A crowd guessed at around 50,000 saw a clear Ford victory in a race of changing fortunes, that had three different makes in the lead at different times. But many would have gone home disappointed, for the race that started and finished spectacularly, almost died in the middle. Almost everybody won at Bathurst. Ford drove to…

They didn’t call Harry Firth the Old Fox for nothing. When he turned up for the inaugural Bathurst 1000 in 1963 some of his competitors thought he had taken leave of his senses. Not for him the great, growling V8 that has since become synonymous with the Mt Panorama circuit, where the race had moved…