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This King’s Birthday long weekend, June 7 & 8, the 2025 Heritage Touring Cars Series will reach its midpoint, with round three to be contested at the HSRCA’s 2025 Sydney Classic at Sydney Motorsport Park. Nearly 20 icons of Australian touring car racing are set to tackle the circuit in full race form.
Dean How and David Towe will have the first and last JPS BMWs out on track together again, Rick Allen and Scott Robinson’s BMWs adding to a great showing for the marque. Chris Stillwell’s RS500 and Adrian Allisey’s Walkinshaw Commodore seem set to be the ones to beat, and we’re looking forward to great racing amongst the lower capacity cars as well, including Gavin Adamson’s Gemini which put on a great show at Morgan Park. Meon Nehrybecki’s AMG-Mercedes 190E 2.5-16 Evo2 is sure to be a crowd pleaser.
Let’s take a look at two highlights – David Holland’s Holden Torana XU-1 and Garry Kirwan’s Walkinshaw Commodore VL.
David’s XU-1 comes from an impressive family lineage – the car belonged to his father Don, whose Bathurst history stretches all the way back to the 1963 Armstrong 500, the first time the race was contested on Mount Panorama Circuit. He would go on to make 17 appearances in the race and win his class five times.
The car that will appear in the 2025 Sydney Classic is the Holden Torana XU-1 that Don raced in the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500, where he finished fifth, his wife Jan Holland also running in another Torana alongside Christine Cole. David made his debut on The Mountain more than 50 years later, last year in the Bathurst Heritage Revival.
Image kindly provided by Craig King
Garry Kirwan will run an ex-Gerald Kay Holden Commodore VL SS Walkinshaw at the Sydney Classic. This car began life as an unnumbered Larry Perkins shell and was built up by Gerald Kay, running under Macfarlane Generators sponsorship. It contested the 1989 Australian Touring Car Championship season in Kay’s hands, also running in the Sandown and Bathurst endurance events with Alf Grant joining Kay.
The Walkinshaw returned in 1990 and would complete most of the series until a crash at Oran Park saw its season over. The team were able to buy a new motor from Perkins for Bathurst, but the arrival of economic recession led to the car being parked and the motor going back to Perkins.
There it stayed until the beginning of the new millennium, when Steve Tate bought it, refreshed the motor and prepared it for motor racing. It’s a very original car, but looks near new because it only endured those two years of period competition. Garry Kirwan acquired the car in 2007 and has been racing it ever since – one of our longest running competitors. During its historic career it held a lap record at Eastern Creek, where it will appear this weekend, and appeared alongside the Formula 1 in Melbourne.
Our C & A touring cars will be joined by kindred spirits in the HQ Racing NSW series, which was born in Tasmania in 1989 and runs Holden HQ four door sedans with 3.3-litre six cylinder engines. Group N historic touring cars also have a good field set for the weekend, and including Group S and MG Racing Australia, this should be a great meeting for fans of tin top racing!
Tickets are available now at Humanitix at this link and will be available at the gate each day.
If you’re unable to attend in person, the meeting will also be live streamed by Blend Line TV. Blend Line TV is a subscription service, which costs $8 per month and includes not only the HSRCA event, but other motorsport as well. You can learn more by clicking this link, which is where you’ll find the livestream of the Sydney Classic June 7 & 8.
