MOTORSPORT: Holden Ute on the world stage

It's ironic, but — more than a year after production ceased — a Holden is to race in the world's toughest rally for the first time.

A Holden Ute is at sea, due to arrive in Peru on South America's Pacific coast in a week for the Dakar Rally starting on January 6.

The event, with hundreds of competitors in cars and trucks and on motorcycles and quads, will have 5000 kilometres of competition over 10 days, with a much-needed rest day in the middle. Seventy per cent of it will be on sand — much of it dunes.

"There are sand dunes to the height of Mt Kosciuszko — and then there are mountains (the Andes)," says Steve Riley, the dairy farmer from Leongatha in Victoria's Gippsland inspired to take his 6.0-litre VE SS Ute (with Mitsubishi Pajero four-wheel-drive transfer case) on the ultimate torture test.

Australia doesn't have anything like the sand dunes of Peru. The nearest Riley and his longtime mate and now co-driver Trevor Hanks could find for testing were at Reef Beach in southern Western Australia's Bremer Bay.

"Being able to read the sand and the dunes in the Peru deserts will be paramount to our success," Riley says.

He has done Dakar twice before — both times in South America, since the move there more than a decade ago after terrorism fears in its original Africa.

Both times as a co-driver — with Queenslander Geoff Olholm in a BMW-based Rally Raid 4WD in 2011 and with West Australian Adrian Di Lallo in an Isuzu D-MAX in 2013 — and both times made the finish, the major achievement for all starters.

But Riley has had a burning ambition to go back to the Dakar — in a sense the world's biggest motor race and dominating the sport's global exposure each January — as a main man, the driver.

And he wanted to do it in "something Australian".

"If you ask yourself the cost of doing it you wouldn't do it — you'd scare yourself," he says.

There's the whopping entry fee to the French organisers and then the cost of running a vehicle through the most difficult of conditions for days on end.

There had been a plan afoot for Peter Brock to drive a Holden Adventra wagon on the 2007 Dakar before he died in the 2006 Targa West.

Riley's is very much a privateer effort, although he's found some corporate support -- including from China's GiTi Tyres.

A three-time Australian Safari winner on four wheels after a long off-road career on Honda motorcycles, Riley built the ute almost five years ago but has given it a major refresh for Dakar.

Three days after Christmas he, Hanks and four mechanics will fly out for the adventure of a lifetime.

Riley says the Holden Ute will be suited to Peru's sandy stages, but even before he sets off he has one lament — the FIA's T1 cross-country regulations require a 37mm turbo restrictor that "means we're very limited on power up high".

Holden Ute Dakar technical specifications:
6.0-litre LS3 V8
Six-speed Holinger gearbox
Four-wheel-drive transmission
King shock absorbers
Self-built space frame chassis
Composite panels
37mm FIA turbo restrictor

The cars for Australia's new premier open-wheeler category, S5000, will be assembled by Supercar team Garry Rogers Motorsport.

While Borland Racing Developments has done the initial adaptation and will remain a consultant, GRM's 36-strong Melbourne workforce will prepare 13 Onroak-Ligier chassis being imported for the six-round series to run as part of the Shannons Nationals from mid-May next year.

The initial S5000 has been demonstrated at the Newcastle 500 and Adelaide Motorsport Festival in recent weeks.

The driving force behind S5000, former magazine publisher and one-time touring car and historic Formula 5000 racer Chris Lambden, says the technical alliance with GRM is "another crucial box ticked" in getting the category up and going.