Bates bid sparks interest

The former factory-backed Toyota rally ace believes he has found a new future as a car builder and exporter after a rush of interest from overseas crews at Australia's new leg of the World Rally Championship.

Bates and co-driver Coral Taylor were an early retirement from the event with a punctured radiator after a 163km/h spin, but did enough to ignite a lot of interest in a car which is not seen in the world championship.

The Corolla is built to global Super 2000 regulations - which means a naturally-aspirated engine and all-wheel drive in a production body - and was entirely designed, manufactured, tested and certified by the Bates Motorsport team in Canberra. "It has taken us about four years to get where we are. The total cost of the project is a couple of million dollars," Bates says.

It is the second scratch-built Corolla rally contender from the Bates stable, following a turbocharged, four-wheel drive car built to challenge the production class domination in Australia of the Subaru WRX and Mitsubishi Evo.

Bates-built cars won three championships, one for Bates and two for Simon Evans, but he now wants to springboard into the Asia-Pacific championship and perhaps even into the national title events in New Zealand and China. "We have homologation now in S2000 and we're looking to see what we can do with the cars," says Bates. "I'd like to take the Corolla into the Asia-Pacific championship and I'd like to see what Simon could do with one. We have the two cars we ran in Rally Australia and we've got a new car nearly finished back in Canberra."

Bates was close to the front-runners of the World Production Car Championship in Rally Australia, despite a last-minute effort and adjusting to Pirelli tyres he had never used before. "I'm very proud. We were right up there with the leading production cars in the world," Bates says. "If we had a Simon Evans in one of the Corollas I'm sure he could have won PWRC and been well into the top 10 overall. He is fast and the Toyota is a competitive package."

Ultimately, he was a non-finisher and faces an uncertain future as a driver, but is keen to push ahead with manufacturing and sales of the S2000 Corolla. "I was happy with what I did, but obviously disappointed to make a mistake and ultimately cause my non-finish. I'm happy with my speed stage times, as we scored one fastest PWRC time and most of the time we were in the top three. And I'm not getting any younger."