History
This car is the Castle Hill Commodore which was campaigned by Castle Hill Racing that competed in the 1993 Bathurst 12 hr event. The technical team was led by George Sheppard formerly of HDT in the Harry Firth, Colin Bond days. The car was driven to victory in Class D (cars over 4000cc )by Peter Brock and Tony Scott whose brother Gary raced a Nissan Bluebird turbo with George Fury at Bathurst during the 80’s.
John Farnham (the singer) was to have driven the car but circumstances prevented him and so Peter Brock acting on the connections he had with George Sheppard phoned and offered his services. We began the race in the dark at 4.45am and the car performed faultlessly all day save melting a plug lead at around 7.35 am. It recorded 242 laps for the event certainly a big job for a production car.
The 1st in class is recognised as being the 10th victory in a Holden for Peter Brock at Bathurst. The win was also recognised by General Motors and it helped to mend the relationship it had with Peter at the time. The car was requested by GM after the race who displayed it in their showrooms up the east coast of Australia returning the car in 1994.
Peter remarked that the 12hr event was the closest you could get to how Bathurst started out where you could drive a car there, remove the number plates, strap yourself in and wrestle with the brakes and lack of power to get a virtually standard car to do something it was not supposed to do, so it was with this Commodore. The 1993 campaign was covered by Bev Brock in her latest book “Brock at Bathurst” with whom we have been friends with ever since the event.
The Commodore had served its purpose and like most other race cars of the time were robbed of parts or disposed of in favour of a new and better car and so the Castle Hill Commodore was to be crushed at a local wrecking yard. This is where I stepped in and bought the car to save it from its fate and so it remains in my possession as my greatest Bathurst souvenir. We went on as Pinnacle Racing to build Group A Commodores and race at the October Bathursts but our sweetest victory was our first with the “old bus” the Castle Hill Commodore.
Modifications
The car still has its 5.0 litre fuel injected black V8 engine that was built by Shane Wilson and supplied by Holdens Engine Company. It had been blueprinted and balanced and was used the 1992 12 hr the year before in the Akubra ute driven by Alan Grice. Exhaust is handmade headers fed to high volume collectors then to a Group A dump pipe megaphone located in front of the left rear wheel. Roll cage is Bond Roll Bars Sydney cage number 1, Bond also manufactured the fuel cell. Fuel system is Mercedes Benz primary pump, 120 litre cell fitted with dry break valves and roll over device. Axles are shot peened stress relieved units fitted to IRS differential locked up to drive both wheels with shim adjustment. Suspension is Bilstein units supplied by George Sheppard. Wheels are 15”Chevoit as used on the Group N Commodores of the day fitted with Bridgestone Potenza tyres in hard and soft compounds with the tread buffed off. The seat is a Recaro with Dominion driver restraints.
TV in car footage antennas and race cams were fitted by Channel 10 sport and sponsored by Windsor Smith Boot Company.
