Racing
Despite becoming synonymous with driving Fords, Johnson raced in his early days in a succession of Holdens. Johnson's first race car was a Holden FJ, his first race being at Lakeside International Raceway in November 1964 In 1968 and 1969 he raced his Holden EH and from there progressed to a Holden Torana GTR for 1970, scoring his first Australian Touring Car Championship points at Lakeside in that year. The GTR was upgraded to XU-1 specifications in 1971. Johnson's first drive in the Hardie Ferodo 1000 was in Bob Forbes' XU-1 Torana in 1973 when they placed fifth, and in 1974 he purchased an ex-Holden Dealer Team Torana which he campaigned until the switch to Ford in 1976.
In 1980, during the Bathurst 1000 he started 2nd and led for the first 17 laps before his car was destroyed after hitting a football sized rock that had been accidentally kicked onto the track by some drunken fans. The resulting public support—A$70,000 was donated to help rebuild the car—threw Johnson into the big time. Led by its CEO Edsel Ford II who saw the value of the goodwill in the press surrounding Johnson's crash, the Ford Motor Company provided a new car shell and promised to match the donation dollar for dollar. His first primary sponsor to escalate him into the big arena was Ross Palmer, owner of Palmer Tube Mills of Brisbane, Australia, allowing him to return the next year to win both the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) and the Bathurst 1000 (with John French). He won the ATCC again in 1982 (the Tru Blu XD Falcon), 1984 (Greens Tuff XE Falcon), 1988 (Ford Sierra RS500) and 1989 (Sierra RS500). He also won Bathurst in 1989 (in a Ford Sierra with John Bowe) and 1994 (in an EB Falcon, also with John Bowe). The names Tru Blu, and Greens Tuff were product names of Palmer Tube Mills. With much larger budgets required in the racing industry, Palmer helped negotiate for Shell to be primary sponsor.
Read more about this topic: Dick Johnson (racing Driver)
Famous quotes containing the word racing:
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)