History
The first Australian Touring Car Championship was held in 1960 as a single race for Appendix J Touring Cars. This was an acknowledgement of the rising popularity of races held for passenger sedans as opposed to the more purpose built open wheel racing cars, or sports cars. The original race was held at the Gnoo Blas circuit in Orange in rural New South Wales, west of Sydney. The original race was won by journalist racer, David McKay racing a Jaguar saloon prepared by his own racing team, which to this point had been better known for its preparation of open wheel and sports racing cars.
The early years of the ATCC saw the once a year event visit mostly rural circuits, before finally visiting a major city circuit, Lakeside Raceway on the outskirts of Brisbane in 1964. This race was also the first not won by a Jaguar saloon with Pete Geoghegan driving a Ford Cortina winning the first of his five titles. From 1965 the title would largely be won by an American V8 powered muscle car, most notably the Ford Mustang which would win five consecutive titles in 1965 (Norm Beechey) and 1966-69 (Geoghegan). The first victory by an Australian car was the Holden Monaro HT GTS 350 driven by Norm Beechey in 1970. As of 4 December 2011 Jamie Whincup & Norm Beechey are the only two people to have won the championship in both a Ford and a Holden in history of the ATCC and V8 Supercars Championship Series.
A major shift occurred in 1973. The championship had blossomed from a single race into a multi-event series in 1969, but the competition had not changed markedly. The 'Supercar scare' that had rocked the build up to 1972 Bathurst 500 forced sweeping changes through touring car regulations. The Improved Touring Car regulations which governed the ATCC, known at the time as Group C were amalgamated with the more basic Group E Series Production Touring Cars regulations which governed the Bathurst touring car endurance race in a compromise between the two, creating a single class for touring car racing that would hold sway of Australian Touring Car racing until the introduction of Group A in 1985.
This period saw a rise in the tribal style conflicts between Holden and Ford and in particular the two marques leading drivers, respectively Peter Brock and Allan Moffat who between them would claim seven of the eras 12 championships (and nine of the associated Bathurst victories). By the mid 1980s Group C had become wracked with infighting and almost random parity adjustments between competing marques.
Attention focussed purely on Holden and Ford had blurred as European and Japanese manufacturers joined the Australian agents of the two big American companies, the trend starting in 1981 with BMW, Mazda and Nissan. The international Group A regulations, already utilised by European and Japanese touring car series, allowed them to compete on equal terms. Holden was forced briefly into catchup phase, all but backing out of the sport in 1992.
1992 saw the unhappy demise of Group A and with the international touring car scene fragmenting in several directions (moving towards DTM, Super Touring and Super GT) Australia forged its own path evolving the Group A specification Holden Commodores into the new Group 3A regulations that would later be renamed as V8 Supercar.
The ATCC continued to be used until the end of the 1998 season, after which V8 Supercar organisers altered the name of the series, eventually adopting its present identity, the V8 Supercars Championship.
Read more about this topic: Australian Touring Car Championship
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