{"id":557486,"date":"2026-03-22T18:18:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T18:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557486\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T18:18:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T18:18:39","slug":"how-dick-johnson-took-out-a-mustang-insurance-policy-at-bathurst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557486\/","title":{"rendered":"How Dick Johnson took out a Mustang ‘insurance policy’ at Bathurst"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> when he filled out his entry forms for the 1984 James Hardie 1000.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s crash in the Shootout for pole position that totalled his Greens-Tuf XE Falcon in \u201983 and forced sponsor Ross Palmer to buy Andrew Harris\u2019 privateer Ford and re-birth it as car #17 on Saturday evening is the stuff of Bathurst legend.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Johnson and co-driver John French were entered in the familiar Palmer Tube Mills-backed #17 Falcon XE that had won that year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

A 1:18 scale version of the 1984 Bathurst Mustang has been released by Classic Carlectables and is limited to just 850 units.<\/p>\n

We have a very small number of them remaining here in the V8 Sleuth Superstore<\/a> so snap one up here before they\u2019re all gone!<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

That #71 Mustang was only driven in practice at Bathurst (it qualified 48th), though was withdrawn before race day to allow the team to focus on its Falcon.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE accident in Hardies Heroes in 1983 at Bathurst that left him scrambling to make race day in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-557486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}