australian

The Jim Richards moment helped to precipitate the gathering split in Australian touring car racing between the internationalist Super Touring category and the Australian-centred V8 Supercars. For a few years there were two races at Bathurst, both claiming to be the legitimate Bathurst 1000, although one of the races was officially branded the "Australian 1000 Classic". One was for Super Touring and production cars (Bathurst 1000), the other for V8 Supercars (Australian 1000 Classic).
Marketing executives from both Holden and Ford during the early 1990s decided they needed a better platform to show off the local product, which was either not competing (Ford) or totally out classed (Holden) by the better European and Japanese (namely the GTR Skyline) cars. A portion of the local race fans, namely the Holden fans were not happy with the class of racing either, and it was decided that for 1993 a variation of Group A was to be run, allowing only V8 Holdens and V8 Ford Falcons to run with the exception of a weight limited BMW M3 run by Tony Longhurst. The following year Australia also had a 2ltr championship, the cars that were so popular in England and Europe and being run by TOCA. For the 1994 Bathurst 1000 the 2 ltr cars ran with the V8s, with a top placing of 10th outright. For 1995 the 2ltr cars played a support role as the 1000 km race was only for the V8s once again. Now under the control of an events manager (Tony Cochran) The V8 series took on a new challenge of being the only class to dominate Australian motorsport, and this ment out promoting and beating at any cost the 2 ltr class of racing. AVESCO also started demanding more money from venues to put on the V8 supercar show come the 1997 year, the demands were far in excess of what the ARDC could afford, just to have the V8 class of racing at Bathurst. Since the demanded amount of money was not forth coming the powers to be running the V8 supercar series, the decision was made to dump the original race from the V8 calender, leaving the organisers without an entry field for the 1997 race. It was decided to ask if the 2ltr cars if they would fill the void to which the local 2ltr teams did, as well as overseas teams such as the immortal Renault Williams team. Many believed the 2ltr cars were too highly strung and not capable of going the distance, however those fears were set right with th BMW of David Brabham winning the event when the Renault of Alan Menu broke the diff.
1998 sadly was the last of the original 1000 km race, the V8s having started their own 1000 km race and intensive marketing campagne (the V8/ 2ltr supertourer Bathurst war) to counter any resistance and crush the competing class of racing. This was a close race with minimal safety car intervention to have Jim Richards win his 7th Bathurst 1000 in the Volvo over his son Steven in a Nissan.
Since the demise of the original race there has been the V8 supercar 1000 only in its place. No longer run on the traditional long weekend in October, it is now only a race between either V8 Fords or V8 Holdens and all other marques are banned.