Race Ace Brock Defies Statue Of Limitations

The Sunday Age

Sunday May 4, 2008

Denis Gregory

A MARLBORO logo will appear on a life-size memorial bronze sculpture of Peter Brock astride one of his favourite cars.

Protests from anti-tobacco campaigners could do nothing to block the tribute to the racing legend, which will be outside Mount Panorama motor museum.

But the Melbourne-based sculptor Julie Squires has agreed to a Bathurst City Council request to etch the logo in a more subtle form.

The council hopes the $100,000 sculpture will be unveiled at this year's Bathurst 1000 in October.

It will depict Brock standing on the roof of the VK Commodore he drove to victory in the 1984 Bathurst 1000, now in the museum.

Squires said that to have removed the Marlboro logo would have been to compromise the integrity of the sculpture. She said that after considering the anti-tobacco campaign, the Marlboro insignia, which had been "quite dominant" on the original drawing, would now be etched into the surface.

"The whole sculpture will be in bronze, so it is not going to stand out like a red-and-white billboard," she said. "What makes it difficult is the car as it was raced is in the Bathurst motor museum. The sculpture is going out the front of the museum, so it seemed bizarre to alter the statue when the actual car is inside."

A Bathurst councillor, Bobby Bourke, said: "I asked whether the memorial could have been based on another car Brock drove that didn't have the Marlboro sign, but Squires said there were no other options.

"We all had concerns about the Marlboro sign, but the car is in the museum along with other cars with James Hardie and Peter Stuyvesant advertising on them."

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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