I've also heard the things Brock got excited about when he saw the car in England were bits that had been changed after it had been rebuilt.

quote:

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Originally posted by commodorenut
It always amazed me why the statue at Bathurst was modelled off the Champion car, when the Bathurst car sat merely 150 metres away. Who made that call and why?

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I can answer that one Mick.

A good friend of mine (you've met him), his eldest daughter was the sculptor commissioned to do the statue. She made it at her home in Newcastle & worked from hundreds of photos supplied to her.

To my knowledge the only time she visited the Bathurst museum was on the day that they unveiled the staue.

This topic gets more intriguing as time wears on, I'm sure we'll discuss this next time we meet.

Dr Terry

Have to agree with Terry.

I can't say what happened at the Brock HDT workshops back then but generally speaking workshops were vastly different to what they are today.

Firstly and most importantly no one cared or even thought of the detail of a racecar for its historic accuracy in 30 years time. As a matter of fact at the end of each season many, many cars were ratted for bits to put into the next shell. We might think that royalty like Brock had an unlimited budget and access to the GM H parts store but that was not the case. HDT did however enjoy great advantage.

They were "Skunkworks" and as great as we think these historic cars are today, back then they were just racecars which were built and chopped and crashed and fixed.....bits were taken out of one and hastily thrown into another. With a shop like HDT they got all kinds of privilege which other teams would never dream of. Those GMH P&A bodies apparently went down the line and were treated to stuff like extra thick and extra thin panels and metal in different areas. I also see it as entirely possible that they could have grabbed some spare windows from up in the loft. Also, as soon as each model was superceded often old shells wer updated with update sheetmetal. I worked on a GMH P&A shell which was originally delivered to a privateer as a VB but was not raced that year , was updated to VC and ended its racing life as a VH.....
So much time has past that it is getting harder to prove/disprove. Is it possible that there was a spare shell also which ended up with enough mixed and matched bits to make a credible second car?

So I am just saying anything is possible. Nick.

I have just been up at the race and looked at the car , welds, paint details etc match up. Why would John Farrell who bought the car from Brock insist he got the Harvey car, when, at the time he dearly wanted to buy the Brock car, why would he go to detail of describing the poorly repaired LHR damage from when Fury hit Harvey in the Bathurst race, why is there no evidence of any damage to the museum car which clearly has 99% of its original stone chipped faded paint. What possible axe could he have to grind with Peter Champion. On the other hand why does the museum carefully make no mention on its display that " this is the actual car that Peter Brock drove" unlike the placard that describes the Alan Moffat Falcon. I would love to hear anything extra that John Harvey could add, or anyone else.

That saved you typing 14,000 words.....

Paech - one thing to consider is that people have said one thing in recent times, and contradict what they have said years ago (and forgotten) and there are others with many hidden agendas.

I also wouldn't trust the memories of some people, particularly those who were very prone to killing brain cells via liquid means. Around 10 years ago, a DVD was made, detailing the HDT road cars, and key people were interviewed for it. Some of those key people - who some would say are the "go to" people for info because they supposedly know everything, could not remember basic facts, like 500 road cars were made for homologation, and had to be prompted many times to remember some well known "facts" that are public knowledge, which many fans have known off by heart for a very long time.

One point that hasn't been covered very well is how the cars were always very well presented - repainted quite often to maintain that. Signwriting would vary between races (and therefore photos) because of the human factor in redoing the job. These cars did a number of races. There's a distinct lack of "damage" on a number of areas that would have copped it - indicating repair/touch up, yet the NMRM car is supposedly "untouched" or "as raced" if you believe those with an agenda.

The car at Bathurst has had numerous recent "repairs" done to it - most notably the grille & front bar - all within the last 3-4 years, and there's very little "original" about it anymore. Nobody so far has been able to tell me why a supposedly virgin race car body is sporting a replacement drivers door from a totally different trim level (which had overspray from a bodgy touch up on parts that shouldn't have, and these were subsequently replaced after it was spread around on forums).

Your point about the sign is very good - the sign is from the era long before all of this internet expert rubbish started, and concurs with what museum staff were telling the punters 20 years ago. Even back then they doubted it.
But memories can be very short when it's convenient....

That is the same rollbar in both pics.

I'm with HGV8 on this one. I reckon they are the same. The photos are taken at slightly different angles, as evidenced by the different gap between the cage vertical and the pinch weld. The gouges, scratches and dings in the tag are identical. The slight change in angle provides a different perspective of the weld, particularly the hole in the lower weld of the two. The blow hole looks bigger in the left hand picture as it is viewed almost straight on, but you will notice it in the right hand picture as well. Nobody, but nobody could fake it that well in an aluminium weld.

It's the same weld and same roll bar, no doubt. Even has the same knocks and marks.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person.
Unfortunately, if the photos are supposed to support one version of the story by showing a difference, in my opinion and the opinion of a few others here they fail to do so.
As Mick said, all the evidence needs to be scrutinised, not just bits of it.
I certainly wouldn't extrapolate the information from one pair of photos to include "all B pillar tabs", as you put it.

As to the glass, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that someone had some non-standard (read, thinner and lighter) glass in there for racing purposes, replaced in a hurry with whatever came to hand when the car was disposed of.