AT FIRST glance, this car looks like it came straight from the 1995 Bathurst 1000.
But it’s not. It’s an extremely good replica, one which will be in action at Historic Sandown in November.
Pinnacle Motorsport was a short-lived touring car team from the early seasons of the five-litre V8 era in the 1990s.
Its racing appearances crossed just 1994 and 1995, initially with an ex-Peter Brock Holden before building a Commodore of its own.
That car went on to deliver an upset sixth-place finish in the 1995 edition of the Great Race with Tony Scott and British Touring Car Championship icon John Cleland at the wheel.
However, that was the Pinnacle team’s final race appearance, and its car went on to be raced by Mal Rose and used in his Supercars Experience program.
In recent years, that car been purchased by a Melbourne enthusiast and restored back to an earlier 1995 livery.
Which brings us to this car: a visually-faithful replica of one of the more obscure cars and liveries from Supercars and Bathurst 1000 history.
Yet for its owner, Craig Barkla, it was a logical choice when he decided he wanted a Supercar to call his own.
He campaigns the car as part of a growing category of tribute machines built to honour cars from touring car racing history.
Barkla in action at the Winton Festival of Speed. Pic: Mark Walker
“I’m in my late 40s, so I grew up in the prime of Supercars: the start of the (five-litre V8) category in ’93 until it went to Gen2. For me, that was its best period,” Barkla told V8 Sleuth.
“So anyway, I’m 18-odd years old in 1995, and I’ve always been a Holden guy.
“The Pinnacle car just always stayed with me. I always loved that car, the graphics of it, it sounded good and it was a quick car – the fastest privateer car that year.
“I bought the Commodore as a road car in 2019 and converted it to a race car and did some track days with it,” Barkla said.
“But the pipe dream was always – if I could afford it – to get a genuine body kit and turn it into a Supercar tribute.”
Underneath the skin, the car still features its roadie origins: the 5.7-litre LS V8 and Tremec six-speed gearbox remain, as does the original brake setup.
But the outside is a perfect tribute to the car that finished sixth at Mount Panorama.
Although that wasn’t the only livery Barkla was mulling over.
“I bought the car as a white car, so it didn’t have to be painted. It was going to be a white base, just a quick and easy thing,” he said.
“I had two cars on my radar: One was the Mark Skaife Sega car from the start of ’96, and the Pinnacle car.
“For a long period of time I was leaning towards the Sega car, but I also liked the Pinnacle car because it’s in between: not too much livery, but not enough.”
Feeling the Sega livery was too basic, he landed on the Pinnacle livery.
Reproducing it, though, proved challenging. The Queensland-based squad ran a variety of slightly different liveries on its cars during its brief existence.
Case in point the ’95 Bathurst livery: that marked the one and only time it was used, having been different at the preceding Sandown 500, and different again during the ATCC.
“My sign writer did a brilliant job of recreating that livery,” he said.
“I got on to Tony Scott, and Tony’s been a great help through the whole process over the journey.
“He was trying to get a hold of the original graphics, and his graphics guy didn’t have the files anymore because that was obviously in early days of vinyl. So we had to go off photos.”
AN1 Images supplied several photos of the car from the 1995 Bathurst 1000 that helped Barkla produce his replica. Pic: an1images.com / Graeme Neander
Further aiding the replica’s believability is that Barkla did his homework when sourcing the race-spec bodywork.
“I’m very pedantic with this stuff,” he said.
“I did research and found the rear wing is more or less the same VR/VS; the side skirts were more or less the same; the rear bumper is the same.
“The front splitter is the one that needed to be right because a lot of people just use a VS one, but it is different.
“I wanted to do a VR – if if I couldn’t get the right front splitter for it, I wasn’t going to do it at all!
“So I did some research and spoke to a few people, and a couple of people put me on to Allan Kerr that runs Alfa Fibreglass.
“He has a lot of the original moulds from some of the Group C stuff and early Group A, and it turned out that he owns the original HRT moulds from that 1995/1996 period.
“So it’s nice to say that the kit, even though it’s not made out of carbon fibre like most of the cars would have been back then, it is out of the original moulds.
“The kit looks right because it is right.”
The Pinnacle car is one of a growing group of tribute cars that are beginning to be welcomed at historic race events.
And, like Barka’s privateer project, it’s not just the star’s cars that are being chosen.
“We’re promoting privateer cars because everyone wants to build a Brock car, everyone wants to build a Johnson car, everyone wants to build a Perkins car,” he said.
“So the privateer cars are a bit of a favourite in that category.”
Barkla’s Pinnacle Commodore will be on track at Historic Sandown in the Group C&A Tribute Cars Super Sprint.
Click here for the full entry lists in the Historic Sandown programme, viewable for free online here or below.
Historic Sandown, to be held on November 7-9 – the weekend prior to the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 Supercars event – is run by the Victorian Historic Racing Register (VHRR) and MG Car Club.
This year’s event will also see a return to live streaming with V8 Sleuth’s website and YouTube channel to carry coverage of the event on the Saturday and Sunday.
The event will also feature car club displays with a range of makes, models and eras on display for fans to enjoy over the course of the event.
Tickets are on sale here now for the Historic Sandown event via Humanitix.
Historic Sandown is an advertising partner of V8 Sleuth