THE accident in Hardies Heroes in 1983 at Bathurst that left him scrambling to make race day in a hastily prepared replacement car would have firmly been on the mind of Dick Johnson when he filled out his entry forms for the 1984 James Hardie 1000.
Johnson’s crash in the Shootout for pole position that totalled his Greens-Tuf XE Falcon in ’83 and forced sponsor Ross Palmer to buy Andrew Harris’ privateer Ford and re-birth it as car #17 on Saturday evening is the stuff of Bathurst legend.
But often overlooked is how Johnson returned to the Mountain in 1984 with an insurance policy in the form of an ultimately unraced spare Ford.
Johnson and co-driver John French were entered in the familiar Palmer Tube Mills-backed #17 Falcon XE that had won that year’s Australian Touring Car Championship, but there was a second entry filed by the popular Queenslander, for a white #71 Mustang in the international Group A class.
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That #71 Mustang was only driven in practice at Bathurst (it qualified 48th), though was withdrawn before race day to allow the team to focus on its Falcon.
Having it on site and qualified for the race would have given Johnson and French a car to move into should any issues befall the Falcon prior to race day, but ultimately the Mustang had to wait until October 1985 for more Mountain running.