GRM farewells Volvo

Garry Rogers Motorsport has today farewelled one of its Volvo S60 Supercars, which will now make the journey to Sweden.

Presented in the colours with which it took Volvo’s first Supercars race win at Albert Park in 2014, the car is set to become a museum piece at the manufacturer’s Gothenburg headquarters.

The team posted an image on social media this evening of the car with GRM’s crew, which have fielded two Holdens this year following a sudden off-season switch from Volvo.

GRM and Volvo Car Australia went to court last year over the team’s desire to race the cars into 2017, with the former eventually changing tack after failing to gain a supply of the Volvo engines.

Team director Barry Rogers explained to Supercars.com in February that GRM agreed to send its two remaining Volvos to Gothenburg following the messy divorce.

“There was a clause in the contract that said both during and after the race program Volvo owned the Volvo specific parts while GRM owned all Supercars specific parts,” said Rogers.

“Basically they were getting the option to buy back all of the components we developed and put into the program to protect them from the cars running in an inferior series.

“In reality it doesn’t quite work out because you can’t own a car without having the chassis or the transaxle and so on (which are Supercars control items).

“We could have butted heads over what the real meaning of those clauses were, but Garry decided we didn’t want to pull the cars apart. He wanted the history retained.

“So once we get the season underway with our new cars we’ll be tidying them (the Volvos) up and sending them over.

“Volvo were very proud of the Albert Park win in 2014 (Volvo’s first Supercars win), so one will be presented in that livery and the other most likely as it finished in 2016.”

Scott McLaughlin's Albert Park win came in Volvo's second Supercars event and followed an equally memorable second place in Adelaide that spawned the driver's now famous post-race 'gave it some jandal' comment.

A cartoon of McLaughlin and a jandal was added to the roof for Albert Park, which has been replicated as part of GRM's preparation of the car for the Gothenburg museum.