Far ahead of him on the grid was the reigning World Champion Jim Clark and his teammate Dan Gurney, driving the Ford-powered Lotus 34. Indy stars like A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones and Rodger Ward also littered the entry list. But the race is probably best remembered for the ghastly fate of Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs. Early in the race MacDonald, driving one of the awkward slow-slung Mickey Thompson roadsters, lost control in Turn 4, hit the wall and rebounded into Sachs; MacDonald was killed instantly, while poor Sachs – the "Clown Prince of Indy," with a knack for improv comedy that just begged for a tape recorder – suffered for several days before dying of his burns. That all happened only a hundred or so metres from where Moffat was sitting, so it speaks volumes about his commitment that this didn't deter him from his motor racing dreams. Instead, he remembers that as the day they were set in stone.

I can clearly remember the day I decided motor racing was going to be my life. I was sitting in a grandstand at the Indianapolis 500 in May of 1964, just a Joe Blow nobody, and Jimmy Clark was driving there for Lotus. The right-rear tyre blew on his car, practically in front of where I was sitting, and I couldn't get over what a fantastic technician he was to keep it under control, drift it down and bring it safely to a stop.

I made up my mind, sitting there in the grandstand, that I was going to become involved in serious motor racing. Ultimately, the idea was to be driving. I just didn't know how I was going to do it. – Allan Moffat, Australian Muscle Car #77/78

Brabham's Indy campaign that year was more curious than glorious. Interestingly, Moffat's book corroborates the claim that Jack drove through MacDonald's fireball, even though the footage apparently shows he didn't.

Not knowing what else to do, Moffat simply went to the next race meeting, found the teams working on the cars, and hung around until they noticed him. That meeting was probably the Watkins Glen round of the U.S. Road Racing Championship on 28 June, which included a GT class for cars under 2-litres. That sort of displacement wasn't exactly America's forté, so to represent them in this class Ford called on their partners from across the pond.

I went down to Watkins Glen, about 500 kilometres from home in Canada, and I decided to stand all day at the cyclone fence and watch. Ford of Britain had sold lefthand-drive Cortinas to Ford of America to promote the new Cortina and I noticed the fellows in the green Lotus uniforms were always walking up to the water tap to wash their hands. So I started asking questions. One of them eventually asked why I was asking the questions and I said, "Tell me where you're going next and I'll show you what I can do."

Well, wouldn't you know it, the next race was 2,500 kilometres away, at Des Moines in Iowa, and when I arrived Ray Parsons, who was an Australian, told me to find some pails and water. I was in the best university now as far as my future.

After four or five months, at the final race of the season, I asked the Ford representative where they were storing the cars over winter. He said they were being sold. That was Peter Quenet and I asked if I could buy one. He said "What are you going to do with an ex-Jimmy Clark Cortina?" and I said I would ship it to Australia and try to win the touring car championship. But the cars were $4,500 and my savings from the saucepans was only $1,500.

If I thought it had been hard standing at the back of the pits for a day, it was nothing compared to talking sweetly to my dad and asking for $3,000. He said, "You're wasting your time," but he lent me the money.

Quenet was so impressed that I got the money together, he said Ford would send my car to the Canadian GP meeting at Mosport and I could participate. It was a 12-lapper or something and I came third. – Allan Moffat, AMC #77/78

And that was how Allan became the proud owner of a Lotus Cortina, a fairly elite club in 1964. He entered his new toy in the inaugural Sandown 6 Hour in late November, which he could've won if he'd had just a bit more experience: upon finding himself in the lead, he suddenly realised he had no idea what to do next, and promptly crashed. Nevertheless, that year Big Pete Geoghegan had emerged with the first of his record five championships in a standard Cortina GT (not a Lotus), so Moffat wasn't merely being over-optimistic in thinking he could become champion in an ex-works car. And maybe he could've, had it not been for the sudden rule changes that came in 1965.

1965: The Water Boy
What happened in 1965 was the Mustang. CAMS imposed a raft of rule changes that included a strict limit on cylinder overboring, which meant you needed something that came with a big, powerful engine to start with – something like the new V8-powered Ford Mustang. A Cortina, even an ex-works Lotus Cortina, was now just a class car – and even then he was sharing the class with Jim McKeown, who was rapidly turning his Cortina into the fastest in the world. Moffat finished 6th overall in the ATCC race in April, 1.8 seconds behind McKeown. He also played a part in the famous 70,000-Mile Durability Run, the reckless gamble that saved Ford Australia, where he proved solid but unspectacular – which is not a criticism, as solid-but-unspectacular was exactly what the Run called for. But it was no way to get noticed.

At the wheel of "The Dreamboat," an XP Falcon Hardtop with 200ci Super Pursuit six. "Moffat came, drove, did okay but wasn’t outstanding," was Harry Firth's recollection. "He was a bit rough, but he was young and still learning at that point."

So, weighing his options, he left the Cortina in Melbourne and returned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This year he was at least on the right side of the fence, having talked himself onto Team Lotus just as everything came together. Their driver Jim Clark had already won the South African GP on New Year's Day, then the Tasman Series in Australia and New Zealand over the northern hemisphere winter. Clark was also due to win the Belgian, French, British, Dutch and German GPs in succession to claim his second F1 crown, as well as the British and French F2 championships. Now, at Indianapolis in May, he was also about to become the first non-American to win the 500 since 1916. The team also had the advantage of Colin Chapman's innovative new car, the Lotus 38, fitted with offset suspension for left-turn-only oval racing; they had the powerful quad-cam Ford V8, which was making 500hp on its USAC-spec methanol fuel; and they had the skilled pit work of the Wood Brothers pit crew from NASCAR, lads who could get a car refuelled and re-tyred faster than anyone else in the world. It was, almost literally, an all-star lineup.

And Allan's job in the midst of all this glittering talent? He was the water boy. No, literally. His job in the pit stops was to hang out a modified broomstick with a paper cup on the end so Clark could rehydrate himself in the midst of what was then a three-and-a-half hour marathon. "There's a photograph of the team on the grid," wrote Moffat in Climbing The Mountain: "Jim in the car, Colin Chapman alongside and me at the rear quarter." Well, here is that photograph:

Yep, the dweeb with the glasses, second from the right.

Having been involved in one of the biggest motorsport coups the company had ever pulled off, Ford was ready to grant a favour. When Ford racing coordinator Peter Quenet hinted his Lotus Cortina might be welcome Stateside, Moffat didn’t hesitate.

My racing in the U.S.A. began with a telegram from Quenet at Ford, asking if I’d like to base myself in Detroit with the two sister cars to my Cortina. It was Sports Car Club of America racing in 1965 and I had a fee. Are you ready for this? It was $300 a weekend. “You don’t have to win anything, that’s your starting money,” he told me. – Allan Moffat, AMC #77

Moffat was now, pinch yourself, a paid racing driver, albeit in fairly minor events that weren't too far from Detroit.

