Feature Cars

Polarising Performer – HDT VL Group A

While it was snickered at, the Plus Pack VL Group A SS with controversial Brock Polarizer guarantees rarity and reward.
HDT VL Group A

Isn’t it amazing how things we sniggered at or simply chucked away decades ago can suddenly be worth big money?

I mean, if you were a little tacker in the late 1970s you might have been taken to the Golden Arches for a meal. And chances were, you chose a happy meal because there was going to be a little plastic toy inside. And, if that little piece of plastic enticement was an underwater monster eraser from 1979, and you somehow managed to still have it, congrats, you’re sitting on about US$600 right there.

Same goes for a lot of Coca-Cola memorabilia, football and baseball cards and everything else from beer coasters to matchbooks. All this stuff was offered as an enticement to consume the bigger picture but, somehow, has become the headline act many years later.

The oil brand Brock used and was sponsored by.

And perhaps the same could be said for that most controversial of Aussie motoring inventions, the Brock Polarizer. It’s a fair bet nobody threw their Polarizer in the dumpster back in 1987, when Brocky was touting it as the ultimate fix for vehicle dynamics. But you better believe there was plenty of smirking going on as PB started to explain an arcane branch of science called orgone energy and why it made his cars better.

But just like your Maccas eraser and your 1914 (pre-rookie) Babe Ruth baseball card, any VL Group A SS still bearing its original Plus Pack gear (including the Polarizer, of course) is worth a lot more money than the same car without the factory-fitted Plus Pack. That’s partly because less than 200 VL Group As did, indeed leave the HDT skunkworks with the Plus Pack fitted, but also because the Polarizer embodies one of the greatest Aussie car scandals/legends of all time.

Actually, even apart from the soap-opera Brock/Holden divorce that was going on at the same time, the VL Group A SS came along at an especially interesting moment in Aussie car-making and motor racing.

VL in Group A guise means business.

Just for starters, unleaded petrol had only recently been introduced (January 1, 1986) giving Holden all sorts of headaches in making sure the old pushrod V8 would work on the no-lead brew. Early attempts were spectacularly unspectacular, with just 122kW from the carburetted version of the Iron Lion.

A couple of years earlier, Holden had also been persuaded to de-stroke the five-litre to 4.9-and-a-bit (although it was still marketed as a five-litre) as a way of making the Commodore at least somewhat competitive, under the new Group A touring car racing rules that were in play here from 1985 to 1993 (when Group A was ditched locally and we went to the home-brewed V8 formula).

So you can kind of see how it was important that any Commodore destined for Group A racing back then could be made to work properly. And, since there had to be no fewer than 500 `evolution’ (for want of a better term) examples to homologate a car according to international Group A rules, those 500 also had to be cars that the general public was willing to pay good money for. Enter P. Brock and HDT.

The 4.9 V8 got the Brock treatment.

The homologation car Brock came up with has, of course, gone on to become a legend in its own lifetime, and remains one of the most sought after Aussie cars ever to hit the road. Based on a Commodore SL to keep weight down, all Group A SS production cars were painted Permanent Red and featured a pretty fetching light grey interior. Of course, you also got a pair of Scheel front seats, and a Momo tiller and gear knob.

Under the lid, the V8 got a four-barrel Rochester carby, headers, heavy-duty con rods, specific camshaft, roller rockers, big-bore exhaust, cold-air induction and even a lightened flywheel. That lot was tied to a five-speed manual gearbox with a 3.08:1 LSD. Sixteen-inch Momo Star alloys seem like a weird size now, but back then they were the absolute duck’s.

Externally, the Group A aimed to get through the air as cleanly as possible, so HDT developed a specific body kit with a large rear spoiler, front air-dam, side-skirts and a small but effective bonnet scoop to get cold air into the thing.

But here’s where it all gets a bit sketchy. Brock, who had already been fiddling around with the Polarizer concept, dug his heels in when it came to the top-flight version of the Group A SS. Without the controversial little gadget, he vowed, the car would not carry his signature, nor would it get all the good bits (which we’ll get to in a moment).

This was in pretty stark contrast to Holden’s (and let’s not forget, the car was being sold through Holden dealerships and warranted by the factory) view that the Polarizer was of no actual benefit and, therefore, charging customers the extra $400 or $600 or so (depends on who you talk to) for it would amount to a rip-off. The battle lines were drawn.

