The Porsche 911 T/R raced by Alan Hamilton in 1968-69 is arguably the most significant 911 to have competed in Australian motor sport.

It was not only the first of its type to race in the Australian Touring Car Championship but it also came within one point of winning the title outright in 1969, which would have been the biggest upset in ATCC history. It was a very special car, as you’ll soon discover.

The Porsche 911 attracts a level of global worship to rival that of any religion. Its astonishing successin so many different disciplines of the sport, from sports car racing to touring car racing to rallying over the past five decades alone would be enough to justify such a fanatical following.

However, another factor in its enduring popularity has been its ability to serve two roles for many owners – a practical and reliable commuter during the week and a competent club racer on the weekends.

This 911 ownership philosophy, which has been actively encouraged by Porsche, has made genuine supercar performance available to well-heeled gentleman racers or ‘weekend warriors’ all over the world for the past five decades.

From the model’s earliest days in the mid-1960s, the Zuffenhausen factory’s approach to meeting customer requirements has led to many limited production runs of specially tweaked 911s that each time tip the balance more in favour of the race track than the road.

One of those was the 1968 Porsche 911 T/R. Very few (35) of these special 911s were produced by Porsche for a very select group of customers, which makes Alan Hamilton’s right hand drive example one of the rarest of the breed.

If Hamilton’s intention was to challenge for outright wins in Australian touring car racing, he was certainly going against convention at a time when the local tin-top scene was being dominated by the V8 Ford Mustang.

But Hamilton had compelling reasons for swimming against the V8 tide with his 2.0 litre German import. Since the early 1950s, his father Norman had been the local Porsche importer and distributor (Porsche Cars Australia) and also dealer principal of a thriving retail outlet in Melbourne (Hamilton Porsche).

Alan had already enjoyed success in local competition with the marque, winning the Australian Hillclimb Championship in a specially modified 904. However, by 1968 it was clear that touring car racing was rapidly becoming the big drawcard. And evidence of its growing importance was the announcement that the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATCC) would for the first time be moving to a multi-round championship in 1969 to replace its traditional single-race format.

Hamilton saw this as a perfect opportunity to prove the competitive pedigree of the 911 in front of an Australian audience which traditionally displayed a soft spot for the ‘underdog’ in any sporting code. And with the marque’s renowned reliability, he could afford to race without the crippling repair and maintenance bills suffered by many rival V8 runners.

But despite his family’s strong ties with the factory in Germany, Hamilton was not your typical rich kid who was going to be handed a new race car by an over-indulgent father. He had to finance the purchase himself, which required a long search to find a bank that would lend him the sizeable sum needed to purchase his new car and go racing.

Alan rightly figured that a lightweight version of the latest 911 with the hottest engine available would provide him with the kind of power-to-weight ratio needed to apply plenty of pressure to the front-running V8s over a series of rounds on different circuits. And, given the right set of circumstances, even threaten them for outright wins.

The obvious choice for such a pioneering campaign was the potent 911R which was as close as Porsche had gone at the time to serving up a stripped out competition version of the 911 which could still be driven on the road.

However, Australian touring car rules strictly forbid use of the lightweight composites used in the 911R’s fiberglass panels and polycarbonate windows. What Hamilton really needed was a steel-bodied, full-window-glass version of the 911R.

Fortunately the factory had just the right tool for the job - the 911T/R. Developed for European Grand Touring competition, which was similar in philosophy to Australia’s Improved Production rules at the time, this racing variant was based on Porsche’s new 911T model.

The T’s no-frills specification resulted in not only a lower showroom price for the budget-conscious 911 buyer but also a big 35kg weight saving over its better-equipped stable-mates, making it the ideal starting point for this steel-bodied racer.

The ‘R’ in T/R stood for ‘Rallye Kit’ – a selection of competition parts which could be mixed and matched by the factory to suit each buyer’s requirements for racing or rallying.

Minimising weight was critical to its success. Each T/R was supplied without any body joint sealers or sound deadening compounds which shaved off another 25 kgs. There were also cloth-trimmed Recaro lightweight bucket seats and minimal interior equipment.

The base T/R’s competition breeding extended to race-tuned suspension with front and rear anti-roll bars and Koni adjustable shocks, ventilated disc brakes inside lightweight (and unpolished) cast-aluminium wheels, beefed-up engine mounts and baffled fuel tanks with twin electric pumps. Options like limited slip diffs, larger fuel tanks, remote oil coolers and even additional driving lights could be added, depending on what the customer wanted.

Two versions of the classic 2.0 litre SOHC air-cooled flat-six were available. The base 911S specification with a healthy 119kW (160bhp) was ideal for the club racer, but for customers like Hamilton who needed to punch way above their weight, the potent Carrera 6 version shared with the 906 Le Mans-type GT race car was also available.

This was an exotic factory-built racing engine that featured dual-plug cylinder heads (with slightly smaller inlet/exhaust valves than the 906 to meet 1968 FIA homologation), titanium connecting rods, Marelli ignition, lightened flywheel and competition clutch.