First time out at the Detroit track, Waterford Hills, my Lotus Cortina blew away the local Chevrolet Corvair heroes Don Eichstaedt and Jerry Thompson. The win was made even better because both were engineers in the General Motors technical centre. The Ford guys at the track were ecstatic. – Allan Moffat, Climbing The Mountain

He also took part in the U.S.'s most important sedan-based road-course event, the Marlboro 12 Hour. Confusingly this had nothing to do with the cigarette giant, taking place at the tiny Marlboro Motor Raceway in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Moffat and his vaunted co-driver Bob Tullius finished well down the order, however, when Tullius preferred walking back to the pits rather than getting a broken Cortina moving again. After that it was back to Australia for another attempt at the Sandown 6 Hour, again coming agonisingly close to victory but failing to finish thanks to a broken diff. But as the curtain fell on 1965, the days of close-but-no-cigar were almost over for Allan Moffat.

1966: Tilting at Windmills
And here we come to it, for in 1966 the Sports Car Club of America inaugurated the Trans-American Sedan Racing Championship, or Trans-Am. After the release of the original Mustang in 1964 summoned the pony car market into being, Ford’s rivals had scrambled to catch up – Chrysler with the Plymouth Barracuda and Dodge Dart, GM with the Chevrolet Corvair Monza – and it occurred to the Sports Car Club of America that here was a golden opportunity to escalate Detroit’s pony war with motor racing. For 1966, they organised a new production-based category for cars that met a 1,315kg minimum weight, a 116-inch minimum wheelbase, and most importantly, a 1,000 minimum sales figure, divided into two classes – Group I for engines under 2.0 litres (colloquially known as U2); and Group II for those under the absolute limit of 5.0 litres, which actually was a restriction by American standards (NASCAR still allowed 7-litre monsters), usually known as O2. Since the SCCA was mostly interested in sports cars, obviously, each race would have a minimum duration of 2½ hours, throwing the focus squarely on endurance.

To win the inaugural Trans-Am championship, Ford boss Lee Iacocca had hired Carroll Shelby to prepare a special version of the ‘66 Mustang. Shelby was the right man for the job, having made his name putting Ford’s 221ci small-block V8 into the AC Ace to create the Shelby Cobra, and last year had built the GT350R Mustang for competition in other SCCA classes (and provided the parts to Australians like Pete Geoghegan). Shelby still knew his business, and converted an initial 252 K-code Mustang into Shelby GT350s (no longer officially badged as Mustangs) for homologation, with another 1,100 or so following just to top up the kitty. The rival Plymouth Barracudas were in trouble: even if their 273ci displacement wasn't so far behind Ford's 289, Chrysler's LA V8 was a much heavier design than Ford's Windsor, and the relatively staid 'Cuda had none of the quivering sex appeal of a GT350.

The Rainville/Johnson "Team Starfish" Barracuda at Green Valley, Texas. (source)

Not that any of this was Moffat's concern, of course. As the year began he was not racing a muscle car, and for that matter was not racing in Trans-Am. Moffat's mission at this point was to race his Lotus Cortina in the SCCA's lower Central Division, or CENDIV, which basically meant the Midwest including the Michigan peninsula but minus the rest of the Great Lakes. It was a tough but rewarding period in his life, where money was tight but the results were coming, and with success he cast his eyes upon higher things.

Ford's works team in Trans-Am's U2 class was Alan Mann Racing, a team on the rise in the British Saloon Car Championship and basically making a cameo in the States for the money. Their red-and-gold Cortinas certainly looked the part, but despite high-calibre drivers and upgraded BRM-tuned Group 2 engines, the Sebring 4 Hour, the inaugural round of Trans-Am, had been won by Jochen Rindt in the excellent Alfa Romeo GTA. After that, Moffat reasoned that surely Ford wouldn't mind if the works team had a little backup? Not waiting for permission, Moffat loaded up his car and spares and headed for the Mid-America 300, Round 2 of Trans-Am, completely forsaking the next CENDIV round.

The Alan Mann Cortina of Sir John Whitmore and Charlie Barns, as seen at Green Valley, Texas.

The now-defunct Mid-America Raceway was located near Wentzville, Missouri, and it was a tricky beast, 4.5km around with lots of right-angle turns, all surrounded by tall pines. Nothing daunted, Moffat arrived several days early and spent that time pounding around in his Econoline tow van, getting in as much practice as his petrol money would allow. His extra laps paid off when he took U2 pole position, faster than the Alfas, and faster than Alan Mann's driver, our own Frank Gardner. That performance won him the admiration of one Mike Babich, 2IC in Goodyear's racing activities. Unfortunately, when Babich ask the Mann team if they'd mind awfully loaning Moffat a proper set of tyres for the race, it earned him the enmity of their team manager – none other than Howard Marsden, who curtly refused to give up any of his spare rubber. That was for the best though, as Goodyear overcompensated like hell at the next round.

The next race was in New Hampshire in about five weeks and Mike said to me, "We'll get a truck that’s twice as big as those English guys and fill it up with tyres just for you." – Allan Moffat, AMC #77

Meanwhile, the class win at Mid-America had gone to an Austrian racing under the Australian flag, a Cooma-raised, Chicago-based driver by the name of Horst Kwech (I swear, early Trans-Am was as overrun with Australians as Hollywood is today). Like Moffat, Kwech was a privateer living hand-to-mouth, racing against the factory in one of the fourteen aluminium-bodied GTAs Alfa Romeo had built especially for Trans-Am. Like Moffat, he was dipping in and out of Trans-Am and CENDIV at need, and their careers were due to cross and re-cross like figure skaters over the years ahead. They raced each other again at Grattan Raceway, Michigan, the next CENDIV round, and this time Moffat emerged the victor.

Kwech's Alfa at Round 4, the Virginia International Raceway, where he shared the drive with Gaston Andry.

Then came the big one – Moffat’s second-ever Trans-Am start at Bryar Motorsport Park in Loudon, New Hampshire, on 10 July 1966. "It had been a go-kart track until its owner, Keith Bryar, a Baptist minister, extended it to 2.5 kilometres," Moffat wrote. "Alan Mann arrived with three cars and Jacky Ickx, Sir John Whitmore and Frank Gardner but, long story short, who do you think is the fastest Cortina in qualifying?" And it only got better on Sunday, when Moffat won the race – not his class, the race. He took on Plymouth Barracudas, Dodge Darts, Shelby Mustangs, Alan Mann's Cortinas, Kwech's Alfa, and the works Alfas, and flogged the lot of them. "I won the race and got a cheque for $1,200, which might as well have been $12 million," he said. Moffat had been so successful in fact that it triggered a protest from Alan Mann Racing, who refused to believe their works-backed car, driven by reigning British Touring Car Champion Frank Gardner, could be beaten by a nobody. They demanded Moffat surrender his engine for checking by BRM Competitions U.K., but it came through clean as a whistle.

Indeed, by reacting like a team under pressure Alan Mann Racing had only raised Moffat's profile even further, and after the Bryar result (while in the U.K. to ensure BRM did nothing funny to his race engine), Moffat was able to convince Team Lotus linchpin Ray Parsons to join him. That was a brilliant coup, because Parsons was also the Lotus team manager in Trans-Am, a job he did basically by default as he considered himself first and foremost a driver. By hiring him, Moffat effectively halved the number of works Ford teams on the grid, which was sure to make the company far more amenable to supporting his own burgeoning operation. With Parsons on board he needed a second car, so they acquired a spare Cortina body, fitted it out with all Ray’s special parts, painted it gold with a green stripe and roof, and took it racing in the Marlboro 12 Hour.

