Allan Moffat and his bottle of Peripheral Port?

[Group'C']

Originally Posted by A9X05

Thanx Group C well imformed answer! I was thinking the pic was from the Mazda days Its too long ago for this ol' brain ! Maybe I missed something from a earlier post/s

The buety of having a good Library A9X05 or as my wife says being a hoarder

[Dazz]

Old thread revival, but might be of interest to some.

Getting back to the bottle of "Peripheral Port", another bottle has appeared, not like the first one, but what appears to have been done to celebrate the launch of the Allan Moffat Mazda Racing Team in Sept 1981.

This bottle is clearly numbered 116, so the question begs, how many were made? I emailed Yalumba Vineyards who got back very promptly, but have no actual records of how many were made.

Original bottle that I gather was pre Group C RX-7 approval, 1980 possibly when he'd had the odd run in an RX-7 in Sports Sedans.


And the recently seen bottle that I'm assuming there were at least 116 of made?

[Marcos WTF]

I can only hope the stuff tasted better than they sounded.
My suburb was infested with them 20 years ago.
Rust, crashes & good taste had thinned their ranks I'm happy to say.

Rarely hear one these days.

Intresting thread though & thanks for the history too.

[Holden308]

I remember reading in AMC that Moffat claimed that CAMS imposed an extra 20 or 40kg of weight to the RX-7 over its homologated weight. It wasn't that bad on the shorter tracks used in the ATCC, but it was a killer trying to climb The Mountain. He would lose time on the Commodore's and Falcons from Hell all the way to Reid Park, and coming down Conrod. The rotary simply didn't have the grunt there.

Interestingly, in that same interview Moff also said that two of his co-drivers at the 1985 Daytona 24 Hour were regular RX-7 pilots Gregg Hansford and Peter McLeod and both noted how much faster the car was without the CAMS imposed extra weight (and with that particular car both Moff and Gregg would know as it was the car that retired after 15 laps of the James Hardie). Moff did say he wonders about how the car in its Daytona trim (with its ATCC/Bathurst aero kit) would have gone at Bathurst. Would having 20 to 40kg less weight have made a difference?

Just one thing.....did the Moffat RX-7's have a non-homologated 6 speed gearbox? I know it was meant to have a 5 speed but I heard a story that it didn't actually have a reverse gear and that the labels (R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) were just for the scrutineers benefit.

I can still remember John Smailes calling "Not through the dog-leg" as Moffat passed Brock on the outside of the dog-leg at Oran Park in 1983. That RX-7 on the shorter tracks had it over just about everyone. Barry Jones' rotary engines may have had more HP than Moffat's Horoshima Screamers did, but Peter McLeod, Barry Jones, Terry Sheil, none of their cars handled as well as Moff's.....and arguably none of the other RX-7 drivers were as good as the expat Canadian. Maybe Bob Morris (1984) was as good a steerer as Moffat, but not the others. And that's no disrespect to them, around the time there were really only a few top drivers in Aussie touring car racing and Moffat was clearly established as one of them.

[chavez]

Mick Webb written that they used a 6 speed at Bathurst in '83.

[Scrut]

The current owner of the car attempted to run the 6 speed at the
Phillip Island Classic a couple of years ago.
To the best of my knowledge he was told to replace the gearbox
with a 5 speed, but was instant the car was correct with the 6
speed as this was how it was raced back in its day.

[Dazz]

Depends who's version you listen too as to whether they used it or not and when.

It was reported at the time circa 1985/6 or so, when Matt Wacker bought one of the RX-7's as raced at Bathurst in '84, Moffat was quoted as saying to him "you can buy the factory 6-speed transmission to go with it for $1,000 per gear". When Matt went to pick it up with $6,000 in hand Moffat quipped, "It's got reverse".

The 6-speed was definitely used at Daytona, but yeah, as for running it at Bathurst in 83, I don't know, plausible, but that would be a massive risk and if caught that would have been huge.

Flip side is, why have them if you don't use them I guess!