Commodore Bedeviled
Peter Brock’s 1981 Bathurst Commodore is sadly no more. It could have made for a very different Brock winning streak had it been successful 36 years ago. Instead it had a devil of a time on and off the track.
Peter Brock Holden Dealer Team Bathurst Commodore racecars are undoubtedly pieces of Australian motorsport history. Whether it’s the two-time winning car that carried him home in the 1982 and 1983 James Hardie 1000s, or the pair of amazing day-glo Big Bangers that ran 1-2 across the line together a year later, the terms ‘Brock’, ‘HDT’ and ‘Commodore’ paired together instantly put these cars in the spotlight – and rightly so. Yet there’s one Commodore that he took to Bathurst in the Group C era that rarely gets mentioned, seemingly overlooked and forgotten by history, likely due to its lack of a Bathurst win. Maybe it’s the fact it’s one of very few Brock Bathurst racecars that no longer exists that has consigned this third-built HDT Commodore racecar to being absent from the lists of all-time classic Brock muscle. It’s the ‘Devil Commodore’ that, had it achieved the ultimate success at Mount Panorama in 1981, would have linked together two separate Brock streaks of three wins in a row in the race and given The King a whopping seven straight wins in the Mountain classic.
Australian Muscle Car magazine prides itself on stopping to consider the things others have not, and that’s exactly the case with the third-built HDT Commodore Group C car. Perhaps Marlboro’s pre-Bathurst 1981 advertising campaign theme of ‘Brock’s racing like the Devil at Bathurst’ (see breakout) was ultimately a bad omen!
After all, this chassis won its first two races, then didn’t win much at all once the television advertisements hit the screen...
The 1981 Peter Brock/Jim Richards Bathurst VC Commodore came on stream after the team owner/driver had engaged in a massive fight all