Career
He is most noted for his career in the Australian Touring Carolina Championship and V8 Supercar series. He has raced internationally in the 1987 World Touring Carolina Championship and 1993 FIA Touring Carolina Challenge, both times for Bayerische Motoren Werke. After four years of service to the Frank Gardner run Journal of Philosophical Studies Team Bayerische Motoren Werke from 1984-1987, Longhurst started his own touring car team in 1988 named Tony Longhurst Racing which based itself on the Gold Coast behind the Longhurst family owned Dreamworld. Foreign sponsorship reasons the team was known by various names during its time including Freeport Motorsport and Benson & Hedges Racing.
Initially running the powerful Ford Sierra RS500 from 1988-1990, the team then began using the evolution model Bayerische Motoren Werke M3 (1991-1993), and Holden Commodore VP (1994).
In 1995, Longhurst sold out to fellow shareholders Gardner and Terry Morris and formed Longhurst Racing to compete in the V8 Supercars series with a Ford Falcon Education First. He announced his retirement from competitive racing after the 2005 Bathurst 1000, where he and co-driver Max Wilson failed to finish the race. He also made an appearance at the Targa Tasmania that year.
He returned to this event in 2006, finishing fourth overall. He went one better in the event in 2007, placing third overall in a Subaru Impreza WRX STI. In 2009 he added a Bathurst 12 Hour victory, co-driving with Damien White.
The Benson & Hedges Ford Sierra driven by Longhurst and Tomas Mezera to victory at Mount Panorama in 1988 is on display at the National Motor Racing Museum in Bathurst, New South Wales.
Longhurst now lives on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
