Hemmelig 242 Gr.A prosjekt ?

[BAS]

Chassiset til denne bilen var opprinnelig en 242gt


Info
Volvo 240T group-A (Ex. Australian Volvo Dealer Team, Söderqvist Racing Service)
Present ownerstatus: Thor Rustad, Norway.

History

This car is one of the former RH Australian Volvos, this car was built in only 6 weeks and the chassie is based on a Volvo 242GT. After Volvo withdrawn from group-A world over this car was shipped to Japan, in 1987 Robert L. Kvist and Peggen Andersson drove the car with backup from Japan Volvo Dealer Team on Fiji and the team went under the name Team LeMans. Later in 1987 the car was shipped back to Sweden, to be raced under Hans-Åke Söderqvists Team,

SRS

, aka Söderqvist Racing Serivce. Leif Wiik rented the car from Söderqvist, to compete in Finland at the Kemora 500 km together with Ulf Granberg. In 1988

SRS

kept on racing with the car in the Swedish Championships with the driver Onni Kreivi. And on it went and two Belgians rented the RH car from

SRS

in the ETCC series. And one year later in 1989 a Swede Peter Pettersson buys the car from

SRS

, he was aiming on the Swedish Championships. Later in 1989 the car was rebuilt to LH after a ugly crash in the Norrköping GP, the work was done by Hans-Åke Söderqvist at

SRS

. The car didn't last long with Pettersson, he sold the car to Denmark, the buyers name is unknown for present time. Peter Pettersson confirms that he saw that car agin around 1990-92. Later the roumor said thet the car had been rebuilt to Special Saloon, roumors was true and the car met the tarmac for the last time in 1995, the owner and driver at present time was Danish guy Knud E. Sorensen.

And in 2009 this very car showed up in a Ad, at the car sales site Mobile.de. The car was now in Spain and was for sale, by a man the had a company that restore old race cars. The car was out for sale on a estate. The bad thing was that the cars history was lost and gone with the last owner, that now had passed way sadly. Anyway a fearless Norwegian (like the one that tried to find the path to the northpole) buys the car, only by looking at the images presented in the Spanish Ad. And in the end of January the car hit Norwegian soil. The Norweigan, Thor Rustad, is restoring the car to mint condition today, the car will still remain LH thou. And the fun part was that except the rebuilt body and rollcage Rustad have bought a complete group-A Volvo! No one could figure that out...

After establishing contact with Thor Rustad, myself and he was unsure that his car really was the former Australian Volvo I suddenly remembered something! I had been in contact with the owner from 1989, Peter Pettersson, and the still had the papers on the car with chassie number and all. And Thor had mentioned that he had spotted a chassie number on the car, we compared numbers and voilà it was the same! And it was confirmed by me that this car was the former Volvo 240 with #44 from Australia, Thor Rustad was very glad to hear the news.


Kilde: http://www.240grupp-a.se/eng_site/volvo_grupp_a.htm

Så hva er da forklaringen om serien på de 502 homologatedbilene som ble bygget fra 1983? De er vel de som er grunnlaget for at bilene ble godkjent for løpskjøring? Tok FIA en runde til Australia for å godkjenne akkurat denne 80 modellen? Eller kanskje det har blitt bygget ennå flere etter 1983? Da må det med andre ord finnes mer enn 27 løpsbiler....