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27 Sep 2010, 12:20 (Ref:2765448) | #26 | |
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IIRC 'Flying Tigers' was an American cargo airline- became part of Federal Express in the late 80's
As you say, I think they were a fairly regular sponsor of entries at Macau, also in sportscars, such as the Bob Garretson 935 that Jesper mentioned... http://www.racingsportscars.com/phot...-09-27-050.jpg ..., they also sponsored the Brands 1000km sportscar race at least once http://www.racingsportscars.com/cove...1981-09-27.jpg Must admit I'm not familiar with the two American drivers, (Mitchell and Ballantyne) named against the Bathurst Supra entry, so this one's a bit of a puzzle. As Jesper says, Group A didn't reach America (though wasn't there talk of a US Group A series at one point, maybe through the SCCA?...and the odd Group A car does seem to have crossed the Atlantic- one of the ex-works Metro turbos ended up racing in IMSA...), so unless someone in the US built up a Supra with either the intention of racing overseas, or in anticipation of some US Group A races, where would the car have the car come from? The only Aussie Supra was Peter Williamson's ex-Hughes car, so at first sight it seems unlikely to be a local entry- Could it have been a car intended to be leased from one of the Japanese teams (or even Hughes in the UK?) for a one-off race? |
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27 Sep 2010, 12:45 (Ref:2765466) | #27 | |||
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Looking at the world of rallying, Group 2/4 cars were still appearing on the RAC Rally entry list in 1983 (the last Dolomite Sprint to appear on an RAC seems to have been William Douglas' Gp2 car in 1983), but cars like the Ascona 400, Chevette HSR, Escort RS were still appearing as Gp B cars as late as 1985, as were Gp A RS2000s- they all seem to have gone by 1986 though. Looking back to racing, I've just had a skim through some ETC results, and the odd RS2000 and rwd Opel Kadett GTE was still turning up in 1982/3 |
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27 Sep 2010, 21:25 (Ref:2765758) | #28 | ||
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Several Group 1 cars was transferred to Group A and cars like the Escort RS2000, Opel Kadett GT/E, Opel Ascona-B and Mazda RX-7 both had seperate Group 1 and Group A homologations. From what I remember from the rallying stages during 1982, everybody seemed a little bewildered at how to conduct the issue of having old Group 1 and 2 cars running in the new Group N, A and B catagories.
Jesper |
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27 Sep 2010, 21:31 (Ref:2765766) | #29 | ||
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I have been looking in the Bill Tuckey 1984 Bathurst book for any references to the Flying Tigers Toyota Celica Supra, and found little. It seems the entry was as much a mystery a quarter of a century ago as it is today. There's a notion that a Lee Mitchell raced in Queensland in the mid-1960s and that no entry fee was ever payed by Flying Tigers.
So far a main land Asian connection (Thailand, Malaysia?) seems the most plausible, as mentioned earlier in this threat. Jesper |
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28 Sep 2010, 03:09 (Ref:2765842) | #30 | ||
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Mk1 Capris were built in Australia (Ford's plant in Sydney) and later cars are quite a rare sight, presumably private imports.
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28 Sep 2010, 05:57 (Ref:2765859) | #31 | |||
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"The car Richards drove to his many wins in 1985 was in its second Bathurst. Originally numbered 62 and re-numbered 1 for the endurance series in deference ro Richards ATCC win, it was the first fully-fledged Group A car the team built. Construction from a shell supplied from Germany, before Bathurst 1984, the car was a real workhorse, having debuted at Bathurst in hands of former world champ Denny Hulme and Prince Leopold von Bayen...." |
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28 Sep 2010, 14:46 (Ref:2766094) | #32 | |||
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I thought that Richards had a Frank Gardner build 635 for round 2 of the 1985 ATCC, but I might be a year off and it was only for 1986 he had a new car? Jesper |
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29 Sep 2010, 02:21 (Ref:2766397) | #33 | ||
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Yes, Jesper you are one year out regarding Richard's new car. He raced this for the first time at round 3 (Sandown) in April 1986. The old car was sold to Garry Rogers who raced it in Bob Jane T-Marts livery. Adrian. |
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29 Sep 2010, 05:14 (Ref:2766427) | #34 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Found the results for another two Australian 1984 races including Group A cars. http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....28&postcount=6 Surfers Paradise 4th November 1984 Round 5 of 5 of the Australian Endurance Championship
http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....28&postcount=6 http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....6&postcount=13 http://tentenths.com/forum/showpost....2&postcount=14 Calder Park 17th-18th November 1984 Australian Grand Prix support race
According to the links above Group A cars participad, but was there a separate Group A class at these two races? Or was there any class destinctions among the Group C cars? At Sandown 500 there were +/- 3000 cc catagories, while at Bathurst - another round of the same Endurance championship - there were only one class for Group C cars. Jesper |
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29 Sep 2010, 08:59 (Ref:2766490) | #35 | |||
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Group C had a class structure of usually 3 classes (up to 2000cc, 2001-3000cc, over 3000cc), but some years there was a 1600cc class (at Bathurst at least)... some tracks (like Amaroo and Sandown) even ran their own series for the class cars.
