This also left Grice without a drive and he later admitted he contemplated retirement until he was thrown a lifeline by Re-Car team owner Alan Browne in mid-1982.

Despite CAMS upping the 635's minimum weight from 1280 kg to 1420 kg,[1] JPS Team BMW scored their first podium when Richards finished 3rd in the final round of the 1982 Australian Touring Car Championship at Surfers Paradise (the only round of the ATCC contested by the team who again focused their efforts on the AMSCAR series which by now was open to all Group C touring cars).

The testing and development, mostly carried out by team manager Gardner at Sydney's Amaroo Park, paid off as the BMW started to show its potential not only with improved reliability, but with extra horsepower giving much needed added speed.

At Sandown after the latest homologation period, the BMW was the only one of the top 5 outright makes which was not protested over the weekend, mostly because they were not seen as a true threat.

Mazda, Ford, Holden and Nissan were all embroiled in some form of protest over the legality of parts, and Frank Gardner cheekily requested the JPS pits be moved away from the other top teams so they could get work done in peace due to the constant arguments going on around them.

Though many believe the cunning Gardner saw a good opportunity to win the race himself, especially after the V8's with their homologation updates had failed to make an impact at Sandown, the traditional warmup event for Bathurst).

At the time, the long-held Holden and Ford V8 domination of Group C touring car racing in Australia was under serious threat with factory-backed teams from foreign manufacturers the likes of the European BMW, and Japanese marques Mazda and Nissan, and this was unpopular with not only the fans, but some within the sport itself (Moffat's ATCC win was the first by a Japanese car, while George Fury put the Bluebird turbo onto the front row at Bathurst.

There were also claims from high-profile drivers such as Allan Grice that the Mazda RX-7 was a sports sedan and not a touring car and should not have been allowed to race).

The claim of sabotage is actually disputed by Jim Richards and the team's chief mechanic Pip Barker who believe that the dirty fuel could have been a combination of things.

JPS Team BMW competed in its first full Australian Touring Car Championship in 1984 with Richards finishing in fifth place with a best of third again at Surfers Paradise.

Despite BMW's touted reliability it would be a short race for the Richards/Longhurst car which suffered a blown engine on just lap 39, again leaving Longhurst without a drive after he also missed out at Sandown.

In the race the car's only problem was a flat tyre and Hulme and von Bayern had a steady run to finish second in class and 15th outright.

For the normally quiet Hulme who had a career dating back to the early 1950s in his native New Zealand, it was the first time he had ever talked on television while actually driving in the race.

With no chance of winning or placing in the 1984 Australian Endurance Championship, JPS Team BMW decided to skip the final round at Surfers Paradise.

The team (more to the point, Frank Gardner) always told anyone who would listen to wait for Group A to take over in Australia and they would show everyone how good the BMW 635 CSi really was.

In a golden year for JPS Team BMW, Richards also went undefeated in the AMSCAR Series and then won the 1985 Australian Endurance Championship, winning five out of six races including the Castrol 500 at Sandown where Richards and Longhurst came from a lap down to pass their teammates George Fury and Neville Crichton for the lead with only a few laps remaining after the car had died on Richards early in the race due to an easily fixed electrical fault (the team anticipated such a fault and actually put the spare part needed in the 635's glovebox, with the drivers instructed on how to fix it away from the pits if needed).

For the 1986 championship, Richards was in a new 635 CSi, with a more powerful engine, better chassis, bigger brakes and the new 16" BBS wheels, while Longhurst drove the team's newest car, a BMW 325i.

Unfortunately for the team newer cars such as a much more powerful and durable Holden VK Commodore SS Group A, and the turbocharged Nissan Skyline DR30 had been introduced into the championship, while the fast Volvo 240T also had further development.

The team's second car (another 635) was driven by Kevin Bartlett and Trevor Crowe who failed to finish both endurance races.

It was replaced by the BMW M3, which unlike the 635 CSi was much more of a purpose built race car, powered by a high-revving 2.3 litre, 4cyl engine.

Early on, despite pole for Richards at Calder, and a surprising second at Symmons Plains, a track known as a power circuit thanks to its long, curving back straight, the new M3's hampered by having to use the less sophisticated 325i suspension due to the unavailability of parts from Europe where the car had been in high demand.

Although he failed to finish the next race at Sandown due to a rare engine failure after he had damaged the sump in a first lap incident while avoiding an out of control car, this brought him within reach of the Nissan Skyline of young charger Glenn Seton.

The crash, which took out one-third of the field, was caused by the Chevrolet Monza of Peter Brock which suddenly turned left, directly into the path of the oncoming traffic.

In what was the first ever World Championship motor race ever held in Australia, the gamble on the motor paid off as Richards and Longhurst finished in 14th place (first in class), 28 laps behind the winning Rothmans Porsche 956 of 1984 WSC Drivers' Champion Stefan Bellof and (then) three times 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Derek Bell.

It was also the first ATCC win for BMW and the first for a 6 cyl car since Peter Brock had used a Holden LJ Torana GTR XU-1 for part of the 1974 series.