Red vs Blue: The Aussie Rivals Pack Comes to Project Motor Racing

July 29, 2026

The 2013 Holden Commodore VF joins the fight.

Back in March of this year, we released the Ford Falcon FG for free for all players. But something was missing. So now, along with Update 2.1 the Holden Commodore VF joins Project Motor Racing as part of the free Aussie Rivals Pack bringing one of touring car racing’s great rivalries to the grid: Ford versus Holden.

To understand the Ford versus Holden rivalry, you first need to imagine it as more than just a sporting rivalry because it’s a lot more intimate than that. This isn’t just about a Lion versus an Oval or posh versus not-so-much. It’s about family inheritance, factory towns, family driveways, company fleets, police cars, utes, school runs, Bathurst Sundays, inherited loyalty and a nation’s identity.

Holden carries the romance of “Australia’s Own Car” ever since they produced the first home-grown Aussie-made car back in the 1950s. Ford, markedly not Australian, carries the pride of the challenger, the big Falcon, the blue-collar bruiser that never needed or asked Holden’s permission to be Australian.

So where did this loyalty to a brand come from? Most of the time, you were born into it, and then spent the rest of your life pretending it was somehow based on some rational decision you made while knee-high to a hubcap.

The Contenders

In one corner: Ford, blue, usually Falcon, usually carrying the flag for hard-nosed muscle and Bathurst heartbreak/heroics in equal measure. In the other corner: Holden, red, usually Commodore, carrying the weight of local pride, factory muscle, Peter “Perfect” Brock as messiah, and a fanbase that can smell misplaced Ford optimism from three streets away.

The roots of this rivalry go all the way back to the 1960s, when Australian touring car racing was still closely tied to showroom identity. These were cars people recognised, cars they could argue about because almost identical versions lived in driveways, taxi ranks, police fleets, worksites, and on the road to family holidays.

Bathurst would eventually rise to become the great sorting room for all that pride. But the race that started it all began not at Bathurst, but at the Armstrong 500 at Phillip Island in 1960. It was only in 1963 that the rivalry found its spiritual home on Mount Panorama.

The Rivalry

Through the years, the rivalry hardened into myth through drivers as much as machines.

Peter Brock became Holden’s golden boy, the man so tied to Bathurst that “King of the Mountain” still feels less like a nickname and more like a job title. Brock’s nine wins at “The Mountain” remains unsurpassed.

Allan Moffat rose to become Holden’s nemesis. Clinical, relentless, uncompromising, and exactly the sort of man Holden fans loved to hate. Mostly because, aside from his other talents, he kept ruining their weekend.

That driver rivalry helped turn Ford versus Holden from a simple manufacturer battle into something far more personal. It was not just red versus blue anymore. It was Brock versus Moffat. Charm versus steel. Holden hero versus Ford enforcer.

And Then There Were “The Moments”

In 1977, Ford delivered one of the most crushing beat-downs in Bathurst history when Moffat’s (sharing the ride with some random dude named Jacky Ickx) Falcons crossed the line first and second — and did so in formation. It was a dagger into the heart of every Holden household in the country. The kind of result Ford fans still mention to this day.

But Holden fans have much to hold onto as well. Brock’s Bathurst wins in the 1970s and 1980s built the Commodore/Torana legend into something close to religious conviction. The 1979 Bathurst victory, where Brock and Jim Richards won by six laps and Brock set the race’s fastest lap on the final lap, remains one of those motorsport stories that sounds made up by a Holden fan after three beers. Except it happened.

By the 1990s and 2000s, the rivalry, like the world, had been seduced by money, glitter, and corporate sponsors. More professional … and yet, somehow, even more tribal because the V8 Supercars era narrowed the fight into its purest modern form: Falcon versus Commodore.

Bathurst’s rules from 1995 to 2012 effectively made the Great Race a Ford-vs-Holden V8 fight, with Falcons and Commodores as the central combatants. That period made the rivalry unavoidable: every grid, every TV broadcast, every pit lane graphic, every family argument had two colours.

And it kept producing theatre. Craig Lowndes became one of the great emotional pivot points. A Holden prodigy and Brock protégé, he later defected to Ford, which was the motorsport equivalent of changing sides in a civil war and then turning up at Christmas dinner with a grin and happy expectations.

Mark Skaife carried the Holden Racing Team with ice-cold precision. Marcos Ambrose arrived as Ford’s new-era disruptor and took the fight straight to Holden. Russell Ingall versus Skaife gave the sport one of its most infamous flashpoints at Eastern Creek in 2003, after years of needle, contact, television tension, and mutual irritation dressed up as competition.

But the real rivalry was always most lived-out at Bathurst. In 2003, Holden gave their fans Greg Murphy’s “Lap of the Gods” a Top 10 Shootout lap so outrageous it instantly became part of the sport’s folklore. 2006 gave Ford a huge emotional release when Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup finally won “The Mountain”, Ford’s first victory there since 1998, and the first race for the Peter Brock Trophy after Brock’s death. Lowndes and Whincup then completed a three-peat, the first since Brock and Larry Perkins in the early 1980s.

That’s the thing outsiders sometimes miss. Red versus blue was not just “which car is faster?” It was loyalty. It was memory. It was class, place, family, and debt. It was a dad in a Holden jacket refusing to admit a Falcon looked cool. It was a Ford fan describing every Commodore win as “luck” for approximately 60 years. It was tribal, occasionally ridiculous, and completely magnificent.

By the time the 2013 Car of the Future era arrived, the battlefield had changed once more. New manufacturers joined, and the cars became more controlled, more modern, more equalised.

That’s why the 2013 Ford Falcon FG and 2013 Holden Commodore VF in Project Motor Racing’s Aussie Rivals Pack matter. They represent the last great moment of one of the world’s most classic sporting rivalries: big V8 touring cars, rear-wheel drive, serious attitude, elbows out racing, and decades of cultural baggage and grudges packed into every braking zone.

A last gasp and hurrah because, when the Gen3 Supercars rules began in 2023, Holden-badged Supercars were replaced by the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, and an era came to an end.

Except you get to fight it out in its heyday. Pick blue or red. Pick Falcon or Commodore. Pick Ford or Holden.

And no, you don’t need to explain your choice rationally. See you on “The Mountain”!

Get the free Aussie Rivals Pack and thank you for standing by us as we work toward the future of Project Motor Racing.

Watch the Aussie Rivals Pack release trailer here.

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