Yeah im pretty sure that bits wrong. farily sure it was never a sports sedan, in this country at leastOriginally Posted by Steve Holmes
Yeah im pretty sure that bits wrong. farily sure it was never a sports sedan, in this country at least
The 1987 Bathurst and Calder ANZ RS500 was a Rouse car easily identified by being Right Hand Drive. The following year Moffat bought an Eggenberger car out and contested a handful of ATCC races, the Sandown 500 (shown below) and Bathurst. I've read somewhere talk that this first car was originally a Texaco car with some indicating the black roll cage as evidence although I don't think anyone has really confirmed this. For 89, 90, 91 and 92 Moffat ran two full spec Eggenberger customer cars. One of the two cars was said to have only have 4 entries in it's CAMS log book - 4 Bathursts in a row.
1987 Bathurst - Rouse car;
1988 Sandown 500;
I've stolen a quote from another forum from what appears to be the owner of the 1988 car:
Greetings from Down Under guys. I'm on the hunt for any pics from the 1989 Intertec Fuji 500. In particular pics of the winning RS500 - the Allan Moffat Racing ANZ Sierra #39. This car was the very first Eggenberger 'customer' chassis, raced as #9 in Australia with Klaus Niedzwiedz employed as lead driver at Bathurst in 1988.
The 1989 Fuji 500 is significant as it was Moffat's last race & was done on his 50th Birthday but little, if anything of the race was reported in oz. I'm fortunate to know Allan personally & he speaks fondly of this race, even explaining the choice of race #39 (born 1939) & that he always told himself he would not be "one of those 50 year old race drivers"........he stuck to his word & went out a winner!
I think this is that #9 car;
and this is the #10 car;
The #10 car has been doing laps as recently as the 2012 Melborne F1 support races. I don't think the #9 car has been out since the Group A days. The #9 Rouse ANZ car is also in Aussie and is regularly seen doing the Group A races at classic events.
That's about as much as I know - but I'm sure there are others out there that know a whole lot more!!!
More car info and some good period pics:
http://www.ten-tenths.com/forum/showthread.php?t=114111
Hi Superford,
The white RS500 seen photographed inside a house is in fact the ANZ 10 car and the same car that you mention had 4 Bathurst entries in its CAMS book, I think the ANZ 9 car the Fuji 500 race winner is still owner by B Miles???.
See photos FYI.
Cheers.
Last edited by zakspeed65; 05-27-2012 at 07:29 AM.
Thanks for that zakspeed65 - I wasn't really sure. You suggest that #9 may be owned by B Miles of NZ fame?? Regardless I hope to see this car in action again one day soon.
I had the pleasure of having a good look over the Texaco RS500 when passing through Pahiatua last year when it was on display in the Hoffman Ford Showroom. Oh to be able to take it for a squirt!!!
Here is another of that series of snaps of ANZ #10;
From memory Moffat didn't race his Sierras much at all, he mostly focused on the big events, Bathurst, and a couple of the lead-up races.
Here are a couple of publicity pics from the 2012 Silverstone Classic http://www.silverstoneclassic.com/ where there will be a big celebration of the BTCC during the 1980s and early '90s. I always thought the Tim Harvey Labatts colour scheme was the nicest looking of all the Sierras. Note the number of Australian cars in these pics; One of the DJR cars, and an ex-Brock car, which itself was possibly ex-Rouse. Was the Chris Hodgetts car ex-DJR?
Hi Steve, the Hodgetts car was built by Brooklyn Ford I believe. Def. not a DJR car. I might be over there at end of July, so will try to get to that race meeting if I am. Apparently 1200 entrants there last year - it is HUGE!
Conrad
http://www.silverstoneclassic.com/Content/Event-Info/2/
Last edited by conrod; 06-03-2012 at 09:39 PM.
Thanks for that info Conrad. Good to know. Who was Brooklyn Ford.
Just out of interest, did DJR supply all the Sierras raced by Rob Gravett, or did Gravett end up building his own at some stage? I seem to recall he may have built his own prior to buying his first DJR car?
My understanding is that Gravett had just the one DJR car, and the rest ot the Trakstar cars were UK built. Brooklyn Ford was a Ford dealer, and I believe they did a lot of tuning of Cossies back in the day.
