Norm Beechey Championship Chase - 1970
Before Brock There Was Beechey is a documentary on Norm Beechey’s racing career up to 1969. It finishes with narrator Bill Tuckey hinting there is a second volume, and this is it.
This DVD is actually the official Shell documentary on Norm’s year of winning the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1970.
If you are a fan of touring cars in the 1960s and 1970s, this is an excellent film to have in your collection. However, where the previous volume has plenty for the Mini enthusiast, this time there is not a Mini to be seen, except in an occasional fleeting glance.
Jim McKeown gets a bit of a run in his Shell Porsche – particularly when he won the Warwick Farm and Symmons Plains rounds outright, finishing second in the championship. There is a good dice between him and Brian Foley, also in a Porsche, at Calder.
The full-colour film is otherwise all Holden Monaro (Beechey), Ford Mustang (Moffat and Geoghegan) and Chevrolet Camaro (Jane), and showcases some of Australia’s most famous tin-top racecars.
It is also good to get a look at, and to some extent a bit of a feel for, some of the racetracks in their muscle car heyday.
The narration by Roger Climpson is typical for the period, with some ‘interesting’ applications of engine sound effects. But that only serves to make it all the more nostalgic.
Norm Beechey was a flamboyant racer who was as admired in the 1960s as Peter Brock would become more than a decade later.
Basically, this is an interesting film, well put together, for fans of the period, and fans of Beechey or Holdens in general, but sadly no Minis to speak of.
Like the Neptune DVD, it is a little expensive, but it is also produced on a low-volume scale and the film footage is extremely rare – like rocking horse poo.
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