The WA Historic Touring Car Club will be once again supporting the Supercars at Wanneroo Raceway in late April 2022.
HTC’s are a still a major draw card at these and other events and even the current Supercar stars admit to enjoying watching them in action. This is astonishing given that it is almost 70 years since this form of racing began.
Historic Touring Cars encapsulates family production cars from the 1950’s to 1972 which were raced basically as they came out of the factory to see who produced the best cars in terms of winning at race tracks. The manufacturers thought winning on Sunday related to selling cars on Monday.
At that time Australian race car drivers such as Beechey, Jane, Brock, Moffat and Geogheagan were carving out careers as touring car drivers. They drove Mustangs, Monaros, Falcons, Chargers, Cortinas, Mini Cooper S, Toranas, Valiants and Jaguars to name a few.
Whilst it may be said that Supercars is the modern evolution of those beginnings, the closest spectacle to those days is the Historic Touring Car racing of today which continues using cars from that same period.
The Group is split into three time periods defined as: – Group Na (pre 1958), Group Nb (pre 1965) and Group Nc (1966-1972)
There are HTC clubs in most states of Australia, and in excess of 300 cars that compete.
The WAHTCC has members with almost every type of car that raced in period and enjoys healthy fields of 20-30 cars at their premium events throughout the year. Local drivers also travel to the eastern states to compete in their events including Supercar support at Bathurst. WAHTCC drivers are some of the fastest in Australia regularly winning at the major events.
In 2022 members of the WAHTCC will be racing locally at 10 individual events at Wanneroo Raceway and the Collie Motorplex competing for the Motorsport Australia WA Historic Touring Car Championship.
The new 2022 Committee is working hard to ensure competitors, Pit Crews and the spectators once again are thrilled with the cut and thrust of highly competitive motorsport in these now extremely valuable and rare race cars of the period.
Mike Rowe, Chairman of the 2022 Committee, commented at the AGM “The enthusiasm and support from the members of the WAHTCC in continuing to refurbish these cars to as good if not better standard than when they were manufactured, is testament to the huge enthusiasm still surrounding the Historic Touring Car movement.”
“The competition year hasn’t yet started and we have 4 new members with 4 more Historic Touring Cars to add to the 75 member cars currently in the Club.”
“The 2022 looks like being another stellar year for the Club and being nationally televised whilst supporting the Supercars is sure to maintain the strong following of the sport.”
Joining the grid this year will be Peter Hopwood’s Chevy Impala, another 69 Mustang Fatback and 2 new mini’s to the grid.
The Historic Touring Cars will be racing at Wanneroo Raceway as part of the WA Sporting Car Club race meets and for more details on when they are racing check out the WAHTCC Facebook and of course the WA Sporting Car Club’s website.