HISTORY: Stormin' Norman

The arrival of a new generation of Supercars heroes in 2025 provides a timely trigger for a look back at earlier touring car heroes and villains.

As Ryan Wood, Kai Allen and Matt Payne become regular front-runners, not forgetting that Broc Feeney and Will Brown are still only 20-somethings, who has had the biggest early impact?

Jamie Whincup is the GOAT – greatest of all time – but did he build the biggest fan following?

That honour went to Peter Brock, who has since been followed by Craig Lownes.

So what about Norm Beechey?

It's been more than 50 years since 'Stormin' Norman' rampaged through touring car racing and with his bellowing Holden Monaro, a game changer for the category and a patriotic rival to the old-school Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros that were stars long before Gen2 Supercars.

Beechey scored a memorable win the second round of the 1970 Australian Touring Car Championship at Bathurst in his game-changing Holden Monaro GTS 350 and went on to win the title that year – Holden's first series title and also the first for an Australian car.

When Dale Rodgers spoke with Beechey, in a rare interview for Race.news, there were rare insights into the unique cars that became iconic in the lead-up to his memorable 1970 Championship.

‘GREAT DAYS’ is a line Beechey often adds to his signature when signing various pictures and books from his racing career and it captures his career of the 1960s and early 1970s perfectly.

It's easy to romanticise the heroes of motor sport, describing them as larger-than-life personalities, showmen and entertainers.

Beechey was all of those things and more, which is why he was, without question, one of the greatest touring car competitors this country has seen.

Not only was the character himself one of the most popular drivers of the era – trumping Ian 'Pete' Geoghegan, Bob Jane and Allan Moffat – but he went further by putting cars on the grid between 1965 and 1970 that were unique and won him even more fans.

Beechey competed in a wide variety of cars from as far back as the Albert Park meeting that was held in conjunction with the Olympic Games in 1956. He raced a new Ford Customline that won the main touring car race, beating Len Lukey – have you heard of Lukey Mufflers? – in the process.

He then went on to race a famous early-model 48-215 Holden, known as PK 752 (its registration number plate), before it ended its days rather bent after an encounter at Calder with fellow Brunswick car trader Jane, who was driving a Fiat at the time.

But it was in 1965 that Beechey changed the landscape of touring car racing and sparked the love affair with V8s as the staple diet of racing in Australia.

Norm won the Australian Touring Car Championship that year after he imported a brand-new Ford Mustang. The cars were hard to get during their launch year in the USA but, in typical Beechey style, he was soon jumping the queue thanks to a chance restaurant meeting in Melbourne with Bill Bourke, the head of Ford Australia, who wrote a letter of introduction to the trumps in the 'states.

His ATCC win at Sandown in the colours of the Neptune petroleum brand was arguably the first major win for a Mustang anywhere in the world.

After the Mustang won the 1965 ATCC by over a lap, when it was held on a single day and not over a series, it became the car of choice. Jane continued with his hastily-arrived Mustang in '66 and was soon joined by Geoghegan.

Continuing his pioneering attitude, Beechey was soon back to the USA to look for a Mustang replacement, even though his car was still new.

The story is a good one, as Neptune and Shell’s Brand Manager, Rod Troon, accompanied Beechey to America.

Troon managed the Tridents Racing Team – which would become the Shell Racing Team in 1968 – with cars across all three classes of the-then Improved Production era. Beechey was in the Over 3000cc class along with teammates Jim McKeown, in a super quick Lotus Cortina, and the ubiquitous Peter Manton as ‘King’ of the Mini brigade.

After their shopping trip, Norm and Rod returned in early 1966 with a two-door, 5.3 litre Chevrolet Nova 11. It was a superb-looking American muscle car and, just as Beechey had done with the Mustang, would be the Nova’s first circuit racing campaign.

Beechey paid $US2,600 for the Nova from a Californian dealer before spending another $6000 at Traco Engineering for a race-ready version of the 327 cubic inch Chevrolet engine.

The Nova was an instant success and the battle lines between Norm and Geoghegan were drawn in early 1966 and continued right through until Beechey’s retirement in 1972.

Arguably, this was the real beginning of the classic GM-versus-Ford battle, however it was an era where the drivers were undisputedly the heroes.

Beechey set about defending his ATCC crown at the 1966 event at Bathurst, where he qualified both the Mustang and Nova. In a little-known story, although the Mustang was quicker, Beechey decided to take on Geoghegan's Castrol Mustang in the newer Nova.

The paddock was buzzing with questions about why, after qualifying some five seconds slower than Geoghegan and nearly two seconds slower than his own Mustang, he would race the Nova. But Norm led at the end of lap one, and by lap eight of the 20-lap event, was nearly 10 seconds ahead.

Then an oil leak from the gearbox found its way into the clutch, forcing Beechey to back off. Geoghegan went past to take the win by over 30 seconds.

“It was the Nova’s first race and my first time at Bathurst,” Beechey recalled.  “I treated that track with a lot of respect.”

“The Chevy Nova went straight by Geoghegan up Mountain Straight in the race, and I was leading comfortably. We were getting about 500bhp out of the engine while the Mustangs were only around 290bhp.”

Beechey stuck with the Nova into the 1967 season and again faced his biggest rival in the showdown for the ATCC at Lakeside. The Nova was raced extensively during ‘66 and ‘67 and was becoming a well-sorted race car, but 'Big Pete' always seemed to have something in his repertoire to take it up to Beechey.

