As New Zealand welcomes back the Repco Supercars Championship for a doubleheader, Australia’s top touring car drivers have been coming to the land of the long white cloud for four decades.
During the early 1970s, Sports Sedan drivers travelled across to battle the local stars, but it was the Group A regulations that opened up the link between Australian and New Zealand touring cars.
The Nissan Sport 500 Series in 1985 attracted many of the best Australian touring car stars led by Peter Brock, Dick Johnson, Larry Perkins and many other privateers competing across two back-to-back events.
First up was the inaugural Wellington 500 street event and the next was held at Pukekohe.
Wellington held the debut of the Holden Dealer Team’s new Commodore conforming to the newly introduced Group A regulations shared by Brock and Perkins, who was to later quit the squad halfway through 1985.
Johnson was there too, but in a locally homologated Ford Fairmont XE V8 fielded by the Pinepac team.
It wasn’t a successful series for the Aussies due to the early development cycle for the Commodore, which did finish a best of fourth in Wellington due to high attrition.
Johnson failed to finish both events, but both these programs sparked an infiltration of Aussies in future years.
For 1986 this was cemented when HDT arrived with two of its newly homologated evolution Commodores, Johnson was in his Mustang, privateer Allan Grice, JPS BMW, Charlie O’Brien, Jim Keogh, Gerald Kay and Bob Holden took on some the world’s best.
Australians took on Wellington until the final event in 1996 and returned to Pukekohe in 2001 when the V8 Supercars arrived.
New Zealand’s success in Supercars has risen alongside its event led by the likes of Greg Murphy early, then Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen most recently.
Taupo and Ruapana will host the Repco Supercars Championship doubleheader coming up.