This remarkable engine was fed by a pair of Weber IDA 3C carburettors, which consisted of three in-line 46mm downdraught single barrels mounted directly above each horizontal cylinder bank, with one choke per cylinder.

These modifications produced 210 bhp (157kW) at a howling 8000 rpm and 145 ft/lbs (196Nm) of torque at 6000 rpm. This was mated to a lightweight five-speed gearbox, of which Hamilton had two versions with different ratio sets which he would swap around to suit different circuits.

What Hamilton may have lacked in firepower against the 400-plus horsepower of the top V8s was more than compensated for by the 911 T/R’s feather-like weight, which at just 920 kgs was more than 200 kgs lighter than his V8 foes.

The little German coupe was also like a jack rabbit off the start-line due to phenomenal traction from its rear-engined weight bias. Combined with leech-like handling and huge braking capability, the 911 T/R also boasted reliability that its fragile American V8-based competition could only dream about.

1968 ATCC: A stunning debut

Incredibly, Hamilton’s brand new 911 T/R resplendent in Signal Orange and factory right-hand drive made its debut at the biggest touring car race of the year – the 1968 Australian Touring Car Champion at Sydney’s Warwick Farm Raceway.

It was the final year the ATCC would be decided by a single race and the competition looked strong.

The mercurial Pete Geoghegan in his Castrol-backed ’67 Mustang was short-priced favourite to claim his fourth ATCC crown against V8 rivals Norm Beechey in his new 350 Camaro and a mob of Mustangs driven by Bob Jane, Fred Gibson, Bryan Thomson and Kiwi stars Paul Fahey, Red Dawson and Rod Coppins.

As expected, from pole position Geoghegan bolted off into the distance and won as he pleased as a high rate of mechanical attrition wiped out just about all his competition – except Alan Hamilton. The race had played out exactly as the young Victorian had expected, powering through the field as his fragile V8 opposition fell apart around him to be in second place with only a few laps remaining.

Unfortunately, an adjustment his crew had made when setting up the rear suspension resulted in the sidewall of a rear tyre rubbing against a bolt head through the corners that eventually caused a blow-out on the last lap!

Hamilton went spearing off the circuit but recovered and limped his way to the finish line on the bare wheel rim to finish third. Apart from the self-induced tyre failure, it had been a most impressive debut.

1969 ATCC: So close and yet…

After such a strong showing at Warwick Farm, Hamilton was primed for what had all the ingredients needed for a giant-killing performance in 1969. The first multi-round ATCC was to be contested over five rounds in five states, using a simple 9-6-4-3-2-1 point scoring system with drivers allowed to drop their worst round from the final tally.

The results sheet after four of those five championship rounds looked like a script that could have been written by Hamilton himself.

Against the best cars and drivers in the country, including Geoghegan’s ’67 Mustang, Beechey’s new HK Monaro GTS 327 and the Trans-Am Mustangs of Bob Jane and Allan Moffat, Hamilton’s very light, very fast and super reliable 911 T/R had capitalised on the regular mechanical failures suffered by his V8 opposition to claim one third and three second places.

At the fifth and final round at Tasmania’s Symmons Plains Raceway, the championship could only be won by Geoghegan or Hamilton. The Porsche driver’s task was daunting, yet simple. If Geoghegan failed to score any points in Tasmania and Hamilton managed to win the race, he would become the 1969 Australian Touring Car Champion!

One can only imagine the heart-pounding anticipation Hamilton must have felt on the starting grid when Geoghegan’s Mustang failed to start, requiring a push by his pit crew into the pits and instant disqualification.

As his other V8 foes began to drop like flies in their usual fashion, the Porsche moved into its customary second position. The only obstacle that now stood between Hamilton and the greatest upset victory in ATCC history was race leader Norm Beechey in his Monaro.

After claiming victory at Surfers Paradise in round four, Beechey’s big blue Holden had been running strongly and looking good for its second round win until things started to go very wrong very quickly. His gearbox suddenly lost three of its four gears, forcing Beechey to leave it in top and mercilessly slip the clutch to coax the beast around the slower corners in his grim determination to win the race.

Hamilton could now see smoke pouring from Beechey’s Holden, which was slowing dramatically as its clutch disintegrated under the torture. Incredibly, Hamilton closed to within a car length of the dying Monaro on the final lap as the pair lunged across the finish line. However, Hamilton just couldn’t get there - his second place losing the championship to Geoghegan by just one point!

After such a brilliant effort in 1969, which no doubt won Porsche a legion of new fans in Australia, many expected the young Hamilton to continue his campaign in 1970. However, with the family business growing rapidly and Alan being the logical successor to his father Norman, he retired the 911 T/R to concentrate on his business interests.

The car was sold and ended up in the hands of an American collector for many years. To Hamilton’s knowledge the car was never raced during its time in the US, which would explain why it was still mostly in its original condition when Queensland collector David Bowden tracked it down and brought it back to Australia in the late 1990s.

Now restored to its correct 1969 ATCC specification, the ex-Alan Hamilton 911 T/R is one of the most prized exhibits in the famous Bowden Collection of classic Australian touring cars.