Built by Triple Eight Engineering and used in the latter half of the 1997 British Touring Car Championship, making it's race debut at Knockhill in August in the hands of Derek Warwick.

In October 1997 it's believed the car was used in the Bathurst 1000 where it was driven by Warwick and Peter Brock. During testing Brock lost control at 160mph and rolled the car doing major damage. After extensive repairs the car was able to qualify 4th, and eventually finished the race some laps down in 6th following a drive-shaft failure.

Sold to Opel Sweden and used in the 1998 and 1999 Swedish Touring Car Championship, drive by Jan Brunstedt.

The car was unused in 2000/01, but returned to racing in the 2002 Norwegian Touring Car Championship driven by Per H Skjolden, but has been unused since then.

In March 2006 when it was acquired by Alex Schooledge having been brought together with V97-001 from a dealer in Sweden who had taken both cars in a part exchange. The car remained in storage until late 2008 when a full strip-down and rebuild was started in preparation for the 2009 season.

Alex has kindly offered to document the rebuild for the site, click here for the first instalment.