Holden Dealer Racing Team, (or simply Holden Dealer Racing), was an Australian motor racing team, backed by General Motors-Holden, which contested both the London–Sydney Marathon and the Bathurst 500 endurance race in 1968.
Although short-lived, this team was significant as the precursor to a permanent Holden Dealer Team set up the following year which then played a dominant role in Australian touring car racing over the next two decades.
Holden Dealer Racing was set up by David McKay of Scuderia Veloce and he put forward a strong three-car team of Holden Monaro GTS 327's firstly at the 1968 Hardie-Ferodo 500 at Mount Panorama, Bathurst, New South Wales on Sunday 6 October. The driver pairings were New Zealander Jim Palmer (a Tasman Series regular) with Phil West, international touring car and sports car driver Brian 'Yogi' Muir with 1964 Bathurst 500 winner George Reynolds and international sports car and Formula One racer Paul Hawkins with Bill Brown. The Palmer/West Monaro finished second outright at Bathurst with the Muir/Reynolds car in fifth, while the Hawkins/Brown car was disqualified.
Following the race all three Monaro's were rebuilt to handle rally type conditions for the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon, starting in Crystal Palace, London on November 24, traveling through Europe, the Middle East, and into the Subcontinent. From there the cars remaining in the rally departed Bombay on Thursday 5 December, arriving in Fremantle, Western Australia at 10am on Friday 13 December before they restarted at Gloucester Park Paceway in Perth at 6pm the following evening. The race then went across the Nullarbor into South Australia before heading into New South Wales and arriving in Sydney on 31 December. The cars were entered under the official team name of the The Daily Telegraph under a sponsorship deal with the Sydney newspaper, with whom team leader McKay was the motoring editor.[1] The main drivers for the team were David McKay in car #36 (DNF), Barry Ferguson (12th) in car #76, and three time Australian Grand Prix winner Doug Whiteford (14th) in car #68. A fourth team car (#41), a Morris 1100 driven by Miss E. Westley finished in 50th place (only 56 of the 100 car field finished the marathon).
It was not until the 1969 Datsun Three Hour at Sandown that a permanent Holden Dealer Team, managed by Harry Firth, had its first outing. None of the six Holden Dealer Racing drivers from 1968 were involved in Firth's 1969 Holden Dealer Team campaign.