Conrad
heres a few more I took at the 87 street race.
Does anyone know if any of the current RS500's that race in NZ are based in Canterbury?
Mark, there used to be a few of them in Canterbury. I know several years ago there was a DJR and Brock car there, but not sure whats there now.
These are awesome photos Brett. Man I just loved those cars! Its amazing how standard looking the interiors are. I took a look inside one of the Eggenberger cars a couple of years ago at a historic event. For some reason I expected it to look like the inside of the space shuttle, but it was extremely basic, save for a few additional knobs. I was almost disappointed! These cars just seemed SO high-tech when they first appeared.heres a few more I took at the 87 street race.
Couple of great shots here by Warwick Clayton of the Rouse XR4i. What a pretty car this was. I believe this was its debut NZ race, the 1986 Wellington Street Race.
Making some progress.....decals next.
Wow! What is the history of this car?
Some time around 1987/88 I was at my desk at Cars and Car Conversions magazine when I fielded a phone call from a former colleague who had crossed to the dark side and was working as a public relations consultant. "I have a client", he explained, "who has the fastest Sierra in Europe!" My heart sank. This was the height of the Sierra Cosworth tuning era, and every tuner in Britain was claiming that his latest effort was the fastest and most powerful yet. Because of Ford's commendably strict durability requirements for all of its production vehicles (from memory, every vehicle had to be capable of driving for a minimum of 24 hours at full throttle, regardless of whether it was a 150mph Sierra RS Cosworth or a 950cc Fiesta), the Cossie was under-stressed in standard form and could easily accept substantial performance upgrades, often achieved with little more than a modified 'chip' in the ECU. By such means 240bhp was achieved with some ease, a substantial increase on the standard car's 204bhp (sorry guys, I am not very good at these new-fangled kW thingies). With some mechanical upgrades: better head gaskets; bigger turbocharger; bigger intercoolers; higher-flowing injectors etc, even greater outputs were achievable, still with impressive durability and reliability. But this lead to a horsepower race, such that in time it seemed that every tuning company and BTCC race team in the UK, and many more in Europe, were offering performance upgrades for the Cossie. And every week it seemed that one or other was trying to top the others with more and more (advertised) horsepower.
Without the ability to verify every claim we - the editorial staff at CCC - had become skeptical and frankly, a little tired of these claims as more and more preposterous figures were bandied about. Hence my rather 'ho hum, not another one' response to my former colleague's invitation to feature his client's car. However when he explained that this was no ordinary tuned Sierra but a Pro Stock dragster, I took a somewhat keener interest. "It's got 1800 horsepower", he averred. "It does the standing quarter mile in under 9 seconds. It is the fastest Door Slammer in Europe, and he wants you to test it!"
That's how I came to be at Santa Pod with a staff photographer a few days later when a huge vehicle transporter bearing a Hauser Race Cars logo rolled in. The two crew team members with the car proceeded to open up the rear of the transporter and unload the vehicle within. When it was still on the tail lift I looked up at it, and as it was slowly lowered to ground level it started to dawn on me that I might have bitten off a bit more than I could chew.
I should explain here that while I wasn't over-endowed with self-confidence, by that time I had done quite a bit of racing in the UK and had enjoyed a bit of success. I had also track tested a number of pretty quick cars, and when it came to a driving challenge I was pretty much up for anything. Or thought I was. But I was definitely having second thoughts about this. This was clearly a serious and highly specialized bit of kit, and not the sort of thing you just grab the keys for with a cheerful "Gizza go, mister', jump in and tear up the road. Hey, I wasn't scared right? Just a little… well, apprehensive…
Then the owner/driver Geoff Hauser arrived, and after we had exchanged the usual pleasantries, it quickly became apparent that he was of much the same opinion! It seemed that my erstwhile colleague had been a little economical with the truth, and that there was no possibility of anyone other than Geoff himself, a hugely experienced drag racer and professional car builder (and a hell of a nice guy too, I came to realize), taking the wheel. However, a track test is not a track test unless you actually get to drive, right? And as always, we were under pressure to deliver a feature for the next issue of the magazine, with no time to reschedule or tee up an alternative. I had been stitched up.
