Andrew and Jeremy,
Your comments on Group R (excellent idea) and Group C sedans (crazy name,
crazy cars, presumably) raises a few interesting points.
1) Groups C sedans (as opposed to those luscious endurance sports cars which
send all reasonable hot blooded males wobbnly at the knees) wiould make for
fantastic racing, particularly if a grid full o9f former Bathurst mobiles
can be assembled. Could some famous retired pilots be tempted to go historic
(after founding their foundations for world peace and managing to unite
Ozzie rules, ARL, 2 litre shopping cars and proper saloons into one series
for 5 litre cars etc.) be tempted to race?
Supplementary thought: would the crowd fit into Wakefield Park?
2) On the issue of classes. I think the problem here lies with CAMS (why
not, they are to blame for everything else that's wrong with Australian
motorsport - not much overall but they cop the blame on all fronts). No,
seriously, I still find this Australian fanatacism/belief (call it what you
will) for the governing body to decide what is or isn';t a racing car rather
strange. After all, in the UK, or Ireland or most other countries of my
acquaintance, a race is what the promoter decides the rules will be.
In Ireland, we ran historic racing by saying, we would accept cars within
certain dates and which we were satisfied were historic. True, we were
extreme, didn't broach any of those horrid concepts such as democracy and
suchlike but then it worked well, as the drivers got start money and a
better prize fund than even the FF1600 championship at the time.
I think what needs to be done is for CAMS to be told where to stick its
capacity to deciee what is or isn;t a category and where promoters have a
potential grid they can get filled, to propse running a race to those
regulations. Of course, safety regs and suchlike are decided by the
governing body but the current situation of waiting for the grinding
bureaucracy at CAMS to do something makes little sense to an economic
rationalist (that is, privatise the government and shoot the people who are
surplus, incidentally) like me.
Can somebody not go to the management at somewhere like Wakefield Park and
ask them to run an invitation race for Group C sedans and then build the
idea from there? Why must CAMS sanction everything first? The RAC certainly
doesn't in England.
Note, I'm not suggesting open anarchy, just a degree of commonsense. Of
course when it comes to bureaucracy, use of the latter term has probably
shot me in the foot.
3) As far as dates are concerned, a cut-off around 1983-84 seems fine to me
as there has long been (or so it seems to me) a sort of unspoken cut-off
date that at circa 15 years, a car is historic.
Hope this helps!
Festives etc.
Patrick
>Jeremy....
>
>You wrote:
>
>"The Australian Histroic Commission at its meeting on December 13th
approved the new Group R.
>
>The actual details are to be published in January - but essentially this
allows FF up to the end of 1983 and Atlantic/Pacific cars up to the end of 86."
>
>Well, that's just fine and dandy for you open wheeler guys - what about us
tin top people.
>
>I would have thought that now there is no excuse not to recognise Group C
Sedans (1973-84) as an official Historic category. The cars currently
logbooked as Group C are all cars with a genuine race history from the
period - so surely the purists can't ignore these tin tops, because they are
actually a real part of Australia's motor racing history.
>
>I know that we've had threads on similar topics in the past, but - what is
happening overseas with regard to getting later cars, particularly genuine
ex-racecars, recognised as a Historic category? Surely we can draw a
comparison with the US or UK - any suggestions out there in Cyberspace?
>
>....regards...Andrew "Axeman" Pursey....1955 Morris Oxford (racing in Group
Na pre'58 Classic Saloons), 1956 Morris Isis (almost a daily driver) and
1996 Saab 900S Coupe (quality worse than most LBCs and Saab attitude to
customers worse than BL >ever was back in the 70s - don't buy a
Saab)....alternate email saabsux@hotmail.com
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