There are 113 days to go until the first round of the 2026 season gets underway at Sydney Motorsport Park.

In just under two weeks the countdown will be down to double digits and while it is still a long time, time starts to go a little quicker.

Being January 2, there is not a whole lot to report but we hope that you will enjoy what we have to present to you today.

We welcome all recent new readers and welcome new followers to our Facebook page; we hope that you will enjoy your time here.

AUSCAR #31 has a new cover photo, The #31 is one of a couple of AUSCARs that will hopefully see action in the Australian Stock Car Championship sometime this year.

It is always a great time when we see something new from one of the teams, it can be a cover photo, news, a flashback, anything is good and it keeps the wheels turning, it lets people know there’s always something happening.

While browsing through the mass of eBay pages that offer NASCAR items, A #47 Little Debbie crew uniform was for sale, the details were promptly passed along to Brad Burgess, and the item was gone a few minutes later.

Dig deep on eBay because what you want or need could be as deep as page 20, you never know until you really have a look at it.

Progress continues on Eddie Ivermee’s Oldsmobile, the engine is now in the engine bay, and it is looking good, the car known as Intrepid is really starting to look like a Stock Car once again.

Sorting out the Tropic Coast Racing history has been a challenge since we started working on sorting out the history of Eddie’s Oldsmobile.

Our curiosity was piqued earlier this week when Eddie saw a photograph of the Tropic Coast Racing workshop; this photo was really interesting because there was a covered up black car whose contingency stickers were very much different to the rest of the cars in the picture.

The number on the car was partly obscured by a cover, but the cover was light enough to know that the car had double digits which ruled out an already TCR readied car as they had switched from #23 to #2 for 1993/94.

Eddie looked for black Cup cars from 1992, and we consulted our database of what we knew of TCR car histories.

We knew that one future TCR car was an ex-Jimmy Spencer Lumina, a quick look on Google revealed that Jimmy Spencer drove a Lumina for Travis Carter in Winston Cup competition, it was black, numbered #98 and the numbers were yellow just like the photograph of the obscured car.

We found a race report that said that Ian Thomas had a major crash in that car at Adelaide in 1994.

Along the way, we found out a bit about the TCR cars nicknamed Elvis and Destiny, both cars were also raced by Kevin Schwantz.

In the 1995/96 season, Kevin Schwantz won at Oran Park with Elvis and then used Elvis at Adelaide, he crashed it and Destiny was used for the race, a race that he ended up winning.

Destiny was set to run at the Thunderdome in the final round of the 1995/96 season, unfortunately it had sustained heavy damage before the race, and Destiny was replaced by a TCR built Monte Carlo that was making its second race appearance for the season.

The interesting part about Destiny was that the Lumina had the brace that the original two TCR Oldsmobiles had which was also what the #41 Oldsmobile had, all three came from Morgan-McClure.

A conflict about the fate of Destiny is that it was reported that the car received new clips and Monte Carlo panels, but Marshall Brewer brought a Lumina off TCR, and its switch plate had the name ‘Destiny’.

As for Elvis, we’re still searching for that car’s fate, it appears that because both Destiny and Elvis were used by Kevin, their histories and fates get mixed, we believe that is what happened when Motorsport News reported about Marshall buying a Lumina from TCR.

For Sale

The #8 Monte Carlo is for sale, this car was built in 1999 for Joe Bessey and was run in Winston Cup competition, it was driven by Geoff Bodine and other drivers in 1999 and 2000, it went on to be raced in SCCA competition and then it was brought to Australia by Graham Booth and it has been around SCA since the very beginning.

Don’t worry fans, Richard White Racing isn’t going anywhere, they’ve got plenty of Stock Car racing left in them for the future.

You can buy the car as it is, you can buy the car with a fresh engine, or you can buy the car and have Richard White Racing prepare it for the 2026 season.

Check out the above video to see the car in action at Calder Park Raceway in November 2025, it won one race that weekend.

If you’re interested, check out the link above that has all the details and then contact Richard.

If you have a Stock Car, an AUSCAR, a Sportsman or a HQ for sale, drop us a line any time and we’ll advertise it for free, it can be a complete, turn key car, a car missing some parts or even if it is just a roller, we’re also happy to advertise the sale of parts and promote offers for working on cars.

You may just have the car, the parts or the skills that somebody really needs.

Additionally, if you want to buy a car, tell us what you want, what condition you want it (complete or roller) in and your price range and we will post it for you.

Information Most Wanted

We met Paul Scicluna at Calder Park, he is looking for information on his #12 Pontiac Grand Prix.

This Pontiac raced at the Grand Prix round in 1999, it finished 23rd, 10th and 16th for the weekend.

The information we have received is that the car came from Les Kennewell and he got it from Robert Tinworth.

Determining which car from the Tinworth team is not as straight forward as Robert Tinworth said ‘l had 5 of them’ when asked about his cars in 2020.

An advertisement in January 1997 offered four Pontiacs for sale, two front steer cars with 23-degree engines and two rear steer cars that were to be sold as rollers.

One car that gets mentioned a lot is the ex-Kyle Petty Pontiac that was later the Harrington Commodore and then the Tinworth Pontiac, we’ve read somewhere it was sold a few years ago which if true would not be the car we seek as Paul has had his car since before 2000.

We are looking for anybody who may know with absolute certainty where the above ex-Brad Jones, ex-Kim Jane Chevrolet Lumina ride car nicknamed ‘George’ came from.

We have two different opinions on this car; one is that Brad Jones got it from George Elliot (he isn’t sure about that) and the other is that it came from Walter Giles (the Giles family doesn’t believe that) and both arguments are very confident that they are correct.

It has been suggested that it is the Buick LeSabre of Walter Giles, we haven’t found anything to confirm or refute that, a report has been found that Walter’s original chassis went to Mark Harrison but we’re still looking into it.

The car has Oldsmobile parts like the rear bumper, roofline and deck lid, it has Lumina 3/4 windows, and the front was added later on than the rest of the body.

On the dash there is an imprint of a square on the right side indicating that a plate was there at some time, had this remained we would have likely known its origin.

Pink was found in the surviving layers of body paint pointing its history towards Ron Goodman’s car for the Gold Coast in 1992 and Walter Giles who also had pink cars.

The #05 Ron Goodman Oldsmobile was an ex-George Elliot Oldsmobile as stated in the Round 4 1991/92 programme, it was originally claimed to be a car purchased from George, but a later publication said it was ‘lent’ (leased) to Ron by George, and it was given back to George.

The trail for that particular car goes cold after Gold Coast 1992.

As you can see, the right side of this Oldsmobile has a Lumina 3/4 window which is very interesting.

Somebody out there has to know for sure, Brad Jones getting a ride car had to be a pretty big deal as he only had ‘Elroy’ on hand early on, plus a ride car is a nice way to get more Stock Car laps in too and we believe that would make the car newsworthy.

See you next week.