Moffat/Fisher, again at Virginia.

That hit a stumbling block when they finished nowhere after finding water in their fuel, something Moffat refuses to consider an accident. But he was now basically a team – Allan Moffat Racing was in business – and Peter Quenet was keen to have him in the field for the final two races of 1966, the six-hour Pan-American Endurance Race at Green Valley Raceway, Texas, and the Riverside 4 Hour in California. Four cars was definitely better than two with the Alfas to contend with. To maximise his chances, Moffat made the radical suggestion of getting some help from back home in Australia – Jon Leighton, Moffat’s co-driver from Sandown in '64, and the Grey Fox and then-Ford hero, Harry Firth.

The Trans-Am thing came about like this. Moffat talked to Ford, because I had a contract with Ford, and asked them could he borrow me for a couple of races over there. So they said yes, but that he’d have to find the wherewithal to run it. I was able to help a bit, because you have to remember that by then Queens Avenue was well up and running and we had already done the GT 500, so I knew a fair bit about Cortinas. – Harry Firth, AMC: Ford and I

Green Valley Raceway was basically a drag strip with aspirations: the main feature was its long front straight, which was of course the drag strip itself and provided ample racing room – but the circuit looping back around to the start/finish line was just the dragster return road, which was far too narrow. The two straights ran parallel only 20 metres apart – cars would be nudging 200km/h going one way, while those on the return leg would be doing similar speeds in the opposite direction only a few metres away, with no barrier between them. There was also a major hump in the main straight where the cars would frequently get airborne. This was where the SCCA planned to hold a six-hour day-to-night race, starting at 4pm and finishing in the darkness of 10pm. And it was raining heavily. It's a miracle no-one was killed.

Green Valley Raceway, outside Forth Worth, Texas, was a combination drag strip and 2.6-kilometre road course. It lacked drainage, relied on hay bales for safety and the rubber laid down by drag cars made grip questionable. And it rained. I aqua-planed off and hit one of the hay bales. It was a big lesson.

Harry Firth was fantastic. The race was half-day and half-night and, when darkness fell, he drove like the rally star he was. He pulled back four of the six laps I'd lost and brought us up to second in class behind Kwech's Alfa. Then a throttle cable fell off and he dropped another six laps and had to start again. This time he got into "man possessed" mode. On a track with questionable grip, in the pitch dark, he set a new under-2-litre lap record. We finished 4th in class and 9th outright. Ray Parsons with Jon Leighton was 3rd in class and 7th outright. – Allan Moffat, Climbing The Mountain

The seven-race calendar was pretty compacted at this stage of the year however, so there was no time for licking wounds.

One week later, on 18 September 1966, we were racing at RIR, Riverside International Raceway, the race track stuck in the middle of a Californian sand dune.

To get there we drove 2,200 kilometres across the bottom of America in two days and then Harry surprised us again. He removed the cylinder heads from both our cars and took them to a local machine shop where he performed some magic. – Allan Moffat, Climbing The Mountain

They put brand new BRM Group 2 engines in the Lotus Cortinas. I took their last year's Lotus, took it to pieces and gave it a bit of a fix. I took the cylinder head off and changed the inlet ports and combustion chambers, and changed a few other things on the car – and it passed theirs in a straight line at Riverside. – Harry Firth, AMC: Ford and I

Having worked his magic however Firth came down with the flu, leaving Moffat to drive without relief, which wasn't enough to play the spoiler for Ford. Frank Gardner won the U2 class for Alan Mann Racing, the factory team at last claiming a win. Horst Kwech's 2nd place gave Alfa Romeo everything they needed to take the U2 manufacturer's title – a sting for Ford, but a minor one. Shelby's Mustangs had done the job in O2, seeing off the Barracudas and Darts to bring the first Trans-Am title home to Dearborn, but only by a whisker – only a final win at Riverside for Jerry Titus had put them over the line. Ford took the lesson to heart: for 1967, the factory team would have their full support.

1967: Cougar Love
To be honest, 1966 was the peak of Allan Moffat's Trans-Am activities, as everything from here on would be a series of cameos. The reason was, of course, when Ford swore to give the works team full backing for 1967, they weren't talking about the U2 works team. The Cortina was already losing its edge to Alfa Romeo, and now Porsche had convinced the FIA that their 911 Carrera was actually a sedan. There was no point investing in a class that was getting ever more competitive yet brought no marketing benefits, so Dearborn basically forgot the U2 class existed, benching Alan Mann Racing and merely offering $300 "incentive" to each Cortina entered in a Trans-Am race.

One of Moffat's Lotus Cortinas at Texas.

America of course had fallen in love with the big V8s racing at the front, so that's where Ford focused their attention and dollars. In fact, they might've overdone it. Shelby American had just coughed up the '67 Shelby GT500, a car you might know as Eleanor, but this time his operation wouldn't be the only game in town. For reasons known only to themselves, Ford also brought in Bud Moore Engineering from NASCAR and asked him to prep a couple of the new Cougars from the Lincoln-Mercury division, basically an "up-market" Mustang. This ignited a season-long battle between Shelby's Mustangs and Moore's Cougars, despite the fact that under the skin they were virtually the same.

Moffat was grateful for Ford's $300 starting money, of course, but it wasn't really enough to get ahead. With Trans-Am expanded from 7 to 12 rounds, the new season-opener was a 300-miler at Daytona Speedway's infield road course, not exactly friendly to a piddling 1.6-litre Kent engine. To maximise his chances he called on his bitter rival in Australia, Jim McKeown, and basically asked if he could borrow his engine. Exactly how good McKeown's Lotus Cortina was is a story for another day, but suffice to say Lotus quoted an official power figure of 78 kW at 5,500rpm for the engine in stock form. A Jim Clark factory race engine was more like 127. McKeown's homebrew modified engine peaked at no less than 145 kW. Moffat had now raced against the very best in the world, and he'd seen with his own eyes that McKeown's was the fastest.

Jim was cagey, but agreed on the basis of "take my engine, take me." Sadly the race at Daytona ended with a silly mechanical failure, which put paid to any hope of convincing Peter Quenet he needed a U2 works team this year, leaving Moffat struggling. To maximise his earnings Moffat entered three cars in every race, taking pay drivers to handle them (a false economy, as they drove so hard their money was usually eaten up in repairs), and even took to transporting high-octane race fuel for the other teams. But the Lotus Cortina failed to win its class all year as the dynasty of the 911 began in earnest, leaving Moffat and his team living virtually hand-to-mouth.

It wasn't until Round 5, at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, that he had his next big break. One of the Mustang owners had turfed his regular driver (for reasons unknown), and needed a seat-filler at short notice. Moffat didn't need to be asked twice: 300 miles later, they'd finished 3rd outright, only to be disqualified for refuelling with the engine running.

