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Ford set to quit V8 Supercars?

22 October, 2014

 


In a shock announcement to Ford, and V8 Supercars fans alike, reports surfaced over Bathurst weekend that Ford Australia were set to quit V8 Supercars.

The reports concerned speculation that Ford Australia was looking to exit the sport once its contract with Ford Performance Racing (FPR) expired at the end of the year. The announcement follows the demise of the Falcon as we know it — the new Falcon FG X is the final Aussie Falcon to go on sale before Ford Australia shuts its local assembly facilities down by October 2016.

This could mark the beginning of the end of the Ford badge in the V8 Supercars event. Ford Australia’s impending switch to importer status means their entire business model is under review, including investment and participation in motorsport.

“We are working with the teams now and any announcements we have will be after the season is over,” says Ford Australia’s president, Bob Graziano, adding to the speculative nature of the reports.

The report put a bit of a damper on the weekend which was a high point for Ford fans, with Chaz Mostert and Paul Morris taking pole at the Bathurst 1000 event in their Pepsi Max Falcon, racing for the factory-backed FPR team.

Regardless of what camp you sit in, you can’t deny that it would be a dark day in Australian motorsport if Ford were to pull out — here’s hoping that we’ll see the legendary Ford versus Holden rivalry continue for many years to come.

Janspeed recreates the Jaguar sports car

29 September, 2026

Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”