Touring Car Icons

The GIO Nissan Skyline GT-R is one of the most iconic privateer touring cars of Australia’s Group A era. Built by Fred Gibson’s renowned Gibson Motorsport operation as the team’s only customer GT-R, chassis #004 was commissioned by Bob Forbes Racing and entered in GIO colours for Mark Gibbs and Rohan Onslow during 1991 and 1992.

Its defining moment came at the 1991 Sandown 500, where Gibbs and Onslow delivered a dominant six-lap victory on the cars first major endurance outing. The car followed that triumph with a third-place finish at the 1991 Bathurst 1000, helping Gibbs and Onslow secure the Australian Endurance Championship. It returned to Bathurst in 1992 to finish sixth before the end of the Group A era, subsequently becoming a cherished piece of Australian motorsport history.

One of the fastest Sierra’s ever seen at Bathurst, the Allan Moffat Racing ANZ Ford Sierra RS500 was built by renowned Eggenberger Motorsport in 1989 specifically for Moffat’s Bathurst campaign. Driven by German stars Klaus Niedzwiedz and Frank Biela, the brand-new Sierra immediately proved its pace, finishing second at Bathurst that year behind Dick Johnson and John Bowe.

The cars defining moment came in 1990, when Niedzwiedz unleashed a record-breaking 2:13.94 lap in the Top 10 shootout to claim pole position for the Bathurst 1000 – the fastest qualifying lap ever recorded at Mount Panorama at the time, and even faster than the ‘V8 Supercars’ that followed three years later.

The car remains one of the most significant Group A Sierras to race in Australia and is presented in original, unrestored condition.

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Brock LH Torana + Lowndes VT Commodore

Few relationships in Australian motorsport are as intertwined as those of Peter Brock and Craig Lowndes. Their careers were separated by a generation, yet their paths crossed at precisely the moment one legend was approaching the twilight of his career, and another was emerging as Australian motorsport’s next superstar.

Lowndes grew up idolising Brock, with his father Frank having worked with the Holden Dealer Team during Brock’s formative years, and the two eventually came together at HRT in 1994. What began as a childhood hero becoming a teammate developed into one of the sport’s most significant mentor relationships. Brock passed on not only his knowledge of driving and car preparation, but his approach to pressure, fans and the wider responsibilities of being a racing driver.

There were obvious similarities between the two: both possessed exceptional natural speed, an instinctive feel for a touring car and an ability to extract performance when it mattered most. More importantly, both understood that success in Australian motorsport extended beyond simply winning races. They became hugely popular personalities who connected with fans in a way few other drivers could, while both established remarkably successful careers with Holden. Lowndes himself acknowledged the similarities in their driving styles, while Bev Brock described Lowndes as the closest driver to carrying on Peter’s mantle.

Their careers even followed remarkably parallel paths – both became Australian Touring Car champions early in their careers, both won three Australian Touring Car Championships, both enjoyed extraordinary success at Bathurst, and both became synonymous with Holden’s factory racing effort. Yet there was also a fascinating passing of the torch: as Brock’s career wound down, Lowndes emerged as the young star capable of carrying Holden’s enormous expectations into a new era. Their relationship was not without complexity, particularly as Lowndes’ emergence coincided with Brock’s gradual retirement from the factory team, but ultimately the pair developed an extraordinarily close bond.

When Brock died in 2006, Lowndes’ victory in the inaugural Peter Brock Trophy at Bathurst became one of the most poignant moments in the sport’s history – a fitting tribute from the driver who had once simply dreamed of being Peter Brock, and who had ultimately become the closest thing Australian touring car racing had produced to his successor.

This 1978 Holden Torana A9X and 1998 Holden Commodore VT represent both Brock and Lowndes second Australian Touring Car Title winning cars, achieved exactly 20 years apart.

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1986 Johnson Ford Mustang + 1986 Brock VK Holden Commodore