His new boss wasn't fazed, however. He entered Moffat in the Manufacturers' Challenge, a non-championship round at Watkins Glen, where the main opposition was Roger Penske's new Chevrolet Camaro Z28 driven by Mark Donohue. Later, in 1972, Donohue was to deliver the first of a record number of Indianapolis victories for Penske, and his close partnership with Penske would carry over to Europe when Roger started his own Formula 1 team in 1975. But in 1967 they were merely GM’s leading lights in Trans-Am – largely thanks to Penske's eternal quest for "the unfair advantage."

And didn't it look sumptuous in that Sunoco blue. (source)

It wasn't until the end of the season, after Donohue had steered it to victories in the last two rounds in Las Vegas, Nevada and Kent, Washington, that it was discovered this car had been illegally acid-dipped at Lockheed Aerospace in California. That reduced its weight from 1,325kg to less than 1,200, but it left the panels virtually see-through. Concerned with the structural rigidity, Donohue pointed out that he was being asked to risk his hide in a vehicle now made of tinfoil; Penske responded by fitting a NASCAR-style roll cage, the first ever seen in Trans-Am.

That's how Roger Penske rolls. I mention it here because, although Moffat doesn't outright state it was Donohue who won the race at the Glen, and was subsequently disqualified when it emerged they'd run a 5.7-litre engine in a race limited to 5.0, it does come right after a page describing his first meeting with Roger, and how he gave himself away as an arrogant prick. Being such a minor event, I can't find any results listed elsewhere to check it out. But either way, the first car across the line copped a DSQ, leaving the 2nd-placed car – Moffat's – the real winner.

After that, his phone never stopped ringing, so he was among the first people called up when Ford started looking for extra drivers in the tail end of the season. Chevrolet's new Camaro hadn't had a great start to the season, getting up to speed only slowly, but because the Mustangs and Cougars had been competing as separate brands, taking points off each other, only a couple of wins would be needed to make Chevrolet champions. A panicked Ford had put up the bat signal, calling for every driver they could get.

Towards the end of 1967 I was back in the States and I got a call, asking if I'd like to drive a Mercury Cougar in the last four rounds of the Trans-Am Series. It turned out every Ford car was needed in the field at Kent in Washington to get in front of Mark Donohue in a Camaro.

I painted the Cougar up in Aussie colours, green and gold. I was running 5th and when he came up behind me I knew the job was to make my car a bit wider. I held him out for two laps and then he did some crazy kamikaze dive-bomb to get past me.

That night I'm at the dinner table with the mechanics and Bud Moore is at another table. I see Donohue coming, and can see the glare in his eyes and he says to me: "Been in this business long?"

I said: "I'm learning every day and I've had a few successes."

Donohue replies: "If I can make a suggestion, if you think you're going to get anywhere, you're wrong. You’re just an asshole."

I went over to Bud Moore and told him what Donohue had said, and Moore said, "If you hadn't done it, then I would have called you an asshole." – Allan Moffat, AMC #77

Admittedly, however, this end-of-season stint riding a Cougar didn't exactly cover him in glory, with three DNFs in four races. Only in the finale at Kent did he manage to finish, and that was out of the points. But the Fords had done it, Shelby's Mustangs taking a narrow 2-point victory over Moore's Cougars, leaving the Camaros outclassed.

1968: Kraftwerk
Trans-Am had enjoyed a meteoric rise in status, so for 1968 GM would be providing “back door” support (to get around GM’s corporate racing ban) to several private teams running Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds. Plymouth’s Barracudas would meanwhile be supplanted by a new fleet of Dodge Challengers, and later, in March, the American Motor Corporation (AMC) would have a brace of their new Javelins ready to roll.

Having learned their lesson – again – Ford wisely shut down the intra-brand fighting for the 1968 season, electing to have both Shelby and Moore run Mustangs. That left Moffat competing with the other late-season ring-ins for one of the four factory seats available. There was a chance, a slight chance, because at the first two rounds of 1968, those four seats technically became eight: Round 1 was the Daytona 24 Hours, run concurrently with the World Sportscar Championship, while Round 2 was the 12 Hours of Sebring. Such long events would require co-drivers, so at the Shelby team, Moffat was paired with – of all people – Horst Kwech in the white #2 Mustang, while the red #1 was entrusted to Jerry Titus and Indy (and F1) driver Ronnie Bucknum. Bucknum however had made it clear he wouldn't be sticking around after the opening long-distance races, so there was every reason to try and make a splash.

Thankfully, this is now getting into an era with copious documentation, so there's no shortage of YouTube gold to dig up. Here's a rundown of the '68 Daytona 24 Hours – Moffat shows up at 10:00, just don't blink!

Although the Titus/Bucknum car went on to win the Trans-Am portion of the race (and finish an amazing 4th overall, behind only the Porsche 907 Long Tails that staged a formation 1-2-3 finish), the Moffat/Kwech sister car didn't last the night after a spring tower tore free. The problem first appeared during Kwech's stint, but he cunningly made sure Moffat was at the wheel when the car stopped.

Well, off we go, and the start the race about two in the afternoon from memory. In the dark, I'm up, Horst gets out of the car and doesn't say anything to me. But I noticed that the steering was a bit wiggly.

Off the back straight, I hit Turn 3 and I see this shoot of sparks coming from the left-front fender – it's like Guy Fawkes night. I couldn’t come in after one lap, so the second time I get up there and not only are there sparks coming out but I'm sliding up the centre lane. A Porsche 917 [sic] went by me and, I’m not kidding, missed me by one centimetre.

I got back to the pits and I said, "What did you think, sending me out in that wreck?" At the front, the spring had broken away. That was the only time I drove for Shelby. Horst chatted himself into the drive. But, as it turned out, it was a blessing in disguise for me, given the engine problems they’d have that year. – Allan Moffat, AMC #77

Things didn't go any better at Sebring, though at least Kwech was the one behind the wheel when the engine blew. Sadly however, that pretty much set the tone for Ford's 1968 season. They'd won Daytona by sticking to the powerful and reliable 289ci Windsor V8, which had almost never gone wrong in the previous two seasons, but now the factory was insisting they use a brand new and untested engine design.

That engine was a new 302ci "tunnel-port" V8, and it was here that the trouble started. The key was the new tunnel-port heads, so named because the inlet tracts were arrow-straight and so big that the pushrod shafts had to literally "tunnel" through the centre of the ports, rather than between them. The intention was maximum airflow at high rpm: the reality was a complete absence of low-rev torque, meaning the drivers had to rev it like crazy to make it work (8,500rpm shift points were standard, with occasional blasts to 9,000), which exacerbated a hidden oiling problem that led to catastrophic engine failures. The factory shipped the crated engines to Shelby to install directly in the two team Mustangs, leading to what team manager Lew Spencer called "six-engine weekends": both team cars would usually blow an engine in practice, qualifying, and the race – each.

Who the hell thought that was a brilliant idea?

That left the races to Mark Donohue, again driving Roger Penske's fast and reliable Chevrolet Camaro Z28. One of the team's two cars was last year's acid-dipped cheater, affectionately nicknamed "The Lightweight"; the other was a '68 model that was legal, having never been near an acid bath. SCCA had warned the team would face the banhammer if they brought the Lightweight to the track again, but Roger Penske did what Roger Penske wanted.

