The birth of Supercars

The birth of what we know today as Supercars racing involved an agonisingly difficult labour, but it all turned out for the best in the end. Here’s how it all went down in the early '90s when the original blueprint for the ‘5-litre V8’ category was hammered out.

Story: Steve Normoyle

Coming up with an all-new touring car racing formula isn’t a simple exercise. History tells us that it can be difficult to get it right, but easy to get wrong.

We saw this with the 2013 introduction of the Gen2 ‘Car of the Future’, the re-jig of the category aimed at opening up V8 Supercar racing to new manufacturers in addition to Holden and Ford. It achieved that goal, with Nissan and then Volvo getting involved, but the turn-key price of the new cars ended up being far more than had been promised. And the final package came with its share of seemingly preventable flaws, such as reliability issues with the transaxle transmission, and footwell temperatures even higher than the barely acceptable levels seen in the earlier cars.

History then repeating itself with the next rule revision, Gen3. The cost of the cars blew out substantially over original estimates, the whole thing was literally years behind schedule, and issues such as the overly-cramped driving position in part led to reigning champion Shane van Gisbergen quitting Supercars to try his luck in NASCAR.