fg1631;86550 wrote1986 all over again. Retro paint scheme has even more significance
FTFY.
The aftermath of Sandown 1986 left the Volvo camp without its infamous, championship-winning driver, and during Bathurst 1986, an increasingly unhappy professional lead driver. The team manager had insisted on sitting out the endurance race season to 'develop' the car, then failed to deliver results when the cars finally hit the track. The principals were also reportedly unhappy, as vast sums of money had been spent by the team manager, an issue which had led earlier to the departure of the original team owner months before, after he had queried where it was all going and wasn't happy with the answers. The results, or rather the lack of them, at Sandown and Bathurst didn't please them at all, especially when many thought the problems encountered were foreseeable and avoidable.
Auto Action reported at the time that the whole Volvo team operation's hardware was for sale "for the bargain basement price of $300,000", and one Sydney-based aftermarket turbo shop owner, known for his lap record set in a sports sedan, was negotiating with Volvo Aus to buy the cars and bits.
Towards the end of 1986, Vovlo began closing up the VCS division after the 'technical evaluation' of the 240 (see
http://www.240grupp-a.se/English/index.htm for the story). But then in November, the 3 Australian Volvo Dealer Team 240 Turbos (and all of the spares) were suddenly loaded into a Antonov cargo plane and taken back to Sweden, to be used by Soderquist Racing in 1987.
