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Showroom Showdown – Production Car Racing
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The 1960s and ‘70s saw a boom period in production/stock car racing, as manufacturers sought to promote the sporting attributes of their products through motorsport. The popularity of production racing grew as manufacturers invested more in creating exciting, solid performance cars that held a lot of appeal to enthusiasts. The US were mastering the importance of promoting its performance machines by the late 50s, through involvement in stock car and drag racing.
By the early 1970s, the Australians were the biggest advocates of production road racing, and were pounding out high performance vehicles of immense stature. Gradually, motorsport governing bodies removed the requirements for cars to be as they rolled off the assembly line, allowing more and more modifications for the sake of safety and reliability, and cost, as manufacturers were required to release an improved offering every year. By the early 1980s, production racing had mostly lost favour, although in New Zealand, General Motors NZ produced a small batch (30 only) of locally assembled Holden SS Commodores built specifically to be raced. These were one of the last high performance touring cars produced for the sake of winning on a race track in strictly production racing.
But over the years, a good number of exciting vehicles were produced directly as a result of the popularity of production racing. As the old adage says, “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday”.
Roaring Season member ‘Ellis’ came up with the idea of this thread, so have at it boys, fire off your production car images and stories.
