To my mind, 1970 was the pinnacle year in the Australian Touring Car Championship, Improved Production era. This was only the second time the championship had been fought over a series of races, with accumulated points, rather than the single race championship the ATCC had been since its inception in 1960. With 7 rounds, and four different winners, it was also one of the closest fought championships, with a more even spread throughout the main contenders than would follow throughout 1971 – 72, when Bob Jane and Allan Moffat began to assert their dominance. Although the V8s had established their superiority in touring car racing, their reliability was still a factor, meaning the champion could still come from the driver of a small capacity car.
The 1969 ATCC was won again by Pete Geoghegan, driving the ’67 Mustang GTA that had also taken him to a pair of single race ATCC titles in 1967 and ’68. He’d been the class of the field throughout the season, finishing second to Jane in the opener at Calder, after he’d cooked his brakes, before going on to win the next two races. He was leading comfortably at Surfers Paradise (round four of five) until he hit an errant exhaust pipe, dropped by another competitor, which punctured a tyre, and he was disqualified in the final, when the starter motor failed on the grid (where he sat on pole), with his crew having to push the car away. And it was Norm Beechey in his HK Monaro who benefitted most from Geoghegans failures, winning the final two rounds.
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