GARRY Rogers Motorsport is preparing for a rapid-fire build process to have an all-new Peugeot 308 TCR cutting demonstration laps at Bathurst later this year.
News came to light in February that GRM will become the exclusive provider of the French marque’s next TCR weapon.
That project is not far from springing to life, with the first two car shells currently en route via sea freight.
They are expected to arrive at GRM’s Dandenong South headquarters in Melbourne’s southeast in August.
“We have got two body shells on the way plus a whole heap of parts that are required for the first build,” Rogers told V8 Sleuth.
“So the initial build will be two cars. The plan is to have those cars homologated later this year when the World Tour cars are here, instead of sending the car to Europe.
“Then we’ll get two cars racing here and then hopefully we do a great job on it and the orders come flowing in.”
Those two cars will race in the 2024 TCR Australia series – but it’s hoped their first public laps will come sooner.
“We would love to have one built and doing demo laps in November at Bathurst,” said Rogers, with reference to the Bathurst International on November 10-12, which will double as a round of the TCR World Tour.
“We may be pushing to meet that deadline, things aren’t easy to freight around the world, but we’ll see how that goes.”
Having a car ready by the time the World Tour arrives Down Under could allow GRM to fast-track the global homologation process which has slowed the wider rollout of the Toyota Corolla model developed in South America.
“In simple terms, we could bang the Peugeot together, apply for a regional homologation, start racing it (in Australia) prior to the world homologation being done, but our plan is to try to get the world homologation done while there’s some world cars here,” said Rogers.
“They’re going to be here for a little while after the World Tour. It probably makes a lot more sense than sending a car across to Europe to get it done.”
For now, GRM is preparing for the arrival of those two shells.
“We’ve been doing all of the CAD and things on the cages and the fascia and the front and rear guards,” said Rogers.
“So certainly we’re not being held up by them not being here at the moment but there will come a point where we certainly need them here because we’ll have all of the bars cut and everything ready to put cages and things in them.
“It will be a big push when they get here to get those cars built by November but that’s the plan.”
As for international prospects, Rogers says they’ve already fielding interest from Europe and South America.
“Whether there’s orders placed before they see the performance of the car or whether it’s after they see the performance of the car, we’ll see,” he added.
