NORM BEECHEY
IMAGES Autopics.com.au
STORMIN’ NORMAN
Stormin’ Norm Beechey holds a special place in the record books: first championship winner in a V8-powered car, first championship winner with the Ford Mustang, the first Holden championship winner and the first driver to win titles for both Ford and Holden.
H
e was the first superstar of Australian touring cars. Stormin’ Norm Beechey’s crowd-pleasing sideways style in a variety of machinery in a brief but spectacular career won a lot of fans in the formative years of the Australian Touring Car Championship. Not that the modest and reclusive champion will acknowledge his legendary status. “People say that, but I never considered myself to be a flamboyant driver,” said Beechey in a rare interview. “It was just that the types of cars I was racing were prone to sliding if you were on the limit and I never considered it as showmanship. “I probably wasn’t as technical a driver as, say, Ian ‘Pete’ Geoghegan, who was by far the superior driver, and I didn’t mind unsettling a car.
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“I’d say I have a rougher technique of driving than some of the neater drivers. “When you were on the limit in the cars I drove, you were sideways with wheels in the air – that’s just how they behaved with my physical style of driving. I’ll admit that my technique was relatively rough.” Two championships for two different manufacturers, one in an imported muscle car and the other in a homegrown car, proved his style may have been rough but it was also effective. Beechey was an integral part of the Neptune Racing Team, one of the first professional racing outfits that ran various cars through its different guises. In 1964, for example, Neptune Racing Team fielded Beechey in a Holden EH Special S4, Peter Manton in a Morris Cooper S and Jim McKeown in a Ford Cortina Lotus MkI in the championship.
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15/06/2023 10:30:31 AM