I sought out the PR man and gave him the benefit of my opinion.
I felt a little better, but my dilemma remained: how the hell were we supposed to do a track test when the owner of the vehicle has no intention of allowing anyone other than himself to drive it? Never mind that: I wasn't too sure I was prepared to drive it myself anyway, at least not without a good deal of instruction, supervision, and practice, for which we had simply had not planned. Anyway, there was no passenger seat and no seat belts, nor any provision for fitting either. So I went back to Geoff and explained the problem. We had pages to fill and deadlines to meet. I told him that I felt we had been misled, through no fault of his, and asked if he could suggest any way out of the mess. "Well, there is something we could do" he replied. "If you are prepared to wedge yourself into the passenger side, we'll do a burnout and a launch and half-pass. It will at least give you a feel for the acceleration and speed". Ulp!
Half an hour later, Geoff having completed a couple of solo test runs, I found myself worming my way in among the tubes of the substantial roll cage in search of a suitable place to sit. Like any serious racing saloon, the roll age is the chassis, so in fact it was proving difficult simply to find a person-sized gap to squeeze in to.
The multiplicity of tubes meant there were plenty of things to hold on to, but equally, plenty of stuff to whack an unrestrained limb in to too. I was especially nervous of the weight of my crash helmet, and the possibility of sustaining whiplash if the acceleration was indeed as fierce as expected.
After a bit of wriggling about, I found a position propped up against the rear bulkhead where I felt I couldn't be hurled backwards, where I had something to hold on to, and where I could use my free arm to provide some support for my helmet. "I must be fucking mad" I thought as I gave Geoff the thumbs-up. He fired up the motor, which set off an incredible racket. But even more noticeable was the vibration, which excited every internal panel and seemed to add to the din. You could feel the torque of that giant bellowing 9-litre V8, the whole vehicle rocking gently on its rear tyres, squidgy as under-inflated balloons, every time he blipped the throttle.
We rolled up to the start-line and Geoff performed the obligatory burnout to warm the tyres, filling the cockpit with acrid smoke. Backing up with the door open largely cleared the cockpit of smoke, but not before I had suffered a coughing fit and streaming eyes. Then creeping forward in tiny increments, in the process known to drag racers as "staging", we were ready.
We had access to all of Santa Pod's facilities, so we used the 'Christmas Tree" as though we were in a proper drag race: pre-stage, stage, watch for the amber lights and GO! Although I was prepared to be amazed (and holding on for dear life!) nothing could prepare me for the sheer violence of the launch. Even though I was braced, my back slammed in to the bulkhead behind me knocking some of the wind out of me, and I was glad of the restraining arm behind my head taking the additional weight of my helmet. With no discernible wheelspin, and no clutch slip, it was like being launched by a giant invisible rubber band. One moment we were sitting on the start line and the next second we were flying down the strip at rapidly-increasing speed. At half-track and about 130mph, Geoff lifted off and we coasted the rest of the way, braking gently to a halt without needing to deploy the parachute required when slowing from 190-odd mph.
An amazing experience. A Boeing 737 in take-off mode has enough acceleration to pin you back in your seat, but the initial launch is distinctly leisurely as the tremendous thrust developed by the jet engines strives to overcome the inertia of all that weight at rest. In a similar way, almost everything else I have driven or ridden in is traction-limited, and takes a little coaxing to get off the line . This thing seemed to defy the normal laws of physics.
As we rolled to a halt I was very glad to unravel myself from all those tubes and set foot on terra firma again; glad to have had the experience; glad to have survived. And to be honest, I was glad not to have had to drive the Sierra myself! It was without a doubt the riskiest thing I did in my time with CCC, but (having survived!) it remains a memory to treasure. Curious isn't it: the life-experiences where you've overcome obstacles, confronted fears… and survived… are the ones that remain in the memory longest.
Wow, awesome story! I don't really know what the rules are in Pro Stock, but obviously he was allowed to fit a V8 in place of the turbo 4, or was he using the South African V8 Sierra as his reasoning for the repower? Did the car still look like a Sierra Cosworth, or had the outer shell been so severely massaged it was hard to tell?
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