For more than a decade, Allan Moffat was
Ford’s racing hero, but all that changed in
the early 1980s. Having been abandoned
by Ford, he abandoned them, handing
the Blue Oval mantle to Dick Johnson.
Worse than that, he sided with Japanese
carmaker Mazda to race an RX7. David
Hassall unravels a remarkable story.Turning
Japanese
A
llan Moffat and controversy were always
familiar bedfellows. But the Mazda RX7
ramped it up to another level, con rming
Moffat as Australia’s ultimate motor racing
anti-hero in the early 1980s. Not since
his meteoric arrival with the Trans-Am Mustang
in 1969 had the expatriate Canadian worn the
metaphorical black hat so comfortably from the
moment he declared his intention to race the
Japanese sports, er, touring car.
There followed two years of off-track battles
with the ruling body, then three more years
of political manoeuvring, interspersed with
race wins, black ags, exclusions and annual
disappointments at Bathurst. All the while, the
Peter Stuyvesant cars were constantly cloaked
in secrecy, which made them the subject of
suspicion by rivals, who fought him in the
corridors of power as much as on the race track.
That suspicion was seemingly well placed,
too, according to some of the people involved.
Winning political battles at governing body
CAMS was never enough to make the
lightweight rotary-powered ‘riceburners’ Bathurst
winners, requiring a fair amount of engineering
innovation and rule-bending trickery – and
ultimately even that wasn’t enough to overcome
good old-fashioned V8 grunt.
Moffat and Mazda eventually won a
batch of national touring car and endurance
championships that were a tribute to their
commitment and doggedness in the face of
enormous opposition, but ultimately failed to
succeed where they most wanted – at Mount
Panorama. That was a bitter pill to swallow, but
Bathurst was simply a mountain too high to climb.
There was a determination by Holden, the
Bathurst organisers and perhaps even CAMS
itself to ensure that The Great Race remained a
bastion of Aussie muscle, which they achieved
for another decade. Moffat may have succeeded
in nally getting peripheral port induction
approved, then a bigger 13B engine and even
fuel injection, but at the same time the Holdens
and Fords were granted freedoms of their own
that maintained the status quo. Mazda – as well
as fellow newcomers Nissan and BMW – were
allowed to be competitive for the lesser races, but
Bathurst seemingly remained off-limits. A lapped
second was the best placing the RX7 managed.
In the end, the giant-killing RX7 almost
killed Moffat himself, both metaphorically and
physically. A huge accident at Surfers Paradise
in 1984 left the four-time touring car champion
battered and bruised in every sense. And then it
was all over. CAMS adopted international Group
A for 1985, Mazda and Peter Stuyvesant walked
away from racing, and Allan Moffat was once
again (at least until old rival Peter Brock came
knocking) an unemployed racing driver.
Ray Berghouse