"So we pulled a tricky stunt," Donohue later recounted to Chevy engineer and author Paul Van Valkenburgh. "I carefully shaped the number circles so they could be easily interchanged between the number 16 for one car and number 15 for the other. First we went through [tech] inspection with the heavy [and legal] number 15 car, then we went back to our garage on the far side of the track, put the number 16 on it, and went back through inspection again. Nobody said anything."

"By changing the numbers around again," Donohue recalled, "and entering the track where our garage was, instead of through the pits, we even used the dipped car to qualify for both cars. Funny to think we could put one over on them like that." – The Lightweight Camaro, caranddriver.com

As a result of these and other little hoodwinks, solid prep and operation, and Fords blowing up left, right and centre, Donohue won an astonishing ten out of twelve races that year, including an incredible run of eight in a row from Sebring to Bryar. The 1968 Trans-Am trophy went convincingly to General Motors. Apart from the Daytona 24, the Mustang teams won only one other race, the second-last at Riverside (courtesy of Horst Kwech).

Yes, Moffat was well enough out of it. Without a race drive to pay the bills he was effectively unemployed, until a chance meeting with Roy Lunn got him his next foot in the door. Lunn was the head of Kar Kraft, a Ford-owned but virtually off-the-books high-performance skunkworks that had been instrumental in the development of the GT40. He offered Moffat a job as a test driver virtually on the spot.

In his book, Allan was at pains to point out that what most people think of when they hear "test driver" is Fiorano, Ferrari's storied on-site test track in Maranello. In the U.S., where industry is done on a geographic scale, things weren't such a quaint artisanal setup: Ford's River Rouge plant covered nearly 385 hectares, had its own docks on the river and included its own interior railway, electricity plant and steel mill, making it capable of turning raw materials into fully finished cars in a single location. One-and-a-half kilometres away, you'd find the tarmac of Ford's Dearborn Proving Ground, originally built as Ford Airport, the only privately-owned permanent dirigible mast in the world. Because Henry Ford was rich enough to live in a steampunk fantasy-land, he tooled around in his very own zeppelin, and needed somewhere to park it.

Just the kind of personal transport you'd expect of the man who dreamed up Fordlandia.

So Moffat spent the bulk of 1968 testing Ford prototypes, which was better than it could have been, but probably less exciting than you're imagining. He was working on some very sexy machinery – the upcoming Boss 429, Boss 302 and Mach 2 Mustangs for example – but all the same, it wasn't racing. "The engineers are in control, not the driver" he wrote, and added that, "sometimes you're doing nothing more than mileage accumulation, hour after hour." Then again...

At least I was revenue positive. For four months I worked hard, paid off my debts, got bored. It was mid-summer in Detroit, stinking hot and I was pacing the cage. – Allan Moffat, Climbing The Mountain

But – the really crucial detail – the job meant he was visible and known to company heavies like Jacque Passino, then-head of Ford's motorsport activities. It was Passino who exerted the pull to gift Moffat that stunning Boss 302 Mustang that looked so good in its red Coca-Cola livery...

...but that's a story for another time. 101 victories from 151 starts needs no elaboration.

So now you know. When Allan Moffat emerged from the U.S.A. in early 1969 with that piece of glory on his trailer, it wasn't lightning out of a clear blue sky: it was the culmination of years of hard work and yes, luck. I've come to despise the attitude that says luck doesn't mean anything, it's all hard work; that makes about as much sense as claiming it's all the other way around. In reality you need both: luck is striking oil in your backyard, hard work is having a bucket ready. In those hard years through the mid-1960s Allan had plenty of both, and maximised it. Most of all, I think the tale of this time helps dispel the traditional myth of Brock's raw talent versus Moffat's dogged hard work and technical nous. Yes, Allan had to work hard at his craft to get good at it, but so too did Peter – we forget that he was often less than brilliant during his first stint at the Holden Dealer Team, that Colin Bond was the team's real golden boy in those days. Allan just had the good fortune to serve his apprenticeship away from our eyes, in the U.S. of A. As Harry Firth wrote before his death:

That Trans-Am experience really put Moffat on the map in terms of driving. It was extremely competitive, cutthroat racing. At Riverside I spent two days going through things with him. You put a marker 100 yards before a corner, and 50 yards after. And you keep attacking that corner in all different ways until you get the ultimate quickest time around it. You do it on your own, or as if you were on a different part of the track trying to pass someone. He was a good pupil. He brought that back to Australia with him. – Harry Firth, AMC: Ford and I

Reaching for the Sky

The events of 1987 and the failure of the World Touring Car Championship rather knocked the wind out of Group A. The momentum had vanished, replaced by a hollow uncertainty and unease about where things were supposed to go from here. After 1987, just two manufacturers bothered homologating new cars for Group A in Australia – Holden, who had no other choice, and Nissan Australia.

The new HR31 Skyline wasn't really a feature of the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1988, and neither would it be in 1989, only coming into its own with some helpful rule adjustments in 1990. In season '88 you simply wouldn't have noticed if wasn't there: George Fury didn't give it its maiden outing until Round 5 in Adelaide, where he suffered an inglorious DNF; he didn't finish a race (a lowly 8th) until Round 7 at Sandown. Glenn Seton likewise didn't see the chequered flag until the finale at Oran Park, where he finished an unspectacular 6th.

Yet 1988 was where the HR31 had its awkward, unheralded birth, and the reality for the roadgoing version couldn't have been further from its staid on-track image. For Nissan Australia, the R31 was a make-or-break model.

When I Were A Lad
Confession time: although I'm a Ford driver from an old Ford family, I actually really like Nissans as well. This isn't just because I'm a Millennial and the R34 is God (although I am, and it is): it's also because when I was a kid, our family cars were Nissan Patrols (for which Dad gave my Land Cruiser-driving uncle no end of shit). Our first Patrol was a poverty-pack MQ wagon, a machine from an age when terms like "poverty pack" really meant something: with its brown plastic interior, it was only a gun rack and a rising sun badge away from being a troop carrier. Its former owners weren't the Army however, but the Central Mapping Authority, which explained its highly noticeable yellow-on-brown colour scheme (we called it Coco Pops, because again, kids). A consult with the Old Fart has revealed it had the 3.3-litre turbo-diesel SD33T engine, which gave it a scarcely-believable 70 kW at 3,800rpm and 237 Nm of torque at 1,800. I suspect ours had rather less, but Dad never let it hold us back. We took it on holiday to Fraser Island, and made a bundle of memories I'll treasure for a lifetime.

