By 1984, the Confederation for Australian Motor Sports (CAMS) had had a guts-full of trying to control the monster they’d created in their localised Group C touring car category. Group C had been introduced in 1973, as the best solution to the highly publicised ‘Supercar Scare’ of the year before. In 1972, Evan Green had written an article for the Sun Herald in which he’d interviewed New South Wales Transport Minister Milton Morris on his views relating to the increasingly potent products being produced by Ford, General-Motors Australia, and Chrysler in the pursuit of victory at the annual Bathurst endurance race. Under Series Production regulations, very few modifications could be made to the standard car before it went racing. Therefore, the most obvious way around this barrier for the manufacturers was to essentially build a race car that buyers could purchase straight off the showroom floor.
The article and associated bad publicity left the manufacturers reeling, and immediately cancelled plans for their upcoming efforts. In order to remove the requirement to build road going Bathurst specials, CAMS introduced Group C, which allowed far greater freedoms to be made to the road going vehicle for racing purposes, and although a homologation special would still be required by manufacturers if they were serious about Bathurst success, these specials were far less potent in standard road guise than their predecessors, and could be quietly slipped out the back door to genuine buyers, without any fanfare.
Group C effectively became a two-horse race, between Ford and Holden. Each manufacturer released a new homologation special for the first couple of years, but Fords interest began to wane, and they disbanded their factory team following a successful 1973 season which included winning both the Australian Touring Car Championship and Bathurst. Although they’d continue involvement at a distance, through releasing various new homologation specials, it was now left to former Ford factory driver Allan Moffat to almost take on the numerous Holden teams almost single-handedly.
In 1977, Moffat ran a two-car team of Falcon hardtops for himself and former Holden factory driver Colin Bond, funded by both Ford and the combined efforts of several Ford dealerships around Australia. Moffat and Bond finished first and second in the ATCC, then claimed an emphatic victory at Bathurst, where their two cars finished first and second, and ran side by side for the last half of the last lap, in one of the most famous scenes ever witnessed at the mountain.
However, somewhat naively, Ford chose to rest on their laurels for 1978, and rather than expand on what they’d achieved the previous season to counter the obvious attack that was to come from Holden, they retained their efforts to 1977 levels, and were soundly beaten upon all season long. At that, they decided to step away from touring car racing in 1979, leaving the Holden factory squad to effectively compete against privateer Holden teams, which was a completely pointless exercise from a marketing perspective. So Holden followed Fords lead, and withdrew from touring car racing at the end of 1979.
So now CAMS had a dilemma. Both Ford and Holden had withdrawn from touring car racing, and the cars that were all competing in 1979 were outdated models, with Holden releasing the new Commodore in 1978, Ford the new Falcon in 1979. CAMS needed cars, and they needed teams racing the latest models. And so they tweaked the Group C rules for the 1980 season, to allow in several new makes and models, and made it possible for cars to become eligible without manufacturer involvement. And so, by 1984, they were bouncing around a political hot potato as they attempted to create an even playing field between several vehicles that had little in common, and which included Holden Commodore, Ford Falcon, Mazda RX7, Jaguar XJS, Chevrolet Camaro, Nissan Bluebird, BMW 635CSi. Furthermore, they had representatives from each brand lobbying to get accepted various demon tweaks to make their package more competitive. And as such, they decided to step back from the role of rule makers, and adopted the international set of Group A regulations instead.
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