Amaroo Park - AMSCAR

AMSCAR

One of the features of Amaroo Park's life has been its in-house touring car series. Popular with spectators and easy for nearby ATN-7 to telecast, it became the backbone of the Sydney touring car scene, a scene which has evaporated since it died with the major touring car teams now operating from Melbourne and south-east Queensland. On many occasions AMSCAR events held larger and better quality grid than the national Australian Touring Car Championship.

In 1981 AMSCAR was limited to cars with an engine capacity of no more than 3.5 litres. That limit was relaxed from the 1982 series allowing the V8 powered Holden Commodore's, Ford Falcon's and Chevrolet Camaro's to race alongside the under 3.5L cars such as the BMW 635 CSi, Ford Capri's and the growing list of Mazda RX-7's. As the increasing national popularity of the ATCC, improvements in the ATCC telecast, and the 1991 economic recession all gradually reduced the grids until the series died after the 1993 season. The series was revived in 1997 and held at the ARDCs two circuits, Amaroo and Eastern Creek but with the major teams holding exclusivity to V8 Supercar events the mostly Sydney based privateers were not enough to make the series viable.

In the early, Group C years of the series, several Sydney based drivers who regularly competed in the annual four round, three race per round series became household names through the national telecast on Channel 7. This was helped by most of the major ATCC teams at the time usually not competing in the series. Drivers such as Steve Masterton, Terry Shiel, Terry Finnigan and the late Mike Burgmann got national TV exposure they would otherwise have struggled to get had ATCC headline drivers like Peter Brock, Dick Johnson, Allan Moffat, Allan Grice and Jim Richards been regular competitors, although Grice did win the 1982 series for the and like Johnson and Richards did contest some rounds in 1983 and 1984.

It was only from the beginning of the international Group A racing in Australia in 1985 that the headline teams started racing more with Frank Gardner's JPS Team BMW and team drivers Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst dominating from 1985-87. Gibson Motor Sport, first with Nissan and later with Holden, also contested the series in the later years of Group A, with Jim Richards winning in the teams Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 in 1992 while Mark Skaife won for Gibson driving a Holden VP Commodore in 1993. Other top line teams to contest the series after the switch to Group A were Peter Brock's Mobil 1 Racing and 1988 series winner Colin Bond in his Caltex CXT Racing Team Ford Sierra RS500.

Tony Longhurst holds the drivers record with 5 championship wins in 1986, 1987, 1989, 1990 and 1991, while Ford holds the record for most manufacturer wins with 5 series wins in 1981, 1984, 1988, 1989 and 1990. The Ford Sierra RS500 won the most series for a single model car winning every year from 1988-90.