1983 Australian Touring Car Championship

The 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship was a CAMS sanctioned motor racing title for drivers of Group C Touring Cars. The title, which was the 24th Australian Touring Car Championship, was contested over a series which began on 6 February 1983 at Calder Park Raceway and ended on 19 June at Lakeside International Raceway after eight rounds.

The championship was won by Allan Moffat, his fourth Australian Touring Car Championship and a first for Mazda, who were helping to fund Moffat's team and it was also the first ATCC win for a Japanese manufacturer. Moffat himself dominated the racing, taking four out of the eight race wins, but a beneficial points structure for smaller capacity cars allowed George Fury (driving a turbocharged version of the Nissan Bluebird) to push Moffat all the way to the title, despite not actually winning a race. Peter Brock (Holden Commodore) finished third in the championship.

Moffat, Brock and Allan Grice (who won 2 rounds) were the only race winners in the 1983 ATCC. Defending champion Dick Johnson battled season long with an ill-handling Ford XE Falcon and could only manage two 3rd placings at both Sandown and Barbagallo to finish a disappointing 6th in the championship, 94 points behind Moffat.

Nissan driver George Fury, helped by consistent performances led the series going into the final round at Lakeside and needed only to finish 9th to claim the title. However team manager Howard Marsden decided the team would skip the round, and therefore give up their chance of winning the championship, unless Allan Moffat finished 6th or worse (Moffat finished 2nd behind Brock). Controversy also reigned throughout the series with some teams such as the Holden Dealer Team and STP Roadways Racing claiming that Moffat was foxing during the championship, and not racing as fast as he could in an effort to 'hoodwink' CAMS into believing the RX-7's, which ran the 12A engine in the championship, needed the larger and more powerful (by some 30 bhp (22 kW; 30 PS)) 13B engine in order to be competitive against the V8 Holden's and Ford's at Bathurst. Ultimately CAMS approved the larger 13B for the RX-7's, but also granted concessions to the other cars which ended up giving the bigger cars an advantage on the Mountain.

Controversially CAMS announced the concessions for the post-ATCC 1 August homologation during the race of Round 7 at Oran Park via the ABC's telecast of the race, with ABC commentators Will Hagon and John Smailes making the announcement mid-race. In a TV interview with Smailes immediately following his 2nd placing to Moffat, Peter Brock was informed of the new homologation's and professed his displeasure with CAMS for announcing it on television during the race and not letting those who the decision affected (the teams) first. The fallout from CAMS decision led to both the Nissan and Roadways teams boycotting the final race of the series at Lakeside.

Nissan's boycott of the last round also meant that series leader George Fury virtually forfeited any chance of winning the championship provided that Moffat finished. Despite this it was generally felt that the championship went to the right driver as Moffat and his RX-7 were usually the fastest combination and the expat Canadian was regarded as the man to beat. Moffat only failed to finish once at Sandown and finished every other race on the podium, including four wins, while Fury's best were two seconds (Calder and Wanneroo) and one third at Symmons Plains.

One outcome from this series was that in the future turbocharged cars had their engine capacities multiplied for the purposes of class point score weightings, meaning that in the 1984 Australian Touring Car Championship, Fury would compete on an equal footing with the other outright class competitors. Despite this meaning that the Nissan would score equal points as the RX-7's, Commodore's and Falcons, Nissan team boss Howard Marsden raised no objections to the change as he knew the Bluebird turbo was able to match the speed of the outright class cars.