40 Years ago, Australian touring car racing was still finding its feet under the newly adopted FIA Group A regulations, and the contrast between Ford and Holden could hardly have been more dramatic.
On one side sat Peter Brock and the Holden Dealer Team’s muscular VK Commodore SS Group A – a big, naturally aspirated 5.0-litre V8 sedan developed from a road car and carrying the weight and character of Australia’s traditional touring car formula. Brock’s VK was already a proven weapon, kicking off the year by winning the Wellington 500 alongside Allan Moffat.
Across the pit lane sat Dick Johnson’s Ford Mustang GT, a very different interpretation of the same regulations. The Mustang was lower, lighter and more overtly American, with its 5.0-litre V8 giving Johnson the straight-line muscle to match the Commodore, but by 1986 it was beginning to show its age against the rapidly developing Group A opposition.
The fascinating thing about these two cars is that they represented a moment when manufacturers and teams could still exploit the fundamental characteristics of their road cars: the Commodore’s V8 torque and robust Australian construction versus the Mustang’s compact, powerful American muscle. Within a few years, however, Group A would become an international technological arms race, with turbocharged Sierras and Skylines changing the game completely.
Fast-forward to 2026 and the Mustang remains, remarkably, part of that same lineage – but almost everything underneath it has changed. The Gen3 Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro are purpose-built race cars sharing a common architecture, with both producing around 600 horsepower, weighing approximately 1,350kg and capable of around 300km/h. Rather than allowing the inherent differences between the road cars to dictate performance, Supercars now actively works to bring the Mustang and Camaro into aerodynamic parity through wind-tunnel testing and technical adjustments.
In 1986, Brock and Johnson were effectively taking two very different production cars and turning their strengths into racing weapons; in 2026, the philosophy is almost the reverse with two very different road-car identities are wrapped around highly controlled, purpose-built racing machinery. The names and the rivalry remain, but the battle has evolved from engineering around the differences between Ford and GM to engineering those differences out.

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Chaz Mostert 2013 FG Ford Falcon + Chaz Mostert 2025 Ford Mustang

In 2013, a fresh-faced 21-year-old Chaz Mostert arrived in the Supercars main game with Dick Johnson Racing, looking every bit the rising star after making his name in Formula Ford and Super2.

It took just 15 starts for the young Queenslander to announce himself, claiming his maiden Supercars victory at Queensland Raceway – a breakthrough that also delivered DJR its first win in three years. From there, Mostert’s career became a rollercoaster of spectacular highs and brutal setbacks: a remarkable Bathurst 1000 victory in 2014, a devastating crash at Mount Panorama the following year, multiple near-misses in the championship and a move to Walkinshaw Andretti United that ultimately reignited his title ambitions.

The wins and milestones kept coming, including a second Bathurst triumph in 2021 and 100 career podiums in 2025, but the one glaring omission from his trophy cabinet remained the Supercars Championship.

Twelve years after making his championship debut, that finally changed. In 2025, Mostert produced when it mattered most, storming through the inaugural Supercars Finals with three wins, three runner-up finishes and a fourth-place result across the final seven races. He arrived at the Adelaide Grand Final with a genuine shot at the crown and held his nerve in a tense title fight with Broc Feeney to secure his first championship by 62 points, becoming the 28th Australian Touring Car/Supercars champion and ending a 12-year wait for the title.

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“The Man and his Whiteboard”

Mark Larkham Orrcon AU Ford Falcon

Mark Larkham’s Supercars career is one of the great stories of Australian motorsport, not simply because of what he achieved behind the wheel, but because of everything he brought to the sport beyond it.

A self-taught racer with an engineer’s mindset, Larkham progressed rapidly through Formula Ford and Formula Holden before making his V8 Supercars debut with his own Mitre 10-backed operation in 1995, famously building his own unconventional EF Falcon rather than simply buying a car from an established team.

His career was never the traditional factory-driver pathway, but that was precisely what made Larko different: he designed and engineered his own cars, ran his own team, managed sponsorships and ultimately became one of the most technically minded characters in the paddock.

After years of persistence, the results came — including a memorable non-championship victory on the Gold Coast in 1998, a podium at Bathurst in 1997 and his first championship race win at Calder Park in 2000.

His final full-time season came in 2003 behind the wheel of #10 Orrcon Falcon AU. This very car – chassis M-TEK 04 – has since become a piece of Larkham memorabilia in its own right, restored to its 2003 Orrcon specification and retaining its connection to the man behind the wheel.

Larkham’s greatest contribution to Australian motorsport came after he climbed out of the car. Joining the television coverage in 2007, he transformed himself from V8 Supercar driver into one of the sport’s most recognisable personalities. His combination of genuine engineering knowledge, an ability to explain complicated technical concepts in simple language and an unmistakably enthusiastic personality made him an instant fan favourite. And then there was the whiteboard – a simple prop that became synonymous with Larko, allowing him to sketch, scribble and dissect everything from suspension geometry and tyre behaviour to racing incidents and aerodynamic concepts. It turned technical analysis into entertainment and turned an engineer’s explanation into something any fan could understand.

More than two decades after his final full-time race, Larkham has arguably become even more iconic to a generation of Supercars fans than he was as a driver: a reminder that you don’t necessarily need a championship trophy to become a legend of the sport. Larko’s legacy is the rare combination of racer, engineer, team owner, commentator and entertainer and, of course, the man with the whiteboard!

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