The 1992 Australian Touring Car Championship was an Australian motor racing competition for Group 3A Touring Cars,[1] commonly known as Group A cars. It was sanctioned by the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport as an Australian National Title.[2] The championship began on 23 February at Amaroo Park Raceway and ended on 21 June at Oran Park Raceway after nine rounds. It was the 33rd running of the Australian Touring Car Championship.[3]
Mark Skaife, driving a Nissan Skyline GT-R for Gibson Motorsport, won his first Australian Touring Car Championship. His teammate and defending series champion Jim Richards finished second, with BMW M3 driver Tony Longhurst in third place.
Although Mark Skaife was the overall winner of the opening round at Amaroo Park, Peter Brock's win in Heat 1 of the round in his Mobil 1 Racing Holden VN Commodore SS Group A was the first race win by a Holden in the ATCC since Brock had won Round 6 of the 1986 ATCC at Surfers Paradise.
In an effort to reduce costs and to even out the cars, CAMS imposed a number of changes for 1992. Notably, the Holden Commodores and Ford Sierra RS500's were restricted to a 7,500 rev limit and the BMW M3's had an extra 50 kg added to their minimum weight limit.
However the biggest change came to the Nissan GT-R's. Before the start of the season the cars were given an extra 40 kg, bringing them up to a total of 1400 kg. CAMS also directed that the cars were to run Formula One style pop-off valves on the twin turbos to restrict their power, bringing them down from 1991's 640 bhp (477 kW; 649 PS) to around 450 bhp (336 kW; 456 PS). Gibson Motorsport continually protested against the imposed penalties on the car (after winning the ATCC the cars were given an extra 100 kg to bring them 1500), and even took CAMS to court (unsuccessfully) in a bid to be able to run the GT-R as they were in 1991 claiming that they were no longer competitive. However most saw this as a false claim since the team won both the ATCC and the Tooheys 1000.