Allan Moffat’s first International race transporter changed the Australian motorsport scene forever

Australian motorsport was in a fascinating place in the early seventies. The big Australian car manufacturers were investing eye-watering sums into their performance programs, building race cars for the road to be eligible for the biggest races Down Under.

Then, the ‘Supercar Scare’. These wild homologation specials had to be shelved because of worries about the power under the bonnet ending up at the mercy of the wrong right foot. That meant motor racing fans were denied of some mouth-watering machinery on Mount Panorama and other race tracks around the country.

But the stars were still in the game, and the cars still had plenty of grunt. Motor racing retained its rightful place on the Australian sporting landscape. The two big protagonists loomed larger than ever; Peter Brock and Allan Moffat, and they cared as much about winning as they ever had.

The professionalism of motorsport was growing, with corporate Australian becoming more interested in building brands in partnership with the motorsport heroes of the day. But one critical aspect of Australian motor racing still lagged behind as the sport’s professionalism grew; the way race cars were transported.

Even as budgets grew, the biggest teams were still transporting their increasingly valuable race cars on open trailers pulled by ordinary cars and converted utes. But by the mid-seventies, those days were numbered.

Allan Moffat’s race team of out Toorak, Melbourne, was among the first big touring car outfits to use a purpose-built enclosed race transporter in 1974. It was thanks to his long-time partner, International Harvester, which had set about building Moffat the best race transporter ever seen in the Australian Touring Car Championship. And you couldn’t miss International’s involvement in the project, with ‘International Muscle’ signage on both sides.

The transporter was based on an Australian-built International ACCO, and the body was built by Cooks Body Works in the Melbourne suburb of Moorabbin. The transporter, coined the ‘Racemobile GT’, was a big step forward. It could haul two race cars, fit all the spares and even had space for the crew up front.

It made quite an impression in race paddocks and out on the road for the best part of two years, before a famous incident on what should have been an innocuous trip west with his invaluable American-developed ‘B52’ Ford XB Falcon inside.

Here’s an extract out of Allan’s Autobiography, Climbing the Mountain, referring to a career-defining moment in mid-1976:

“I’d won two out of the first five rounds and claimed a second by the time we headed for Adelaide International Raceway.

“My big International Harvester transporter had left 711 heading for the circuit and I flew to Adelaide.

“Off the plane, the police were waiting. ‘We have bad news,’ they said.

“Not stolen again, I thought, referencing my 1973 theft. Nope. ‘Your transporter has burned to the ground with the car inside.’

“The fire had occurred at Murray Bridge, about 80 kilometres out of the city. It was so intense it had fused the wheels of the track into the bitumen road surface. The two drivers had failed to extract the B52, but they had managed to salvage their own suitcases. I suggested they use them for the long hitchhike back to Melbourne.”

It was a big blow for Moffat. The time and expense poured into the B52 project, and the entire backbone of the race team, was left in a smouldering mess in South Australia.

But in true Allan Moffat fashion, the Canadian bounced back. International stepped up to build an even better transporter on its ACCO platform, which was commissioned and completed in the months following the fire.

The replacement rig went on to transport some very famous Moffat machinery, including the 1977 Bathurst-winning Ford Falcon XC hardtops, Moffat’s Mazda RX7 and his Chevrolet Monza sport sedan. And as the seventies unfolded, more teams followed Moffat’s lead in building bigger and better race transporters to support their racing efforts.

Moffat sold the transporter as his motor racing career wound down in the eighties. It was then put to work hauling sport sedans, before being left to rot in a paddock like so many other invaluable pieces of motorsport machinery from this era. Why do paddocks always get the good stuff?

A post on the Bowden’s Own Premium Car Care Facebook page suggests it was saved by a motorsport enthusiast, who gave it a lick of paint, and then it was purchased for the Bowden collection - adding a diesel flavour to the stunning fleet of historic Australian motor racing machinery on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

That’s where you’ll find this famous rig today. You can be certain it won’t be heading back to another rural paddock any time soon.

Love the transporters in the paddock Down Under? This rig set the wheels in motion for the spectacular transporters of the modern era, and it’s a fitting Australian-built legend for Classics Week.

A big thank you to both Mike Cornwall and Bowden’s Own Premium Car Care for the photos you see in this story.