Classic Adelaide
November 6 - 9, 1997

Classic Adelaide 1997 - a view from the inside

John=s previous rally experience had been strictly limited to touring-type events (eg Rallye de Bordeaux and Tour T=Adelaide), where outright performance is influenced largely by navigation skills, so his perspective is even more interesting particularly for those that are contemplating an entry in Rally Tasmania/Heritage Rally or Targa Tasmania. John finished a highly creditable 12^th in this event, driving a 1965 Lotus Elan which he and his wife use for everyday transport. His report follows:

AThe Classic Adelaide is a serious rally!@

This was the inaugural event, which took place over four days and about 1,000 kilometres, nearly 300 kilometres of which were closed-road >special stages=.

The stages, mostly of between five and 20 kilometres long, were run on fabulous and demanding roads - how many times would every competitor, however good, have misread the road and wished to Ahave that corner again@? Each day was a separate loop, Day 1 through Birdwood and the Barossa Valley, Day 2 the Fleurieu Peninsula, and Days 3 and 4 mainly the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale. Parts of the Australian Grand Prix circuits of Nuriootpa, Lobethal, Woodside, Victor Harbour, and indeed Adelaide, were incorporated at various stages. Competitors returned, pretty exhausted, to the Adelaide Hilton each afternoon ... many of them to seek out specialist workshops for repairs to the ravages of the day=s motoring!

There was a small >Touring Group=, or non-competitive section of the entry, which included three high profile cars from overseas: The stars were the 1962 Pan-Americana-winning Mercedes Benz 300SL Prototype (as opposed to the >ordinary= 300SL Gull Wing, which is only superficially similar) fettled by silver-overalled >Mercedes Oldtimers Team= mechanics sent out from Germany; the 1956 Le Mans-winning Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar D-Type; and a racing Ferrari 275 GTB4, also with Le Mans notches on it belt.

It=s always hard to know who the real heroes are in such a diverse field - the squillion-dollar rally hardened machine might be cruising compared with the fellow who looks like a retired bishop driving the living daylights out of an old Peugeot in 46^th position. But I don=t believe many people would argue with a guernsey for Ken Roscrow in a thing called a Beltey Special, made out of 1950's Bentley bits, which crashed into a tree at the Montacute stage on Day 4 while in an astonishing13th place. Also of note was a 1955 Jaguar XK140 coupe, which finished 20^th; and the very hard driven 1973 (but all of them were really 1974, surely?) Alfa Romeo Montreal of Richard Anderson, which was in the top ten in every single stage and came home fifth overall. Also John Fitzpatrick and Gillian Weinberger=s dramatic swoopy-style 1936 2-seater Delage was 47^th, consistently beating many cars it had no earthly right to.

The outright winner was Bruce Hogarth and Bruce Walter from Tasmania in a 1969 GTHO Falcoln, with Chris Stephen=s Iso Rivolta 33 seconds behind it in second place.

Lotus was not particularly well represented, but, apart from Wendy Allison=s Elan (once again loaned to her ever-loving husband for the event), there was a very fast 1962 Seven of Garry Rainsford which finished fourth, and John Lamb=s 1964 Lotus Cortina. In the Touring Group there was a well-presented Series 4 Elan and another Lotus Seven. In addition, Dean Rainsford=s delectable Lotus XI was on display during the event in the Hilton foyer.

There were no less than twelve Alfa Romeo=s, mostly Bertone 105 GTV=s. This was the best represented marque, and most of them finished in the top 25 out of the 73 starters in the main Competitive section.

Also popular were Austin-Healeys. Tom Barr-Smith=s finished third, which was very creditable even though his car seems to have been constructed to highly un-Healey-ish specifications (do my eyes deceive me, or has it been physically widened as well?) - that=s an idea, perhaps it should be called Highly.

