Saturday Sleuthing: Brocky's Volvo

Saturday Sleuthing is going Swedish today as V8 Sleuth Aaron Noonan takes us overseas on the hunt for an important Volvo race car.

The debut of the pair of brand-new Volvo S60 V8 Supercars is keenly anticipated and they’ll appear at next Saturday’s sydney.com V8 Supercars Official Test at Sydney Motorsport Park.

But what about the last time Volvo ran a major touring car program in this country in the 1990s?

While they finished off winning Bathurst with the S40 model driven by Jim Richards and Richard Rydell in 1998, their 1990s two-litre race program began in 1995 with a Volvo wagon driven by Tony Scott.

Just as the Tom Walkinshaw Racing-run factory Volvo team moved to the 850 sedan, the Australian Volvo team followed suit for 1996 though with a very big name behind the wheel: Peter Brock.

While Brock was a Holden man in the eyes of the Aussie public – and indeed drove in V8s at the time for the Holden Racing Team – Volvo were very switched on to see that he’d be a massive coup in helping boost their profile and change their image. 

A British Touring Car Championship car raced by Rickard Rydell for the Tom Walkinshaw Racing-run Volvo works team in 1995 was imported to Australia and repainted red for Brock to drive with his famous #05, with preparation and management by George Shepheard.

It was one of four Volvo 850 sedans built for the BTCC in 1995 by TWR and we’re informed it was chassis 850R5-003.

The five-cylinder howler was up against the works Diet-Coke BMWs of Paul Morris and Geoff Brabham as well as the four-wheel drive Audi A4s of Brad Jones and Greg Murphy and a handful of strong privateer entrants.

After debuting in the non-championship events at Albert Park and at the Gold Coast Indy, Brock and the distinctive red #05 850 made their championship debut at Amaroo Park and, despite a new aero kit that arrived from Europe that week, the Volvo was down on pace and finished sixth in Race 1 and retired from Race 2 with a failed front wheel bearing.

The rest of the season would prove difficult with some bad luck and mechanical dramas hampering the car’s forward progression and by the time the Volvo team arrived at the non-championship support event at the Bathurst 1000 they had yet to visit the podium.

Brock focused on his HRT role in the ‘1000, so Volvo grabbed Jim Richards as a fill-in. The move proved successful as he won the wet final race on Sunday morning prior to the ‘1000 to give Volvo its first win in Aussie Super Touring.

The title chase resumed for Round 7 at Lakeside and a switch from Dunlop to Michelin tyres allowed Brock to get even closer to the dominant BMWs and Audis.

Fifth in Race 1 was a nice entrée to Race 2, where Brock survived a start line accident and subsequent restart to lock onto the back of Morris and fall short of his first Super Touring win by less than a second.

The change in rubber re-vitalised Brock and the Volvo, giving it a real sniff of further strong results come the final round on the short track at Oran Park under lights.

While Jones and Audi were claiming their first title, Brock picked up third and seventh to round out the 1996 season, which placed the Volvo driver sixth in the championship behind Jones, Morris, Murphy, Brabham and top privateer Steve Richards.

Brock would focus on his HRT V8 program in 1997 and Jim Richards would take the wheel of the Volvo 850 for the new Super Touring season.

A double podium finish in the first round at Lakeside was a nice start, though it soon became clear that the updated cars their BMW and Audi rivals were using had just a bit too much outright speed as the ’95-built Volvo struggled to keep pace despite some updated components.

Richards ran the car through the first six rounds of the two-litre series before it paused for the AMP Bathurst 1000, which had changed to Super Touring regulations as the V8 Supercars elected to run in their own ‘1000 race a fortnight later.

A newer 1996-spec 850 was imported for Richards and Rickard Rydell to drive as #4, leaving the existing car for privateer Cameron McLean and Swede Jan Nilsson to drive as the #8 entry, albeit in revised white and blue livery more similar to the car’s BTCC origins.

The Aussie and Swede qualified 12th and finished fifth, three laps down on the winning BMW of Geoff and David Brabham.

Richards stuck with the ’96 spec 850 when the series proper resumed at Lakeside and wound up at Amaroo Park, though the ex-Brock car made one more appearance at the final round in the hands of Tony Scott.

That was the last time it ever raced, for it was then returned to Sweden under the care of former Volvo Group A driver Greger Petersson and his SportPromotion organisation and joined his large collection of Volvo race cars.

It sits among a collection that includes another ex-BTCC Volvo 850, an S40 (which was actually raced by Jim Richards in Australia in the 1998 Super Touring series) and even the last-built 240 Turbo Group A car!

If you have a car you’d like the V8 Sleuth to find, some great memories or even some information you think the Sleuth needs to know, make sure you get in touch.

Saturday Sleuthing will take a break next week for the sydney.com V8 Supercars Test Day at Sydney Motorsport Park but will return on Saturday February 22 with a full run-down on who is driving what car in the 2014 V8 Supercars Championship ahead of the Clipsal 500.

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