We spent many, many hours across several years searching for the origin of this Australian Stock Car that is now a Dale Earnhardt tribute car.

The car is currently owned by Richard White and is running in the Australian Stock Car Championship and the origins of the stock car had eluded us and others for over a decade.

We believed that the car started its life as an Oldsmobile, it has a stamped chassis number of BP8835R, it was given the AUSCAR sticker A 053.

BP stands for it being a Banjo chassis, 88 stands for 1988 and #35 is the chassis number for that year.

There is debate on the meaning of the R, some say replacement clip and others say that it stands for Road.

As for A 053, nobody knows, there appears to be no records of the serials numbers that were handed out to Australian cars, the destruction of Banjo records also complicates matters on the chassis side of things.

What was missing was something to prove its past history until a closer look was done in March 2026 at the right side of the dashboard of the car and the search was on to find a team plate that was that size and shape.

Richard White was given a stack of pictures of cars belonging to the #31 Racing Cars & Engines team and thankfully photos were taken that shown some of the interior of the cars.

There on the right-hand side of the car is a rectangular plate and that rectangle is a team plate and, in this instance, it is Race Cars & Engines.

We know that several Race Cars & Engines cars if not all of them were shipped to Australia to be used by NASTRAK and some of them ended up being retained by George Elliot.

Brad Jones had this car from before the 1994/95 season as it was mentioned in the 1994/95 season media guide.

It was then the #27 ride car though it appears it wasn’t used for long as social media shown other cars being used instead of the ride car.

After its time as the #8 and #27 ride cars, it had spent some time gathering dust at Calder Park, the above photos were taken by Declan Kirkham in 2011, the pink paint is visible showing it was not done after 2011.

The car was given new life by Matt Czerny who posted about the car in January 2012, car research efforts started at that time but were unsuccessful.

The car then spent some time in Queensland and Tasmania before settling in Victoria and is now racing with Stock Cars Australia with Richard White Racing.

Theories

Now that we’re positive that this car was a #31 Race Cars & Engines Oldsmobile, we still got to search to see if it had any Australian action or not.

Above is a comparison of the #05 Oldsmobile and the #27 Lumina before it was turned into an Earnhardt tribute, while the 1992 TV image is off a few pixels, is it enough to say that it is the same car?

This #05 was originally claimed in a 1992 publication to have been brought from George Elliot, but the Round 3 of the 1993/94 season book says that the car was ‘lent’ to Ron, and it was returned to George.

That is a mystery for the future.