The Benson & Hedges series was immediately followed by the three round Simpson Appliances series.
This series replaced the New Zealand Touring Car championship. It was also rounds 2 to 4 of the South Pacific Touing Car Championship.
The first round of the South Pacific Touring Car Championship was at the Adelaide Grand Prix meeting and was won by Allan Grice in the Chickadee Roadways Commodore VK.
The Simpson series attracted a very decent field. The final round at Pukekohe had 29 cars on the starting grid, although many were small class Corollas and Escorts.
Outright contenders included the Crosby/Wilkinson Commodore; Allan Grice joined Kent Baigent in the Team Nissan NZ Skyline Turbo; there were BMW 635CSis for Trevor Crowe and Charlie O'Brien/Glenn McIntyre; there were two BMW 325is for Ed Lamont and Dennis Hulme (in Bill Bryce's newly acquired ex-JPS car); there were two Mustangs for Bruce and Wayne Anderson and the newly acquired ex-Dick Johnson car of Robbie Ker/Wayne Huxford; the Mark Petch Motorsport ex-Rouse Ford Sierra XR4Ti was raced by Robbie Francevic and there was a Volvo 240T for Per Gunnar Andersson/Gary Croft.
The duration of each race in the series was 3 hours.
The series resulted in three winners.
Here are the results I have for now.
| Rd 1 Simpson Appliances Series/Rd 2 South Pacific Touring Car Championship: Manfeild |
| 1st Graeme Crosby/Wayne Wilkinson Holden Commodore VK |
| Rd 2 Simpson Appliances Seres/Rd 3 South Pacific Touring Car Championship: |
| 1st Allan Grice/Kent Baigent Nissan Skyline Turbo |
| 2nd Trevor Crowe BMW 635CSi |
| 3rd Bruce Anderson/Wayne Anderson Ford Mustang GT |
| Rd 3 Simpson Appliances Series/Rd 4 South Pacific Touing Car Championship: |
| 1st Charlie O'Brien/Glen McInyre BMW 635CSi |
| 2nd Trevor Crowe BMW 635CSi |
| 3rd Robbie Ker/Wayne Huxford Ford Mustang GT |
| New Zealand Touring Car Champions: Charlie O'Brien/Glen McIntyre BMW 635CSi |
| South Pacific Touring Car Champion: Allan Grice Holden Commodore VK & Nissan Skyline Turbo) |
I have complete top en results and a race report for the third round in a copy of Racing Car News back home in Sydney. Will add extra detail when I get a chance after I return home this weekend.
I also have a brief Autosport report of round two back in Sydney.
Unfortunately New Zealand Motorsport does not go into extensive detail on the series, but did say that the Francevic Sierra retired from all three races.
Also, it is worth noting now that all three races saw poor reliability among the leading runners.
The Pinepac team was obviously having a good season as they added another podium result and led the final round at Pukekohe for many laps before the Mustang broke.