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Another Peter Brock daily driver up for auction: 1982 Holden Commodore VH SS Group Three

An immaculate example of a 1982 Holden Commodore that has Peter Brock’s name in the owner’s manual is up for auction a month after another of his daily drivers sold for a record $1.057 million. 


Another daily driver previously owned by the late motor racing legend Peter Brock – a 1982 Holden Commodore VH SS Group Three – is up for auction a month after another of his road cars fetched more than $1 million.

Last month, an immaculate 1985 Holden Commodore VK HDT Group A – number 005 of 500 built – sold for $1.057 million, a record for a Holden road car.

Now the auction house Grays Online has unearthed one of Brock’s earlier road cars – a 1982 Holden Commodore VH SS Group Three – which even has his details listed as the first owner in the vehicle’s instruction manual.

The car also featured on the cover of Modern Motor magazine in January 1983, photographed at Holden’s high-speed test track at Lang Lang alongside the Holden Commodore race car Brock drove to Bathurst victory the prior year.

“That car had just won Bathurst the previous year and they decided to take both cars to Lang Lang,” said Grays Online representative Rian Gaffy.

“The amount of magazine publicity this car got was quite amazing. It’s featured in … 15 different magazines and you get a copy of all those magazines with the car.”

Mr Gaffy said the 1982 Holden Commodore VH SS Group Three sedan is “one of the few (Holden Dealer Team) cars that has actually got Peter (Brock’s) name in the log book.”

The seller says this particular example was Brock’s personal car from 1982 to 1983 and comes with a handwritten letter confirming his ownership.

“The current owner purchased it back in the mid-1980s and has kept (the vehicle) in dry storage until now,” says auction house Grays Online.

The car being auctioned was also used to host Melbourne’s Queen of Moomba in March 1983 – and a sunroof had to be fitted so she could wave to the crowd during the parade.

The Moomba Queen that year was Melburnian model Lynda Knight, who won a competition to be in the James Bond movie Octopussy alongside actor Roger Moore in 1981 (in which she posed in a white bikini and said one line: “Do you have any mail for me?”).

“When Brock first took delivery of the car it didn’t have a sunroof; he got a sunroof fitted so the Moomba Queen could stand through the sunroof in the parade,” said Mr Gaffy.

The car was also used by Brock to drive to different motor racing meetings.

Grays Online says the vehicle is in immaculate original condition – with 124,000km on the clock – and has never been restored.

A “HDT Improved” tag is fitted above the glovebox where build numbers would later appear on Group A versions of subsequent Holden Commodore models.

Unlike later Group A racing regulations, when the Group Three was released vehicle manufacturers did not need to build a fixed number of road cars to be eligible to race on the track.

Experts estimate there were 285 examples of the Holden Commodore VH SS Group Three road cars built with a 5.0-litre V8, and 57 examples built with a 4.2-litre V8.

The car up for auction has original trim, steering wheel, gear knob, and an audio system sold under the Peter Brock name. One of the few blemishes: a small tear in the driver’s door trim.

The car will go under the hammer approximately 8:30pm on the evening of 29 June 2021.

Prior to the sale last month of the 1985 Holden Commodore VK HDT Group A sedan, the most recent million-dollar auction results for Australian-made road cars were $1.15 million for a Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III sold at auction in February 2021, $1.05 million for a Holden Special Vehicles GTSR W1 Maloo ute in January 2021, and $1.03 million paid for a Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III in June 2018.

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Joshua Dowling

Joshua Dowling has been a motoring journalist for more than 20 years, spending most of that time working for The Sydney Morning Herald (as motoring editor and one of the early members of the Drive team) and News Corp Australia. He joined CarAdvice / Drive in 2018, and has been a World Car of the Year judge for more than 10 years.

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