Like this, but in daffodil yellow. People were always telling us where we'd been. (Image via YouTube)

One of the best was negotiating Ngkala Rocks Bypass, a patch of diabolically soft sand about a third of the way from Waddy Point to the northenmost tip of the island. Here you had to leave the beach-highway and box around the aforementioned Ngkala Rocks: the complication was the sand here was so fine it was almost powder, and deep enough to swallow even high-riding 4x4s up to the guards. When we arrived it was already strewn with casualties, and we watched as a few more hopefuls had a go, got bogged, winched out and decided to quit while they were behind. Everyone was milling around letting more and more air out of their fat tyres, and one bloke wouldn't stop muttering about how not even "his best gear" was up to the job. Dad had a couple of goes and, being the incredible driver he is, somehow got us through – in our ageing MQ, with no lift kit or other mods, on skinny standard tyres. We were free to explore all the way up the Sandy Cape and trek up to the lighthouse, which was powered by a battery of large solar panels, a rare curiosity in those days.

Sadly, delays in packing up on our final day meant we missed low tide. Heading back to the barge, we had to drive through seawater up to the door sills including a few scary moments where the waves washed against my window and knocked us badly sideways. We made the barge, but after its saltwater bath the old Patrol was never the same, developing endless faults that needed constant maintenance.

Inevitably Dad traded it in, which brought us our second Patrol – a GQ ST wagon in dark olive green, with the 4.2-litre TD42 engine, a naturally-aspirated diesel inline six with [consults notes] 85 kW at 4,000rpm, and 264 Nm at 2,000. That was all it had to shift its 1,839kg bulk (and with us and all our camping gear on board, it was probably over three tonnes) – and again, being secondhand, ours probably had less. But it did have the extra pair of seats in the back, or "Catholic pack" as Dad insisted on calling it, making it a five-seater with cargo space during the week ("I'm feeding four men!" Mum would despair as she brought in the shopping), but a seven-seater on weekends when we had friends over – de rigueur on soccer-mum transport nowadays, but an optional extra back then. This was also the poor abused vehicle that had the honour of bearing my L-plates, for which I repaid it by not screwing the radiator cap on properly one day and cooking the engine. That was one of only two mishaps I've ever had in a car: I never reversed into a tree or hit a roo (Dad), I never stormed through a puddle and lost a hub cap (bro), just this one oversight that happened to cost $10,000, more than all their bumps and scrapes put together. In retrospect, that kind of set the tone for my adult life: I make no small mistakes.

Under the Button plan the GQ was also sold as the Ford Maverick, advertised by Peter Brock and his jumper.

But my time in the tank-like Patrol meant I could immediately tell the team behind rFactor's Touring Car Legends mod had done their homework. The first time I took the HR31 Skyline for a blast up Mountain Straight, I had a good laugh when I looked across and realised the heater controls had come straight out of our old Patrol. And given how Australian car manufacturers had to recycle parts to keep costs down, that's probably exactly what had happened.

There are prettier mods out there, but for physics and sheer carfeel, TCL is the gold standard for rFactor mods.

Hard Times Bring Good Cars
Did you know we made Skylines in this country? I didn't, not until I read Joe Kenwright's column on the Shannons Club (again, if you don't have a Shannons Club login, let me encourage you to sign up: there's some rigmarole involved and a small amount of email spam, but it's a minor aggravation relative to the benefits). In those days "Skyline" still meant a perfectly ordinary compact sedan, however, so the cars rolling out of Nissan's assembly plant in Clayton had less in common with today's hi-tech turbocharged GT-R super-coupé and more to do with its great rival that also began local manufacture about this time, the Mitsubishi Magna.

The origins of Nissan Australia lay in the far-off days of 1966, when the Pressed Metal Corporation started assembling Datsun 1600s in Enfield, Sydney; when that venture failed, Motor Producers Ltd took over over from the early 1970s, putting together 1600s in their Clayton plant in Melbourne (the same factory where Volkswagen Australia had once manufactured the Beetle). The 1600, sold as a Datsun in export markets, was nothing less than a revelation over here, the car that made Australia sit up and begin to take notice of this funny little Japanese brand. We were left scratching our heads at how its willing 1.6-litre overhead cam engine (a copy of an earlier Mercedes engine) could possibly generate 70 kW only a year after Holden had reached that benchmark with their 2.4-litre six, and although a long way from its intended role as an urban runabout, its independent suspension meant the 1600 loved our rough roads. At a time when even basic things like heaters and seatbelts were usually optional extras, the Datsun had them as standard.

Calling it a "Deluxe" seems amusing now, but at the time it was very well equipped.

So the 1600 established Datsun, but the follow-up models (like the 180B and 200B) never quite hit the sweet spot the same way, and the brand remained banished to the small-car ghetto the Japanese had made their own. This was an era of increasingly gutless engines as Australia followed Jimmy Carter's America in leading the world for emissions control. John Wright bemoaned this as an era of "regress not progress," but I'm not sure in what world breathing in less leaded smoke is a bad thing.

Either way, what brought the Japanese manufacturers to prominence was the Second Oil Crisis of 1979. The first one in 1973 had rattled the windows here in Australia, but not much else. The second, kicked off by the Iranian Revolution and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, however, made its conventions grimly familiar. Long queues at petrol bowsers and odds and evens days for buying fuel became the norm in the early '80s, and the very term "V8" almost became a dirty word. Fights were even known to break out if someone jumped the queue, which inspired a young paramedic-turned-moviemaker create a sequel to his earlier PSA about the dangers of reckless driving.

In this environment, the traditional large car with its big six or V8 engine seemed as outdated as beehive hairdos and disco. From now on, the thinking went, the mainstream car would have to be more compact with a 2-litre four-cylinder engine that sipped fuel rather than guzzled it. Fleet buyers responsible for choosing next year's company cars switched over to the "small three," the Mazda 626, Mitsubishi Sigma (the Galant under its local name) and Nissan Bluebird. Of the Big Three, Ford axed its V8 engine range and made ready to switch to the front-wheel drive Telstar, Holden downsized to the compact Commodore and lopped two cylinders off its Red six to create the Starfire-4, and Chrysler shut up shop entirely. Basically, at the dawn of the '80s the local manufacturers who'd dominated for two decades all found ways to stumble, creating an opportunity for those who were used to getting the most out of a small floorplan.

Unfortunately, it soon emerged that the 2-litre compact sedan was a false economy. Used to the lavish interior space and lazy torque of a Falcon or Kingswood, the sales reps came to hate their new cars with a passion, and drove them accordingly. With so few cubes the lack of power was most noticeable at this level, with Nissan's 2-litre engine unable to provide even as much power as their own 1.6 had 15 years earlier. To keep up with the traffic you had to rev them until the valves bounced through the bonnet and launched into the stratosphere, and given that speed limits were an innovation only six years old (and one that Australians were in no hurry to pay attention to), the end result was that these new cars spent their lives being ragged without mercy until all the fuel savings were eaten up in extra maintenance costs and steep depreciation.

The Toyota Corona was another of this unloved cohort, so boring it barely rated a mention, even to complain.

But the same problems affected Holden's Starfire-4, which was soon dubbed the Misfire-4, so even with these missteps the Japanese still managed to steal sales from Australia's Own. Having taken over Chrysler's operation in Adelaide, Mitsubishi saw their opening and pounced, gearing up to create a wide-body version of the Galant called the Magna that would come with an optional V6 as well as the standard inline-four. Mazda would probably have done something similar had they not been joined at the hip to Ford, who were never going to allow a rival to the domestic Falcon (the real winner of this troubled time, thanks to holding firm on the big-car concept and fitting a more economical six tweaked by Honda). For Nissan, however, the turning point was most extreme, for the next Bluebird was in no way suitable for the Australian market – too small, too gutless and now front-wheel drive.

