I miss the old days when you saw a Jaguar lined up against a Camaro passing both Holdens and Fords.
The two-horse race - created in an attempt to produce parity among vehicles to allow the drivers to shine on THEIR merits - has taken a lot of the excitement out of it.
I thought it was brilliant when Jim Richards drove the turbo-charged 4WD Skyline and shat upon everything else in sight. I wasn't a Nissan supporter back then but loved the way the "new kid" proved that the "old dogs" needed to make more progress in order to compete at the next highest level.
But in order to make it simpler for the audience they reduced it to two teams and, in an effort to further allow everyone to understand the difference, they just call one side "red" and the other side "blue". I'm not just talking about the guys that drive utes with "Bundaberg Rum" stickers, RM Williams horns across the back window, Kenworth mudflaps and 20 driving lights of no less than a metre across the reflector, plus a half dozen antenna with a minimum 3 metre length.
What I wanna know is this: how come the Australian motor racing industry can get away with treating us like morons?
It's one of the reasons I was enjoying the Bathurst 24 hour race - despite its dominance by the massively overpowered Monaros they dropped on the track to guarantee victory, there were a large variety of vehicles. Hell, they even ran a Mishitbus Magna in the race - got lapped something like 27 times, but IT WAS THERE.
We've had something taken away from us, people, in order to make it easier to understand - black vs white, or in this case red vs blue. The drivers don't aren't entirely loyal to one or the other - Craig Lowndes has jumped camp a third time, even the King (RIP) had ditched the Holden team (over that Polariser issue when he went to BMW).
I'm just saying I'd like to see the old races back, with the various groups, for the Bathurst race. It was exciting to see a Mini crawling down through the esses with a V12 Jaguar thundering across Skyline, knowing that the big cat was going to have to negotiate the tight Forest Elbow with a mouse in its way.
(Yes, I'm aware of the GT races, but they don't get televised as much. I have to catch them on SBS after the thrilling French documentaries (with Peruvian subtitles) about the emotional trauma suffered by squid that are rejected in mating season).