1970 Australian Touring Car Championship

[Steve Holmes]

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.



Heading into 1970, and there were several serious contenders for the title. The Confederation for Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) introduced a number of freedoms to the rules allowing the local products to be more competitive against the American and German competition. Beechey built himself a new Holden HT GTS350 Monaro, with 350ci small block Chevy power, that was good for over 500hp. With Beechey doing well the previous season in his Australian HK Monaro, Ford Australia decided to wade into the battle field, by building a pair of fuel injected light-weight XW ‘Super Falcons’ for Geoghegan and Moffat, these machines being built at huge cost.



Bob Jane returned with his ex-Shelby Trans-Am ’68 Mustang, while his earlier Mustang would be raced again by Chris Brauer. Small car campaigners Brian Foley and Jim McKeown would step into a pair of 2.2 litre Porsche 911Ts, as did Bill Brown. The series would also be boosted by a gaggle of Morris Coopers, headed by Peter Manton and Phil Barnes, fighting for class honours, plus the Escort twin-cams of Bob Holden and Graham Ritter. Camaro pilots Bryan Thomson and Terry Allan would run limited campaigns, as would John Kay in the ex-Beechey Nova, plus Robin Pare, and Dick Johnson, who’d race at their local circuits. At most tracks, the grids would be bolstered by several Series production cars, that didn’t have the pace of the Improved Production machines, but could pick up points when the faster cars faltered.