Rear-wheel drive was almost essential to succeed in the Australian market at this time: when the weekend came around, Australians all hitched up trailers, boats and caravans and headed out for some serious work or play, depending on the breaks. A car that couldn't tow was a car that couldn't sell, and FWD, so conventional wisdom said, was useless for towing. A FWD car would only see its drive wheels lifted off the ground by the weight of a trailer, especially if it was a light Japanese compact, so RWD was needed to give the necessary traction. Very well, Nissan's product planners reasoned: since they couldn't keep doing what they'd been doing anyway, they might as well see if they could deliver a well-made RWD compact with both four-cylinder and straight-six engine options. Succeed at that, and they just might beat Holden at the game they were trying to play, and at last have their foot in the door of the mainstream family and fleet car markets. If they could pull it off, not even the sky would be the limit.

Immigration Reform
Like the Bluebird before it, however, the Skyline would have to be localised before it could begin manufacture in Australia. To our chagrin, this generally this meant getting rid of anything high-tech that was too expensive to produce at our tiny volumes, so the first thing to go was HICAS.

Nissan's HICAS system, or High Capacity Active Steering, was a rear-wheel steering device designed to counter the toe-out roll-steering effect native to semi-trailing arm suspension designs. Anyone who's driven a VT Commodore hard with any substantial weight on board will probably be familiar with the problem – because of the way the suspension works, too much load would angle the rear wheel outwards until the whole car started crabbing sideways. The usual way of controlling a car stepping out at the back wouldn't always work, because the car wasn't sliding, but steering itself sideways. HICAS was intended to correct the problem by mounting the rear suspension on a subframe attached to rams energised by the power steering pump: as the rear wheel toed outwards, the rams would move the whole subframe in the same direction as the front wheels, correcting their toe setting and letting the car sail smoothly through a turn.

It was a clever idea, but the execution was mechanical rather than electric, so it was neither consistent nor effective and it absolutely destroyed the suspension bushes. To keep costs down and durability up, HICAS was binned in favour of an Australian-made five-link Borg Warner live axle, the usual upper rods and lower arms supplemented by a Panhard rod similar to the local Bluebird. Other JDM trinkets like fluorescent instruments and electrically-adjustable dampers were likewise left on the shelf. They did, however, spring for a bigger Nissan CA20E engine, a 1,974cc twin-plug inline-four with Multiport Fuel Injection taken from the imported Gazelle, capable of 78 kW at 5,200rpm and 160 Nm at 3,200. The business case required that they not abandon their four-cylinder faithful, so the R31 Skyline with the four-cylinder engine launched first as the new Nissan Pintara.

The Pintara, featuring some very '80s styling by origami, dropped in June 1986 and was followed a month later by the six-cylinder Skyline. Nissan differentiated the two with separate grilles and headlights: the Pintara had a simple and crisp fine bar grille with quad square headlights; the local Skyline had an impressive six-headlight face with a single bar grille unique to Australia. Also separating the Skyline from the lesser Pintara was a Nissan RB30E straight-six, one of a versatile family of iron-block, alloy-head overhead-cam engines designed with capacities from 2.0 to 3.0 litres with various layouts of carburettor or EFI, single-cam/two-valve or twin-cam/four-valve heads (some with butterfly intake runners), and naturally-aspirated or turbo induction. Nissan Australia had negotiated to import the big 2,962cc single-cam version to provide the low-down torque Australians expected, with the "E" signifying electronic fuel injection to comply with 1986's ULP emissions restrictions. The key to the project was that Holden was already importing this engine for the VL Commodore, and it was already going into other Nissans like the Patrol, which helped the numbers come out right in the accountancy department.

The RB30E was standard in all: the GX and GXE sedans and wagons, and the sedan-only Ti luxury and performance Silhouette. It offered 117 kW at 5,200rpm and 252 Nm at 3,600, and although derided as "high tech" (meaning "fragile") at the time, it has since proven an extremely durable engine, many showing 400,000km on the odo with little more than routine servicing (the camshaft was driven by a toothed rubber belt that needed replacing every 100,000km, but thankfully the RB's pistons didn't smash into the valves if it broke). It came with either a 5-speed manual gearbox or a Jatco electronic 4-speed auto, and with the manual could make the run from 0 to 100km/h in 9.3 seconds (which compared very favourably with the equivalent Magna's 10.3 or the XF Falcon's 11.4, if a little behind the lighter VL Commodore's 8.5). All models came with power steering and four-wheel discs – plush for the time.

The different engines allowed Nissan to pitch a single model against Mitsubishi's Magna and Toyota's Camry in the four-cylinder compact market, as well as muscle in on Holden and Ford’s dominance of the six-cylinder family and fleet markets. That said, being based on a design from Japan, where smaller cars incurred less tax, the Nissan was narrower inside than the Commodore (the Holden was just over the 1,700mm width limit, the Nissan was just under it), and much more cramped than the wide-body Falcon. So although it had belts for five, in Australia it was realistically only a four-seater, which counted against it for both families and fleet buyers – Telecom weren’t likely to abandon their Falcon wagons for GXE Skylines. But for those with smaller families or an eye on build quality, the Skyline made a certain amount of sense, and Nissan's core buyers were already accustomed to trading cabin space for build quality and a proper engine. Wheels tested it back-to-back with the VL and declared the Skyline to be the better-built, quieter, better-handling and better-performing car. There was even a unique Australian performance version called the Silhouette GTS, which I talked about last year, and which I'd still love to drive one day.

The Racer – GTS-R
The ultimate version of the R31 however was the Japan-only HR31 GTS-R coupé. Released in August 1987, this stripped-out version of the two-door R31 featured a reworked version of the normal RB20DET engine, a 1,998cc turbocharged twin-cam fuel-injected straight-six, but equipped with a much larger turbocharger on a tubular steel exhaust manifold, as well as a much larger front-mounted intercooler and a 5-speed manual gearbox. Power was boosted to a claimed 154 kW, which in race trim became more like 300 kW, about 50 more than the outgoing DR30. The purposeful-looking spoilers front and rear added some much-needed high-speed stability, and although it shared similar chassis architecture to the DR30, with same the MacPherson strut front and semi-trailing arm rear suspension, continual development had done much to eliminate the weird arcs and spooky handling that made the DR30 such a handful.

Indeed, they might have overdone it: as a road car it shared the basic R31 malady – a willingness to be driven so fast but no faster – which it combined with much greater turbo lag to produce a rather frustrating driving experience. The turbo didn’t spool up until 5,300rpm, so with a 7,000rpm redline the usable power band was woefully narrow, which left you with no way to deal with the understeer that reared its head early in every corner. Driving the GTS-R required a slow-in/fast-out approach, timing the turbo boost to fire you down the next straight and just accepting that you were going to lose a bit in the corners. Overall, it felt like a collection of cool parts needed for racing rather than a cohesive whole, which as a homologation special is almost exactly what it was. 823 were ultimately built for Group A, all of them in Bluish Black – that's not a description, that’s what it was actually called!

