Resurrect or wreck? Glenn Torrens decides to divvy-up a derelict Commodore in the quest to keep others running
This stripped Commodore was bought for its heavy- duty disc-brake rear axle. After removing that for another of my cars, my plan was to chop this body in to little pieces for scrap.
But after looking at it closer, I decided it could be saved; maybe I could find another damaged or rusty car to use as an organ donor for this blue-with blue trim 4.2-litre V8 Trimatic SL with factory air-conditioning.
Months later, I had a twitch of encouragement for my ‘save it’ idea when a mate of a mate, mentioned he was intending to sell an immaculate blue-cloth interior: – seats, door trims, carpet and headliner – from his HDT replica project. As soon as he’d found a replacement red interior (all the first Brock/HDT cars had red trim, so a good replica does too) he’d sell me his blue trim. I guess he’s still looking for red trim because I’m still waiting to buy his blue bits!
So I decided to sell it. Being a V8-tagged, factory air-con – but obviously incomplete – car in restorable condition, I figured someone would be interested at $1500.
Nope.
I had a few ridiculous offers (for example: “Hi, if you can deliver it, I will give you $200”) so eventually I decided to go back to the original plan: chop this bedraggled body in to little pieces for recycling.
But it’s not being wasted. Carefully removed, some of those pieces will be a great help for fixing or restoring other cars. I have a tatty VB Commodore V8 wagon to restore so the nose of this silver car – worth around $200 – is in good condition and will be very useful.
I removed the bonnet (I reckon that’s worth $200, too) and a few handy pieces of alloy trim from around the windows and tail-lights. The doors have rust so are of no use to me, but the factory ‘Antisun’ tinted glass will be handy for a future project. Is the glass worth $100? Maybe the four old doors, with a bit of bog, will be useful on a weekend race car …? Let’s value those at $50.
I retained the factory-tint glass and sold the rusty doors to a bloke who will use them to ‘practice’ fitting custom door handles.
When I began digging around the boot floor, I found rust, making it worthless. Damn! But I had better luck with the passenger side rear quarter panel. I reckon that’s worth $50, as is the rust-free left rear floor section I removed, too.
As well as a punched-in nose, my V8 wagon project has a rusty driver’s front chassis rail (there’s no annual safety inspections in Vic, where the car came from, so dangerous rust seems quite common). So I carefully extricated this driver’s front rail after removing the front cross member, power-steering rack and the front struts. Let’s guess those parts are individually worth $100, as is the rail, so there’s another five-hungie’s worth of bits. Plus the struts are VN type, with sway-bar mounts, that I plan to use under yet another future Commodore project … so that not only saves me cash, but time, too.
So although it’s a little sad to kill any old Commodore – especially a factory V8 one – I’m happy that I grabbed so many good parts from it. Those parts will save me at least $1000 – and a lot of running around – for several of my other Commodore projects!
Photography: Glenn Torrens