MOTORSPORT: Rogers swaps back to Holden

Veteran team owner Garry Rogers has given up on his bid to run Volvos in the 2017 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship and has switched back to Holden Commodores.

His two drivers, new signing Garth Tander and James Moffat, will debut two brand new cars with Chevrolet engines supplied by Walkinshaw Racing and sponsorship from Valvoline, Wilson Security and Payce.

Volvo shocked the category last May when it elected not to renew its three-year deal with GRM to run S60s in the championship. Rogers was so incensed he took the Chinese-owned Swedish manufacturer to federal court alleging misleading and deceptive conduct. Mediation in December was unsuccessful.

Rogers wanted Volvo to extend its deal at least one more year so he could use the Polestar-developed B8444S Volvo engines in the S60 chassis before moving on to a new brand. An alternative could have been to run Chevrolet engines in the S60, which is a control Supercars chassis clothed in facsimile bodywork.

Now, Rogers has confirmed the Dandenong (Vic) based team has built two new VF IIs for Tander and Moffat. The squad has also completed two new Commodores for its Dunlop development series program.

The decision is another 'back to the future' moment for Rogers, whose team had raced Holden Commodores in Supercars before the Volvo deal was done for 2014. Rogers also brought Tander into the category in 1998 and re-signed him in December after the West Australian spent 12 years within the Walkinshaw organisation.

Rogers revealed the decision to go back to Holden in a column published on the team website this afternoon.

"Having tried extremely hard to secure the Volvo V8 engines that had been developed and built in Sweden, which had absolutely no use except in Supercar racing, we ultimately failed. The choice that I was left with was: 'Do we run the Volvo chassis with a Chev engine?'," he wrote.

"I like to think that as much as I am getting on in years, I am a "modern thinker", but also a traditionalist. The traditionalist in me knew it was not the right thing to run a Chev engine in a Volvo chassis in a Touring Car category.

"Having exhausted all potential avenues, including offering to buy the Volvo engines I felt as though I had two choices. One was to say: 'Well, the last 50 odd years have been great, but it's time to give it away'. This thought barely entered my mind, as I truly love what I do and I admire and respect every one of my 34 employees.

"The second option was to build two new cars. This decision was made in early December, and we have been absolutely flat out ever since."

All that means GRM will debut four all-new cars at the opening round of the Supercars championship and development series in Adelaide at the Clipsal 500 on March 2-5.

The new GRM Commodores will have their first outing at a Dunlop tyre test at Sydney Motorsport Park on February 21.