The BATHURST BIG 60

As we gear up for yet another epic Bathurst 1000 this month, with Race 24 of the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship at Mount Panorama, we take a few historical twists and turns down memory lane to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Great Race...

- STEVE NORMOYLE

 

In 1963 the man they would later call King of the Mountain was just an 18-year-old kid in country Victoria. Back then, no one had heard of Peter Brock, and Brock himself had yet to make his first visit to the Mountain as a spectator. The Mount Panorama circuit was already 25 years old. In 1963 it was far from the modern complex we know today. In fact, apart from a few extra wooden fences and a rudimentary pit structure and control tower, the venue was little changed from the public road ‘scenic drive’ that had been laid out just before the Second World War.

In 1963 the Holden car brand was just 15 years old. Despite its short history, it was the top-selling car in Australia by a comfortable margin. Even more remarkably, it dominated the market while offering only one model, which could be had as a four-door sedan or wagon, or in ute or panel van form. What would later be known as the Great Race had already been run three times at Phillip Island.

The last Phillip Island Armstrong 500 was won by a Ford Falcon driven by Bob Jane and Harry Firth, who later would mastermind Holden’s racing effort. But Holden had no involvement in racing in 1963. Fifty years ago, Firth was Ford’s motorsport conduit, and he would win the first Bathurst 500 in a Cortina GT. Two years later Barry Seton and Midge Bosworth would win driving a new version of the Cortina which Harry had developed, for Ford, especially for Bathurst. Already the manufacturers were getting involved in this epic annual long distance car race held on one of the most spectacular, and challenging circuits in the world – and, what’s more, it was a public road. In those early days the sense of excitement was real and it was growing year by year; this was a gruelling, frontier-type event like no other, pitting every-day road cars against one another in the toughest test imaginable.