Saturday Sleuthing: Perkins' '93 Bathurst Winner

While the V8 Supercars Championship is on hold until the Sargent Security Phillip Island 360 in a fortnight’s time, that doesn’t mean that the cars that came before the modern generation of racers can’t come out to play.

This weekend at the Historic Sandown meeting, a group known as the Australian Five-Litre Touring Car Association has a field of 15 ex-V8 Supercars from the pre-Project Blueprint era of 1993 to 2002. So today on Saturday Sleuthing we are focusing on a famous car from the era – the 1993 Bathurst-winning Commodore of Larry Perkins.

First built in 1993 as a VP model Commodore, this car was debuted by Perkins at that year’s Phillip Island round of the Championship after he’d started the season in the older model VL ‘Walkinshaw’.

Rather than swap to the new Chevrolet-based engine though like his rivals, Perkins stuck with the Holden V8 motor.

“In 1993, the Holden Motorsport group and our current regulations came into play and all of the other front-running Holden competitors chose to run the Chev,” recalls Perkins. 

“I stuck with the Holden and there were certain people at the time who didn’t understand the rules, even though we’d had them for five or six years, that the manufacturer could homologate – that ridiculous French word – parts for their car that they wanted to race with.

“The Holden V8 raced with the cylinder head that you could buy on the road car, but because up to that stage they’d never homologated an extra head, I simply got Holden to homologate a head (and a new cylinder block) that had better stiffness with more metal, but still within the rules. 

“It certainly allowed full use of the slide manifold I’d made. We went to Bathurst with an engine that had four or five years of development, whereas the Chev guys were all in their first full year.” 

Perkins was joined by the late Gregg Hansford for Bathurst and took pole position and the duo then won the race after a daylong fight with the Gibson Commodore of Mark Skaife and Jim Richards. 

It was a classic contest that lasted all day and ended with Perkins/Hansford taking the flag 10.54s in front of Skaife/Richards in one of the best races seen on The Mountain.

Perkins sold the car for 1994 to privateer John Trimble, who ran the car in the colours of The Daily Planet and actually finished a very strong ninth at Bathurst with Garry Waldon – and top privateer finisher to boot.

South Australian James Rosenberg is known today in the V8 Supercar paddock for owning the Racing Entitlements Contract under which the #47 Erebus Mercedes-Benz AMG entry competes, but in 1995 he bought this car for Mark Poole to drive.

Such was its pace, it even landed a Bridgestone tyre deal (a very hard thing to get at the time unless you were a Level One outfit) via having Bridgestone-contracted rally ace Ed Ordynski drive at Sandown and Bathurst.

It was updated to VR spec in 1996 and then to VS in 1997 with Poole driving the chassis (PE 017 for the hardcore Sleuths out there) through to the end of 1998 before it was sold to Owen Parkinson and a range of drivers jumped behind the wheel during the 1999 season.

In fact, ARMOR ALL Gold Coast 600 winner and two-time Dunlop Series champ Dean Canto had his first V8 Supercar drive in the car when he failed to qualify for the Oran Park round that year.

The car lay idle in 2000 and was bought in early 2001 by former karter Wesley May and father Ron. The youngster made a handful of Development Series appearances in the car in ’01 and ’02 before it was placed up for sale.

Eventually it was purchased by Melbourne security company owner Ian Cowley, who has raced it in a range of events including the Australian Motor Racing Series (AMRS).

This year it returned to Bathurst to compete in the Sports Sedans support class at the 12 Hour and this weekend it will be on track at Sandown for fans to enjoy.

It looks quite different cosmetically to how it won Bathurst in 1993, though just as the V8 Sleuth was preparing this story came through the information that it has been placed up for sale.

We’d certainly expect a car like this to find a new home quickly and, fingers crossed, a new owner committed to returning her to her 1993 Bathurst-winning spec and livery.

Have a car you’d like to know more about? Know where one is?

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