Once again Beechey would lead the Castrol Mustang and a much stronger field than in 1966 before, without warning and with a comfortable lead once again, the Nova blew a tyre and bounced off the Armco on the run down to Hungry Corner with only 10 laps to run. Ever the showman, Beechey sat on the bonnet of the stricken black Nova and watched another ATCC slip away.

In 1968, Beechey was again in the USA to find a replacement for the Nova. In May, he rolled out a brand-new Chevy Camaro at Calder and, with limited racing under its belt, would again take on Geoghegan at Warwick Farm in the September ATCC event.

This time he would trail Pete’s Mustang and retire after only 12 laps with fans again treated to the the sight of Norm sitting on the bonnet of his car as Geoghegan went on to win his third ATCC in a row.

The Camaro was a very short-lived affair and just a few months later, prior to the end of 1968, Norm would debut a new HK Holden Monaro.

Fresh a Bathurst win with the Series Production version of its new Holden coupe, General-Motors Holden had given Beechey a brand-new HK to tackle the ATCC, which in 1969 was now to be contested as a series of events for the first time.    

The speed in which the car was developed and made race-ready was astounding. The HK Monaro arrived at Norm’s Brunswick workshops late in 1968 and, while still campaigning the Camaro, his small crew led by Graham Moore had the car race-ready for the ‘69 championship.

A non-start at Bathurst in Round 2, after clouting the fence at Forest Elbow, may have cost him the 1969 championship, but the new Monaro finished strongly with wins at Surfers Paradise and Symmons Plains.

Not surprisingly, the ATCC trophy was again handed to Geoghegan and Beechey still speaks fondly of their rivalry.

“I don’t think Ian Geoghegan ever beat me at Calder, and I could not beat him at Warwick Farm. He was brilliant there. But at Lakeside, we both won a lot of races,” Norm recalled.

“Racing Geoghegan was always tough but very fair. There was a lot of respect between us.”

Beechey was not quite as complimentary about Jane and Moffat.

It was 1970 that Beechey launched the car that would define not only in his own career but lives in the annals of one of the greatest cars in Australian motorsport history.

It was the fifth time in five years that Shell’s main man would launch another assault in a new car and the striking yellow HT Monaro was unlike any other Touring Car built in Australia: innovative and borrowing much from the factory-built TransAm cars in the USA.

Once again, Beechey’s Brunswick base was working on the new car while still campaigning the old HK ahead of the HT Monaro GTS 350's debute at Beechey’s home track at Calder.

His adoring fans were lined up in their thousands to watch not only the resumption of the Beechey-versus-Geoghegan battle but a host of serious contenders now entering the Championship: Moffat in the full-spec 1969 Trans Am Mustang, Jane in a matching car to Geoghegan’s 68 Mustang GTA, with serious Porsche additions as McKeown finally relinquished his Cortina and Brian Foley stepping up from a Mini into a 911. There was also a host of other serious contenders with Bryan Thomson (Camaro) and Dick Johnson making his debut at Lakeside in a Shell-backed Torana XU1.

The build of the HT Monaro GTS 350 was overseen by young engineer, Lou Mallia, who had commenced with Beechey’s truck Dealership in the Nova era and progressed to race team duties after Graham Moore stepped down and John Sheppard left after a short stint.

Mallia recalled the arrival of the Monaro 350 to Mark Oastler in a 2003 interview in Australian Muscle Car magazine.

“The car arrived at work (a workshop at the rear of Beechey’s Nissan dealership on Sydney Road in Brunswick) as a brand new, road-going car that we completely stripped and built into a race car,” he said. “Norm was really 99 per cent of that motor car. He was a very, very clever man. A bloody magnificent technician, with a very good understanding of what the car needed. He had most of the say.

Take a simple thing like the seat. I reckon we spent a week just getting him comfortable in the car. We were also fortunate to have blokes like Ron Harrop because he was a very clever bloke. Ken Box was also involved and he was a brilliant engineer.”

In a comment that defies the work and hours that go into today’s Supercars build, Mallia almost shrugged off the build time.

“It didn’t take very long because the HK 327 was phased out at the end of 1969 and we started the ‘70 season with the new car, so we built it over the Christmas-New Year period.”

The 1970 ATCC was all about Beechey and the fabulous HT Monaro GTS 350. Of the seven rounds, Beechey took three victories, finished second in one other and was a non-starter in the final round at Symmons Plains.

The Monaro took its first ATCC win at Round 2 at Bathurst and then went on to win in front of huge crowd at Melbourne’s Sandown Park Raceway. A win in the penultimate round at Lakeside sealed the Championship for Beechey, his second in six years.

Arch-rival Geoghegan’s amazing run of success saw only one victory at Mallala and, for once, the roles were reversed with several second places behind the Monaro. Consistency saw Jane finish third behind McKeown’s Shell Porsche and the expected onslaught from Moffat’s Trans Am Mustang failed to materialise with only one win in a bruising Round 1 at Calder Park.

Beechey had the last word in an interview in Sports Car World in 1970.

“The Holden project was immense,” Beechey said.

“Somebody claimed in print it cost us a six-figure sum to develop the car. Well, it wasn’t that high. We could have run a team of cars for that amount. But it did take up a hell of a lot of time and money.”

The importance of the HT Monaro GTS 350 and its success were also not lost on Norm.     

“You know there are lots of people who believe it’s just a hotted up Holden . . . that they could do the same to theirs. Well they couldn’t.

"It’s a 100 per cent racing car and we have achieved it all here in Australia in one season, with a budget only a fraction the size the Yanks had to play with. It’s a magnificent effort, my greatest motor racing achievement.” Norm concluded. 

 *Thanks to Stephen Stockdale for his assistance with this feature.