1985 Holden Commodore owned by Peter Brock sells for more than $1 million

Tuesday, 25 May 2021

A 1985 Holden Commodore has become the most valuable Australian-built car to sell at auction. It is quite a special one though.

A 1985 HDT Holden Commodore VK Group A SS once owned by racing legend Peter Brock has just become the most valuable Australian-built road-legal car, selling at auction for a remarkable AU$1,057,509 (NZ$1,133,814) with 7.5 per cent buyers premium of AU$79,313 on top, just beating the AU$1,050,000 record set by a rare HSV Maloo GTSR W1 that sold recently.

The previous records for Australian-made road cars were AU$1.01 million for a Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III sold at auction in February 2021 and $1.03 million paid for a Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III in June 2018.

The VK Group A SS is pretty immaculate, with only 77,000km on the clock.

The price of classic Australian cars has been skyrocketing following the end of local production and the demise of Holden, with even a decrepit Ford Falcon that had been attacked with an axe and had no engine selling for AU$400,000 recently. It was an incredibly rare one-owner GTHO Phase III though.

While the bidding on the Commodore quickly rocketed up to AU$1 million, it slowed once it broke that barrier on Monday and slowly crept its way up to the final price yesterday. The winning bid was made 26 minutes before the auction ended and came from a bidder in Strathmore, in the state of Victoria.

The ‘Blue Meanie’ was Ferrari-fast back in 1985.

Of course Peter Brock’s personal drive car was going to have the famous 05 build number.

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The VK Group A SS has the build number 005 (of course) and was Brock's personal car that he drove during the build and release of the now highly collectible VK Group A Commodore.

According to the listing, the VK still belonged to the same family that Brock sold the car to, has never been repainted or restored and has been driven only “on special occasions over the years”. The immaculate car only has 77,539km on the clock.

It also has all the official HDT paperwork to prove its authenticity, including a letter from the late John Harvey, who was Brock’s teammate and ‘right-hand man’ at HDT during the VK Group A era.

As the performance arm to Holden at the time (it was the precursor to HSV) HDT tweaked the VK SS’s 4.9-litre V8 to produce 196kW.

Weighing in at 1340kg, the 'Blue Meanie' (as it quickly became known) is said to have been able to knock off the 0-100kmh sprint in around 7 seconds, which may not seem terribly fast today (a Mazda CX-5 Takami is about as fast), but back in 1985 a Ferrari Testarossa was only about half a second quicker…

A body kit and 16-inch HDT Aero wheels with optional white finish were fitted, along with Scheel sports bucket seats inside, a Momo steering wheel and shifter, and a plaque displaying the build number on the glovebox.

The VK Group A SS Commodore was originally intended to be ready for racing in 1985, but delays from suppliers meant that the team had not built enough road-going versions of the car to pass homologation in time, delaying the track debut until January 1986.

At the time Harvey remarked that his and Brock’s personal road cars (the SS Group A) were in fact faster and more reliable than their 1985 racing cars.

When it did finally debut on the track, however, the VK Group A was an instant success, with Brock and new co-driver Allan Moffat winning the Nissan Mobil 500 street race in Wellington, before Harvey and Neal Lowe won the Pukekohe 500 in the second race of the New Zealand series a week later.