In the end, of course, the stand-off meant that two distinct versions of the car were built; the standard non-Polarizer car and the Brock-approved Plus Pack, complete with all the Polarizer trappings. In the end, buyers kind of voted with their wallets and only 173 (again, depending on who you talk to) Plus Packs left the HDT workshop.

A 4.9lt to comply with Group A.

So what was the Plus Pack? Well, we all know about the small plastic box full of resin, magnets, foil and wires called the Polarizer. But there was more to it than that. You may also know the Plus Pack included the nose-cone sticker, stickers for the side glass and a `Peri Integration’ (Peri being a combination of `Peter’ and `Eric’ (Dowker), Brock’s chiropractor and guru, if you will) sticker on the right-hand-rear-side glass.

There was also a long, thin sticker that Brock described as the antenna for the orgone energy, and while this was most commonly placed on the rear screen, legend has it there were no less than 11 approved locations the antenna could be fitted and still work.

One of those was on the boot lid, which left the sticker completely hidden by the rear spoiler, sparking theories that Brock was hiding Polarizers on cars to keep Holden at bay. It’s also worth mentioning that the Polarizer was pretty crudely fitted, secured to the firewall via a single bolt that was drilled clean through the build plate!

Full analogue gauges on a modern cluster background.

But there was actually more to the Plus Pack if the legends are correct. That extends to different spring rates over a non-Plus Pack car, different spring perches, different anti-roll bars, specific front-end geometry, a higher-pressure fuel pump and even better cylinder-head cooling via an extra water passage. For all that, however, both variants of the Group A SS claimed an identical 137kW of power and 345Nm of torque.

But then it got even weirder with Brock claiming that a polarised car was so much better molecularly speaking, that it’s tyres could be run at 22psi. Oh, and if you didn’t buy the Plus Pack, you could forget about Brock’s signature appearing anywhere on the 30-grand car (in 1986, remember) he’d just built for you.

There are even tales of Brock knocking back offers of a grand or more to put his moniker on a non-Plus Pack car, such was his commitment to the whole Polarizer thing.

The car on these pages is owned by a long-time VL fancier David Earl. In fact, fancier is probably going easy on him, because to hear him tell it, of all the cars he owns or has ever owned, the Permanent Red VL Group A is the one he’ll never part with.

“I loved watching Brock racing around Mount Panorama as a kid,” he recalls. “And I especially loved the VL against the Sierras. Epic stuff. That’s when I fell in love with the VL Group A but, as a young fella, I couldn’t get insurance on one. So I never got it.”

Fast forward a few years and David has finally snagged a Group A SS (and the insurance to go with it) but is knocked flat on his back by a Plus Pack (this car) he spots at a VL get-together at Bathurst a few years back.

“A gentleman in our club owned it, and I started a conversation with him that lasted years. I tried plenty of times to buy it. I even offered to have him drive to my place in it and I’d fly him home. But things were moving too fast for him, so I had to be patient. ‘It’s yours when I’m ready,’ he told me.”

Even once a price had been arrived at, the first VL SS sold and the deal done, David was stopped at the border twice due to COVID lockdowns. Finally, it was third time lucky and he made it to Tassie where he handed over the cash and brought the car back home to Victoria on the ferry.

Since then, the car has been “completely gone through” including the engine with what sounds like a bigger cam (to me, anyway). There’s a new front bar and nose-cone to fix any even slightly rough bits as well as the appropriate stickers, of course.

And what does David think about the whole Polarizer chapter? Has it affected his views of Brock or the car itself?

“I think really, it (the Polarizer) was a great gimmick. But it also showed how big Brock thought he was. No disrespect to the bloke, but his on-track success led to his off-track demise. You don’t go into multimillion-dollar corporations, with no personal stake in them, and tell them what you’re going to do to their cars.”

VITAL STATS

1987 HDT VL GROUP A SS PLUS PACK

David with his Plus Pack. Shirt shows he likes Aussie legends.

Production run: 173 (estimated)

Body: Steel monocoque

Engine: 4987cc OHV V8, carburetted

Power: 137kW at 4400rpm

Torque: 345Nm at 3200rpm

Performance:

0-100km/h: 7.6 seconds

0-400m: 15.5 seconds

Gearbox: 5-speed manual

Suspension: Independent, struts, coils, anti-roll bar (f); live axle, coil springs, anti-roll bar (r)

Brakes: 289mm ventilated discs (f); 280mm discs (r)

Wheels: Alloy, 7.0 X 16-inch

Tyres: Bridgestone Potenza 205/55 R16

Previous ArticleNext Article
Send this to a friend