The Repco Supercars Championship is in its second year of the Gen3 formula where the Ford Mustang has gone up against the Chevrolet Camaro, but this isn’t the first instance of this battle in Australia.
More than 50 years ago arch rivals Allan Moffat and Bob Jane were going at it in a ferocious, often spiteful battle for the Australian Touring Car Championship.
As the Improved Production formula was coming to a close in the early-1970s, Moffat’s venerable Mustang Trans Am, which was famously given to him by Ford was up against the might of Jane’s Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.
Jane and Moffat had built up a strong rivalry built through incidents occurring through the previous seasons. It should be noted that Jane was not to first to race a Camaro in Australia, with this honour going to Terry Allan.
Despite the constant threat of Norm Beechey, Ian Geoghegan, Bill Brown, Peter Manton, Alan Hamilton, Bryan Thomson, Brian Foley, Jim McKeown, Neil Allen and the like, it was always Moffat vs Jane.
And why wasn’t Colin Bond, Peter Brock, John Goss, Leo Geoghegan, Don Holland or Fred Gibson a threat? Well, these drivers raced Series Production as the touring car regulations were split in half effectively though combined together for the 1973 season following the infamous ‘Supercar Scare’.
If Moffat’s Mustang lifted the bar in the preparation stakes, well Jane’s Camaro did likewise.
It was not just a road car modified for race purposes as the Camaro was the first to be built on a plate, feature a Holinger gearbox and Harrop brakes.
Moffat’s Mustang was factory-built to take on the burgeoning Trans Am Series in the US of just seven were built by Kar-Kraft.
So the battle between Jane and Moffat was highly anticipated.
The 1971 season was the first where the combatants and their American sourced weaponry went head-to-head.
Advantage Jane in ’71 after scoring three wins, two seconds and a third out of seven rounds to finish six-points clear of Moffat, who also had the same amount of wins after a retirement in addition to a costly disqualification at Sandown. This was due to failing to stop for a black flag when a transmission oil cooler line came undone while in the lead.
A rule change by CAMS for the 1972 season required Jane to drop the capacity of his Camaro to 6000cc, but this didn’t stop the beast from General Motors.
Jane took four victories to Moffat’s three and Geoghegan’s one to take back-to-back titles by 11-points.
These two thoroughbreds still remain today in restored form at opposite ends of the East Coast.