Holden at the Mountain is as Australian as football, meat pies and kangaroos, but this year’s Repco Bathurst 1000 will be the last to feature the Commodore and the lion on the grid for The Great Race.
A common feature of the annual Bathurst pilgrimage since 1963, Holden started with the racing special EH S4 and will log its final chapter this weekend nearly two years after the brand’s operations ceased in the Holden ZB Commodore.
Representing Australian manufacturing up until 2018, Holden has won the event a remarkable 35 times and started from pole on 24 occasions, one less than arch enemy Ford.
Holden’s final stand at the Mountain occurs on the 50th anniversary of hero Peter Brock’s first triumph in the Holden Dealer Team Torana GTR XU-1, before taking a further eight to hold the record.
The variety in the early years of the event Holden was represented by a mixture of homologation specials and even a EH Premier, but the Monaro became the hero model when the Holden Dealer Racing Team was born through David McKay in 1968.
After running a team of Monaros in the 1968 London to Sydney, McKay did likewise at Bathurst as instead privateer Bruce McPhee took victory in the new GTS 327 variant after completing the whole race bar one lap, which was driven by Barry Mulholland.
This started a run of success for the Lion as a proper Holden Dealer Team was set-up led by Ford’s former leader Harry Firth took victory in 1969 with Colin Bond and Tony Roberts, before a switch to the giant killing Toranas.
LC and LJ Torana GTR XU-1s were outgunned during the early-1970s, but a wet race in 1972 proved a breakthrough as Brock took victory.
Proving already a popular choice for privateers, the Holden product went V8 in 1974 and went on to win four of the next six races as the A9X proved a dominant force in touring car racing by the end of the 1970s highlighted by Brock’s six-lap victory alongside Jim Richards.
Not only was Holden in the outright battle, but the Gemini proved a very capable and successful weapon in the class stakes. Many drivers using it as a launchpad to mount an outright attack on the race in years to come.
Commodore will aim to take the same result as it enjoyed on its debut back in 1980 when Brock and Richards took the flag after heartbreak for Ford rival Dick Johnson after hitting the infamous rock.
Indeed, Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander are favourite to complete a fairytale farewell at the Mountain.