{"id":355402,"date":"2025-12-18T05:08:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T05:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/355402\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T05:08:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T05:08:17","slug":"how-the-diet-coke-commodore-came-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/355402\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Diet Coke Commodore came back to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE Diet Coke Holden Commodore VP formerly raced by Paul Morris has been the subject of a major restoration project in recent years, one that is delved into within the pages of Issue 1 of the newly launched V8 Sleuth Magazine.<\/p>\n

Available to order here online<\/a> or in newsagents around Australia, Issue 1 includes a major feature on the history of the ex-Morris Commodore that was originally built by Perkins Engineering in 1994.<\/p>\n

Now owned by John and Wendy Alcorn \u2013 who ran the Alcair Airconditioning business and privateer V8 race team in the 1990s \u2013 the car was reunited with Morris at this year\u2019s Bathurst 1000 at the National Motor Racing Museum.<\/p>\n

A donor VP Commodore was secured for the required panels in order to take the VS model Commodore back to its original specification.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

SUBSCRIBE: Never miss an issue of V8 Sleuth Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRestoring it back from VS to VP takes a lot of panels!\u201d Alcorn says in Issue 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe car was a mess when we got it. The roof was full of bog so had to be replaced. It still has the original floor, front suspension, rear suspension and roll cage, but we had to replace one main bar in it and put a new hoop bar around the door on the left-hand side. There was one other which was badly repaired and we took a lot of bars out of it that weren\u2019t original.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had been hit in the passenger door on the B pillar and they\u2019d pushed the roll cage back out roughly where it should be and put bog around the cut and never welded it again!<\/p>\n

\u201cExtra bars had been installed for strength for period and we\u2019ve left some of those in there. We left the floor damage in it; there\u2019s still damage you can see. There was nearly 20mm of bog in the passenger side floor. I didn\u2019t want a new floor; I wanted to just paint it up as best as it could be and leave the witness mark where it was hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The car was raced by Morris in the 1994 Australian Touring Car Championship, though didn\u2019t make it to that year\u2019s Bathurst 1000 due to a major testing crash at Lakeside.<\/p>\n

V8 Sleuth Magazine Issue 1 includes the major feature on the Diet Coke Commodore.<\/p>\n

Its cover car is the ex-Craig Lowndes<\/a>, \u2018Green Eyed Monster\u2019 Ford Falcon AU V8 Supercar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE Diet Coke Holden Commodore VP formerly raced by Paul Morris has been the subject of a major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-355402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}