VL Walkinshaw

[Superturd 22]

A car that was a underdog through 1988,89 and 90 but the walkinshaw won bathurst because how good the drivers(Alan Grice and Win Percy Brillant) were and how much testing they did it made a difference. NO car is good till it wins the 1000. :cool:

[thetrooper_uk]

Try reading your post back to yourself and see if it makes much sense. It's just words thrown on the page in a random order????

[Dave B]

Loving the username though!

[Superturd 22]

Can't bloody edit it

[Daniel]

Heh :D I love the nickname people who have taste in cars had for it. VL Walkinsh** :erm:

[mercury8]

Heh :D I love the nickname people who have taste in cars had for it. VL Walkinsh** :erm:

Plastic Pig sounds better.

[Rollo]

From what I understand, the whole HSV division was created after a period of political infighting which saw a Mr P Brock go toe to toe with Holden over something trivial called an "Energy Polariser" then beat his old masters at Bathurst without factory backing in 1987.

Walkinshaw was hired to effectively "re-build" Holden's image after their favourite sun defected firstly to BMW and then Ford, but the car he produced initially were crud, with the two HSV cars for 1988 being prepared independantly for the 1000 that year. Larry Perkins was the race engineer initially which may have explained why the cars were reliable.

For 1990 Percy was the manager and the driver, and the only result the team actually scored was the 1000 which all things considered wasn't really a bad thing.

[racer69]

While the Holden/Brock HDT relationship ended on February 20 1987 when Peter Brock released his HDT Brock Director (with Polariser and all :rolleyes :) , TWR were already planning on running Commodore's in the 1987 WTCC anyway, indicating a deal between Holden & TWR was in the pipeline anyway before the Holden/Brock relationship was dissolved.

Brock didn't defect to BMW either. Holden had pulled their support in early 1987, BMW offered him the works deal for 1988, so he took it.

In 1988 the VL Walkinshaw Group A car was late due to a strike at Holden, delaying the cars being finished in time for the original homologation date. Add to that the fact that Larry Pekins (the Australian end of the TWR program) was doing his thing, whilst TWR were doing their own thing in Europe. As it was at Bathurst in 1988, the #10 Perkins/Hulme car had been built in Australia, while the #20 Walkinshaw/Allam car had been built in England.

The Walkinshaw VL's weren't really bad cars (they were better than the Brock VL's they replaced), its just that a normally aspirated V8, weighed down & on thin tyres, had no hope against the turbocharged Sierra's.