Under 3-litre cars had their last fling at the 1984 Sandown 500, for Bathurst the race was only open to over 3000cc Group C cars, and Group A cars (as mentioned, a number of the U3L cars were converted to Group A specs. This was pushed by the ARDC for two reasons (Bathurst wise), they had been trying to get rid of the under 3000cc cars since 1982 from their meetings (Amaroo and Bathurst), and running the Group A class would ease our way into Group A for 1985. The class structure was the same at Surfers and at the AGP There was a last Group C meeting held at Baskerville after the AGP, but no Group A cars attended. PS.. This is a great thread, very inetersting stuff Quote:
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30 Sep 2010, 03:51 (Ref:2766957) | #36 | |
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Each of the competing Bathurst books of the time ("The Great Race" & "BATHURST") seem to have different versions of cars histories over the years.... doesn't the 1985 Great Race book imply the Crichton 1985 car was an ex-European car?[/QUOTE]
Yes, the 2 books do offer different versions. I don't think the "The Great Race" book is quite correct about Crichton's car being ex-European though. I believe Crichton's car was built in 1984 by JPS and sent to compete in NZ in late 84/early 85. It returned to Australia in time for the second round of the ATCC. After Bathurst the car was sold to Archibald in NZ. This has been confirmed by JPS employees who built the cars. Cheers Adrian. |
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30 Sep 2010, 17:11 (Ref:2767298) | #37 | |||
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At least this version complies with the Bathurst 1985/86 book. What may have confused matters was that the combined Gardner/Chrihton effort used three different 635s during the 1985 season. Both Bathurst 1984 cars and a third Chrichton commisioned and owned car. The '84 Group A car was Jim Richards main car, with the converted Group C car a spare, incidently used by Neville Chricton for the opening 1985 ATCC round, while his new car was in New Zealand already being raced as early as late 1984. The build of both the Richards and Chrichton cars must have been partly in sync. Jesper |
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1 Oct 2010, 14:28 (Ref:2767772) | #38 | ||
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Amazing contribution, brendonwood1. I have started a separate thread for the 1984/1985 New Zealand racing season here:
http://tentenths.com/forum/showthrea...70#post2767770 Jesper |
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4 Oct 2010, 04:06 (Ref:2768895) | #39 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The numbers and entrants data are educated guesses. Oh for an entry list! Here's the race results I have, compiled from AMRY and the RCN report:
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5 Oct 2010, 14:37 (Ref:2769792) | #40 | ||
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That's an excellent update, William. I noticed that a third Toyota Corolla was present at Surfers Paradise, Doug Clark driving. Was this a second TTA car, as Bob Holden still only had one car and no customers? As the first TTA car and the Holden car were both 3-door coupés, what would this third car be?
Jesper |
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7 Oct 2010, 03:06 (Ref:2770651) | #41 | |||
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14 Mar 2018, 10:16 (Ref:3807901) | #42 | |||
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Anyway, long story short; Flying Tigers were launching a service in Australia in 1984, and asked Mitchell (who had again entered the Macau Ghia GP, this time with assistance from Toyota) to run the car (a brand new 2.4L Celica, to replace the Supra that Mitchell ran at the SCCA National Championships earlier in 1984) at Bathurst. Mitchell brought in his friend Tom Ballantyne, a C-Sports Racer from North Carolina, to run the car with him. The car was sourced from Japan by TMS North America and shipped to Mitchell for race preparation, except for the engine which was sent to TRD for additional development. Despite delays in getting the car across from Japan, it was prepped and ready to ship to Bathurst... except for the engine, which simply would not co-operate in providing the required power. So the car was scratched from Bathurst, and instead sent direct to Macau, where Mitchell finished 3rd in class. Apparently Mitchell informed CAMS of their intention to withdraw, and he was asked if they could leave their names in the entry list - which could have been because the list had already gone to print? Mitchell was offered factory assistance by Nissan in 1985 (and ran briefly in the same team as Tommy Kendall), so the Toyota went back to Toyota Motor Sales NA, and from there... who knows? As a side note, Mitchell is in his late '70's, and still very involved in the Reno branch of the SCCA. If anyone requires more detail, I'm more than happy to provide - Lee was very surprised to find out anybody cared about his involvement in a race 30-odd years ago that he didn't even race in!! |
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