Although the GTS-R didn't do much in its first year in Australia, it showed tremendous potential racing on the other side of the world. Nissan had finally taken the hint and embarked on a toe-in-the-water programme in the European Touring Car Championship, which in 1988 was basically the WTCC in witness protection. The drivers were not Hasemi Masahiro and Hoshino Kazuyoshi* as you might've expected, however, but Australia's Allan Grice and his co-driver from Bathurst last year, Britain's Win Percy. Grice was probably there because of his personal sponsorship deal with Yokohama, who provided the Nissan team's tyres; Percy was probably there because of Gricey. The pair knew they could work together and trust each other with the machinery, so they were a good choice for a Nissan company probably not overly keen to have this exploratory season become common knowledge in the home islands.

The new Nissan Motorsports Europe team made their debut with a single car at Britain's Donington Park. Despite the brand-new car, they gave the Eggenberger Ford and BMW Motorsport establishment a fright right from the word go. After three and a half hours, with just half an hour to go, they were leading the race by a whole lap! Unfortunately, whatever development work they'd done hadn't revealed their existing brake package was a bit weedy for the strain of racing. In theory, with a 2.0-litre engine that worked out as a 2.8-litre by the FIA's turbo equivalence formula, the Skyline had the same 1,035kg minimum weight as the Sierras. In reality, this was a minimum weight it struggled to reach, Fred Gibson later revealing that in its entire career the GTS-R never went racing with less than 1,100kg on the scales. The extra weight took a toll on its brakes, which gradually faded over the course of the race until Percy pitted to have the team inspect them. They had a quick look and sent him back out, only to find his brake pedal was still soggy and he spun off at Redgate, leading the team to withdraw the car after 95 laps. It seems the team was bit green, having left the tools needed to change the brakes at home! You could also see that it was an unsorted new car, just look at the way it porpoised through Goddards at 2:51 above! Understeer, suspension tune and engine response all needed some attention there I think.

After their surprisingly good showing at Donington, the Nissan team skipped Estoril and Jarama to make their second appearance in the 500km de Bourgogne, at France's Dijon-Prenois circuit (starts at 3:36 in the video). Again they raised some eyebrows by running with the Fords early on, but again teething problems cut their performance short – this time, the gearbox packed up. From there the team skipped the Vallelunga round in Italy but returned for the Grosser Preis der Tourenwagen at the Nürburgring (doesn't show up in the video), where they finally made the finish, albeit in only 19th place.

In the pits at the Nürburgring (source).

Next up however was the big one, the Spa 24 Hour classic (6:20 in the video). For this race you needed three drivers, so the team roped in former Volvo star Anders Olofsson. Gricey had already won the King's Cup here in a Commodore two years ago, but that had been thanks to his private effort being counted with the factory-backed Mobil Holden Dealer Team cars. This year his Nissan was the sole entry, so they'd be fighting a war of attrition against Ford of Europe and BMW with no backup if things went wrong. In truth things didn't go very badly wrong, the stability of the GTS-R probably finding a good match in the long, fast curves of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, its moderate power not such a handicap when the Sierras also had to wind back the boost to make the finish. There were niggling problems of course (there always are in a 24-hour race), but nothing serious – the video shows Gricey tossing the knob off the gearstick to Nissan product planning manager Howard Marsden in one of the pitstops, and by evening Percy was telling the cameras how their extreme camber setting had put unexpected stress on the front-left wheel bearing, requiring a precautionary change – but the car was still running, much to the surprise of onlookers. Indeed, by 1:30am Gricey was able to point out that they were actually gaining laps on the leaders, not by going faster but simply by maintaining their pace when everyone else was slowing down with one mechanical malady or another. They finished the race with 485 laps to their credit, 27 behind the leaders – an incredible achievement given they'd stopped to replace the entire front assembly five times over the course of the race! Had they had the parts to do the job, it's not inconceivable that they could have won.

But in the end it was another Spa 24 Hour trophy for BMW, a glorious 1-2-3 in fact, but 6th outright went to the #23 Nissan Skyline, a fine achievement for a car in its rookie season. From there though the remainder of the season never quite reached the same heights – they DNF'd at Zolder (gearbox), although they claimed fastest lap; they DNF'd again at Silverstone (another gearbox) where Dick Johnson made the rest look silly; but they managed a strong finish at the Circuit Paul Armagnac in France. Here the round was run over two heats, and in his heat Grice fell off the road and incurred yet another DNF. That left Percy to start his heat from the very back, around 30th place, and they'd just been informed they wouldn't be allowed to race the GTS-R at that Bathurst in a month's time. That meant this was effectively Percy's last drive in the Skyline, so he ragged it for all it was worth, rising from dead last to cross the finish line 2nd outright after 250km, beaten only by the Sierra of Steve Soper.

Boy did I have fun. Starting from the back of the grid to a 2nd place finish, only to be beaten by Steve Soper in the works Cosworth, I just wanted to show what the car could do, and I did. – Win Percy

Sadly, Gricey's off bumped them back to 11th in the final standings, largely hiding Percy's achievement in the history books. Nissan finished the year with just 41 manufacturer's points, compared to 310 for returning champions Ford.

Source

All Revved Up With No Place To Go
The really heartbreaking part of the video was when commentator Richard Hay mentioned Nissan was running this season to prepare for a full tilt at the ETCC in 1989. Problem was, there wouldn't be an ETCC in 1989. For two years the series had been dominated to the point of boredom by the established marques, Ford nearly always winning the races outright, BMW usually taking the lower class, and the two giants fighting it out for the title without ever running wheel-to-wheel on the track. As a consequence spectator interest had fallen down a mineshaft, and with so little interest from the teams and circuit owners the FIA simply neglected to run it the following year, letting the concept lapse into a coma that would last the next 15 years. Not until 2005 would we see another Europe-wide championship pick up the torch.

So Nissan were left with a brand-new, rather promising car, and no major international series to run it in. Our own ATCC hardly counted on that front, however crucial it was to the local branch's marketing plans. Nissan Australia needed to get the Skyline name out there and in the public consciousness, which partly explained why they'd been so keen to hand Fred Gibson a ready-made touring car team in 1986, complete with factory-supplied DR30 racecars. The funny thing was, for nearly half its life the Australian Skyline was represented on the track by the older DR30; by the time the GTS-R turned a wheel as a racecar, the road version was nearing its Series III facelift.

But then again, it mightn't have made any difference either way. The roadgoing Skyline was a fairly beige car whichever way you sliced it: a friend of mine says her family actually had the four-cylinder Pintara version when she was young, but when I pressed her for an anecdote to put in this blog, she couldn't think of any. That probably says all you need to know about how memorable it was. In the end, the HR31 was the awkward middle child, a transitional fossil layered between the monstrous DR30 and the sublime R32. It's day was worse than over; it would never really begin.

*Names written according to the Japanese custom, with the patronymic first. I ummed and ahhed over which way to put them longer than I'm proud of.