PAUL Morris emerged okay from his Team Sirromet Wines VE Commodore at Pukekohe in New Zealand in 2007 after he went on a wild rollover ride in the third and final race of the weekend.
But whatever happened to the white #67 Commodore he was driving that day?
The good news is that not only did ‘The Dude’ survive that Kiwi shunt, but his car did too!
Now listed for sale in the V8 Sleuth Online Showroom here, the car known as ‘Hercules’ has had quite an interesting life story.
Debuted by Morris at the 2007 Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, the car was the very first VE model Commodore built by Paul Morris Motorsport on the Gold Coast.
The Pukekohe round in April of that year was just its third race event when Morris found himself collected by Brad Jones’ BOC Falcon on the run through Ford Mountain, the fast right-hander that brings cars back onto the pit straight at the historic Kiwi track.
“I gave him heaps of room,” said Morris (who impacted the wall at 195 km/h) in Motorsport eNews at the time.
“I was hit in the rear – and then I was upside-down. It wasn’t a big impact with the wall. I was waiting for the big crunch but it never came.”
The Team BOC driver was contrite: “I was trying to give him room, but over the kerb on the inside I clipped the tyres that are there for some silly reason and away I’ve gone,” said Jones.
WATCH: Morris’ wild ride at Pukekohe in 2007
Hercules was repaired for the next round at Winton and driven by Morris for the remainder of the 2007 championship. He and Steve Ellery finished 15th in the Sandown 500 but failed to finish at Bathurst after a late-race crash.
The car was tested by Russell Ingall at the end of 2007 at Queensland Raceway upon the confirmation of news he would join the team for the following season.
The deal marked Ingall’s return to racing a Holden Commodore after five seasons in Fords with Stone Brothers Racing.
Hercules wasn’t raced during 2008 (though it was used by Matt Neal for testing in Queensland prior to him joining PMM for the endurance races) and returned to racing in the early part of 2009 with Dean Fiore.
Fiore ran the car initially under Team Kiwi Racing’s banner before his family’s Triple F Racing banner took over the franchise and the Western Australian ran Hercules for the last time at Winton before swapping to another PMM chassis.
The car returned later that year to make two appearances in the Fujitsu Series at Ipswich and Sydney Olympic Park with Colin Corkery behind the wheel.
It continued in the development series in 2011 and 2012 with Western Australian Brett Stewart at the wheel before being sold to Stephen Coe the following year.
The Queenslander has since raced the car at a variety of events, including making Kumho Series appearances at Phillip Island and Gold Coast in 2018 and in the Combined Sedans field at the Bathurst 12 Hour.
