Researched by Ian Williams
Club Magazines courtesy of Gary Benson & Karin Ross.
These Chronicles have been created to preserve the rich heritage of our Club.
Peter Brock and Tom Walkinshaw and their Australian Touring Car Championship / V8 Supercars race teams had a huge influence on Australian Motorsport and on the associated product development which resulted in the greatest range of performance road going vehicles that Australia has ever seen.
Our Club’s history can be dated back to the SL/E based 1980 VC Commodore. GM-H had just pulled out of direct involvement in Motorsport, instead doing this through specific dealers, known as the Holden Dealer Team.
The Holden Dealer Team then supported the Racing Team that was sponsored by Marlboro, and became known as the Marlboro Holden Dealer Team or HDT. Peter Brock had just taken over leadership of the HDT from John Sheppard and he needed to homologate numerous racing parts for the Marlboro Holden Dealer Team’s 1981 Group C racing effort. From there he commenced joint development with General Motors Holden to produce 500 VC HDT Commodores for sale only through the Dealer Team network and the rest is history.
This car went on to win Bathurst back-to-back in 1982 & 1983 and was later sold in 2018 for a record $2.1 million.
The popularity of these great looking, high performance sedans (pictured below) encouraged groups of like minded HDT owners to get together to form HDT Owners Car Clubs. The first was in Qld in 1982, then in Canberra in 1983. NSW HDT Owners joined the Canberra Club after “Street Machine” magazine wrote about this Club in 1984. In 1985, a group of NSW HDT Owners founded the NSW Club after attending a Club run to the Briar’s Inn at Burradoo, read on to see how this story unfolds …
To download background information please click on the below links:
| The Brock Story 1980 – 1987 | HDT Sportsparts Performance Parts Catalogue |
| Countdown to Catastrophe – 1987 | HDT Sportsparts Performance Parts Price List |
| The HSV Story 1987 – 2006 | Rare Sportsparts catalogues courtesy of Pete Harrison |
| Inside HSV 2009 | DB Technology Energy Polariser Statement |
We start the Club’s story in 1982, and progress it each year that follows …