Originally Posted by
Steve Holmes
As I vaguely understand it, the Rouse rhd XR4i arrived in NZ late in 1985. It later went to Mark Petch, who had Francevic and Leo Leonard drive it at Bathurst after Petch and Francevic had departed the Volvo team at different times. The Neville Crichton lhd Eggenberger car was purchased in late 1986 or early 1987, to compete at early rounds of the 1987 Australian Touring Car Championship, and I seem to recall reading Auto Action reports that Crichton would soon replace it with a Sierra Cosworth/RS500, although this never actually happened to the best of my knowledge.
So unless I'm mistaken, there were only two Sierra XR4i's that raced in Australasia. The new Sierra Cosworth/RS500 arrived for 1987, but in Australia there were only four of these cars that raced in 1987 (excluding the European cars that appeared for the WTCC races): the two DJR cars, driven by Dick Johnson and Greg Hansford, and the two Don Smith cars, driven by Andrew Miedecke, Don Smith, and John Giddings. The Smith car rolled at one event, and the bodyshell was used as the basis for the Mike Ceveri Sierra Sports Sedan, while the Group A components were put into a new bodyshell.
Of the two XR4i Sierras, the Eggenberger car became the second Mark Petch Motorsport Sierra Cosworth, being changed to a Cosworth 3-window etc, and driven by Gary Croft, while Petch also acquired a Wolf Racing (I think?) Cosworth from Germany for Francevic to drive. But these cars didn't appear until at least 1988. The Croft car eventually became the green Sports Sedan. I don't think the second Petch RS500 ever raced outside NZ during Petch's ownership. Only the Francevic Peanut Slab car did.
1988 saw a large influx of Sierra Cosworths/RS500s, for Tony Longhurst, Allan Moffat, Colin Bond, Andrew Bagnall, Murry Carter, etc.
So the original Rouse XR4i still doesn't appear to have resurfaced. As Roger said above, perhaps it stayed in Aus? I know the two DJR Cosworths were built from new, but I don't know much about the Don Smith cars. Could one of these have been the Rouse car rebuilt into a Cosworth/RS500?