NASCAR in Australia

Bringing NASCAR to Australia was the creation of four-time Australian Touring Car Championship and Bathurst 500 winner, Bob Jane, whose personal A$54m investment created the Thunderdome at the Calder Park Raceway, modelled on a scaled-down version of the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Star touring car drivers Allan Grice and Dick Johnson were both early supporters of the concept, with both travelling to the US to race in the Winston Cup Series, although success was limited.

This compared to the Australian-based AUSCAR's (which while also using smaller V8 engines, ran on road tyres rather than racing slicks) which had a top speed of approximately 265 km/h (165 mph)).

While most of the cars used were those seen in America at the time such as the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Chevrolet Lumina, Ford Thunderbird, Oldsmobile Cutlass, Oldsmobile Delta 88, Buick LeSabre, and Pontiac Grand Prix, locally developed Holden Commodore's and Ford Falcon's were also raced with Allan Grice notably driving a VN Commodore to several wins in 1990, while Jim Richards also raced an EA Falcon with some success.

The slower Super Bowl was a welcome addition to the series as it offered a new challenge with its short straights and much tighter turns which unlike the 24° banking at the Dome that allowed for high speed, was only 7° at AIR.

Throughout its run in Australia, NASCAR never ventured west of Adelaide and never went off the mainland which limited its audience (though this didn't stop Tasmanian drivers from competing, such as the winner of the first two Australian championships, Robin Best).

Occasional forays onto other circuit began during the 1990s, first to Eastern Creek Raceway in Sydney before also racing as a support category at the Bathurst 1000 with the cars regularly being faster than the V8 Touring cars on the Mount Panorama Circuits 1.1 km long Conrod Straight, reaching over 310 km/h (193 mph), though overall lap times were approximately 10 seconds per lap slower than the made for road racing V8 tourers.