THE former owner of the Commodore once driven by Peter Brock in the much-loved Vita Brits TV commercial of the 1980s is bringing the memories back via a specially constructed tribute Holden.
And under the bonnet is an ex-Garry Rogers Motorsport V8 Supercar engine!
Noel Davis raced the ex-Vita Brits Commodore in Sports Sedan racing in New South Wales in the 1980s and has just put the finishing touches on a unique tribute car.
“The body shell was an SL/E V8 four-speed, a Brock special 1980 model, it’s got all the flares, Simmons wheels on it,” he told V8 Sleuth this week.
“I’m probably going to do some track days in it, I just want to get it back out there for people to see something about Brock they probably didn’t know or have forgotten about.
“There’s a test and tune day at Lakeside this month, the car is 100 percent ready to go, so that might be an opportunity to give it a run.
“The motor I have got for the new car is a Tander/Whincup engine from GRM. It’s a 2003 engine that was sitting out the back of GRM for years. We plugged in the MoTeC straight away and it fired up perfectly straight away!
“I’ve got an L34 engine, but I like the technology of the V8 Supercar engines.”
The original car used in the TV ad had been a Re-Car Commodore damaged in the multi-car crash that stopped the 1981 Bathurst 1000.
Repaired, it had become David ‘Skippy’ Parsons’ Commodore that he raced as a privateer in the 1982 and 1983 Australian Touring Car Championship seasons.
WATCH: The Vita Brits TV Commercial:
It was used in the Vita Brits commercial for Brock to drive with his familiar #05 as his regular Marlboro HDT Commodore couldn’t be used for the breakfast cereal ad given its tobacco sponsorship.
Brock drove the car with ‘Commodore’ signage while Dick Johnson drove his regular Greens’-Tuf Falcon XE and John Harvey was given the gig to drive the mobile Vita-Brit, which was built on the chassis of a VW Beetle!
Davis ended up buying the car after its role in the TV commercial had concluded. In fact, it had been crashed by Brock at the Causeway at Sandown during filming of the ad.
There’s a shot from the ad showing the #05 Commodore sliding sideways in front of the Falcon and Vita-Brit, however it cuts away – prior to Brock hitting the guardrail!
“I was racing XU-1 Toranas at the time at Amaroo and looking for an ex-Group C car for Sport Sedans,” Davis told V8 Sleuth.
“I heard about this car; it was cheap at the time so I bought it. I raced it in the Vita Brits colours at Amaroo in Sports Sedans, everybody didn’t know what the hell it was!
“I raced it for a long time, it was a great car. It had come without a motor and I ended up with the motor that had been Allan Grice’s 100 mph Bathurst lap engine (Grice became the first touring car driver to set a lap averaging over 100 mph when he set pole for the 1982 Bathurst 1000).”
Davis sold the car in the 1990s to a South Australian buyer and the car was later involved in an accident that saw it destroyed and re-shelled.
