The TCR formula was introduced globally in 2014 by World Sporting Consulting, providing a cost-accessible touring car platform built around production hatchbacks. The regulations require four or five-door front-wheel-drive vehicles with turbocharged 2.0-litre engines, with competitive parity managed through a Balance of Performance system that adjusts car weights. As TCR grew internationally — being adopted by the World Touring Car Cup in 2018 — various national motorsport bodies sought to establish their own local versions.
Plans for an Australian TCR championship circulated as early as 2016, with proposals including invitational entries in the Bathurst 12 Hour and a potential shared calendar between the Shannons Nationals and the Supercars Championship. A 2017 proposal would have placed TCR cars as a support class to the Australian GT Championship before establishing a standalone series in 2018. Neither plan came to fruition, but in January 2018 the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport announced it had secured the rights to develop a TCR series in Australia beginning from 2019, with the Australian Racing Group confirmed as promoter.
The inaugural 2019 season ran across seven rounds at Shannons Nationals events. The championship opened with seventeen entries representing eight manufacturers: Alfa Romeo, Audi, Holden, Honda, Hyundai, Renault, Subaru, and Volkswagen. Prominent Supercars Championship organisations including Garry Rogers Motorsport, Kelly Racing, and Matt Stone Racing were among those preparing and entering cars.
Former Bathurst 1000 winner Jason Bright claimed the first race win in the championship's history at Sydney Motorsport Park, driving a Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR. Will Brown, competing in a Hyundai i30 N TCR, won both Sunday races at the opening event and emerged as the dominant force of the inaugural season, taking four further race wins and clinching the championship at Sandown Raceway with a round remaining. The series attracted several high-profile guest drivers for individual rounds, including World Touring Car Cup regulars Jean-Karl Vernay and Nestor Girolami — each of whom won races in their sole appearance — and former Supercars champions Garth Tander and Russell Ingall.
For 2020, the series planned to include a round at Mount Panorama Circuit as part of the Bathurst 6 Hour Easter weekend, with an international TCR endurance event also mooted for later in the year. A non-championship appearance at the Australian Grand Prix was arranged in the form of the TCR Asia Pacific Cup, after a bid to support the Adelaide 500 was rejected. Television coverage for the inaugural season was carried live in Australia on free-to-air network SBS as well as via online streaming. From 2020, the Seven Network entered an agreement to broadcast races live.
The 2025 series was severely curtailed by a lack of competitor interest, with insufficient entries to sustain a full calendar. Efforts to revive the series in a reduced format centred on The Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia for 2026 were cancelled in March of that year, effectively ending the championship.
TCR Australia demonstrated that the global TCR formula could find a foothold in Australia's established touring car culture, drawing on the infrastructure and expertise of existing Supercars Championship teams. The series provided a genuine alternative category to V8-powered Supercars machinery, offering multi-manufacturer competition at significantly lower cost. Its early seasons produced competitive racing with diverse grids, and the involvement of established teams and former champions gave it credibility from the outset. However, sustaining grid numbers in a market dominated by the Supercars Championship proved difficult, and the series ultimately could not attract sufficient long-term investment to survive.