So, which cars made the greatest impression? It=s a personal and subjective call, of course. The ex-Le Mans Ferrari 275 would have been high on most lists, not so much for its sexy pick-up-a-better-class-of-sheila looks as for the wonderful V12 Ferrari song and the sheer class of the thing - its very stance seduces, AGo on, I dare you to drive me really fast@. The Mercedes 300SL was probably the most valuable and significant car in the event, although it=s a bit too Kraut for my taste. It was almost surreal to have a genuine Le Mans-winning D Type Jaguar mixing in as well, and driven fast at times, so it wasn=t all just for show.

Down to earth, the Montreal, Alfa=s answer to the Ferrari Dino, with its race-bred V8 engine, ZF gearbox, and such distinctive looks, was most impressive, and it=s hard to understand why they aren=t more sought after. You either like big Healey=s or you don=t, but Tom Barr-Smith=s example exuded the assurance that it is The Best Healey In The Universe and went like stink (TBS=s involvement in the Healey Factory probably makes it a legitimate tax deduction to boot!). To my mind John Hardy=s splendid Renault Alpine A110 was the archetypal 1960's car in this spirit of this event. You=d think its rear engine and swing axle configuration would be most forgiving of high speed driving sins, but Bob Watson, who drove the car into 16^th place, smothered any vices with his extensive Renault and rally championship experience.

On the subject of the Renault Alpine, the organisers were commendably finicky about safety, to the extent that they had the police breathalise everyone before leaving the car park in the morning. However, they unwittingly failed to test driver Watson=s sobriety by breathalising Navigator Hardy in the passenger=s seat of the Alpine, which is of course a left-hooker, failing to notice that the controls were on the other side!

In South Australia the Motor Traders Association have a training facility for mechanics near Port Adelaide. These people sponsored the event in that they offered free use of their premises and considerable expertise. The competitor who received maximum benefit from this was one of the Alfa Romeo GTV=s, which rolled on Day 1. The MTA team located a secondhand roof and other parts at the motor wreckers and did a 17 hour overnighter to get the car fixed, painted, headlining and all, ready for competition again by lunch time the next day ... gratis except for $400 worth of parts. The facility was used and much appreciated by many other competitors, including ourselves, and the enthusiasm certainly seems to rub off on the participating apprentices.

Enough people will have their two-bob=s worth about safety, following the accident in which Ian Cocks was so sadly killed, and a number of others in which competitors were injured or lucky to have survived. No question this event is potentially dangerous, especially to those knowingly or otherwise driving close to the limit of their or their car=s capability, for many of the roads were lined with trees, including some very high speed sections, and in the end you could only guess what was around the next corner. But it seems to me that by far the greatest hazard is fire, for they can=t cover the entire route with officials and its roughly a minute between competitors, during which time the game could be nearly over for a car catching fire with trapped or incapacitated occupants. Therefore, I expect there will be a requirement for racing-type fuel tanks and/or some crash protection to prevent them from rupturing, in the faster cars at least, for future events. There was also a lot of talk of allowing pace notes in future, but I think this would actually add to the hazard in the event, for example, of a navigator making a mistake, and also detract from the amateur nature of the rally by causing winners to win by an even greater margin than they otherwise would. Anyway, let=s hope there is no overreaction ... which would most certainly not have been Ian Cock=s chosen legacy. R.I.P.

The rally was organised by the core management team left over from the now-defunct Adelaide Grand Prix, and held as a >replacement motor sport event= at the same time of year. It was pervaded by the friendliness of everyone, competitors, officials, police, and public alike. South Australia deserves it to be a regular and increasing success.

The worm=s eye view

In an event like this, where cars start at one minute intervals, the action is spread over a considerable distance, with presumably up to three stages being run concurrently. No one observer or competitor sees a complete picture of what=s going one. These therefore, are a few observations of a more personal or insular nature.

My previous rally experience was limited to touring-type events, where the emphasis is on navigation, not this full-on fast stuff on strange roads. So I was lucky to have an experienced navigator, Joe Manariti, prepared to chance his arm with a strange driver. We had no intercom so he had to shout through his full-face helmet. On the first two stages he told me that every time he shouted I put the brakes on, so I said perhaps he=d better should a lot less often in future lest we end up in last place. We reach a compromise whereby he only warned me of the >Caution=s, but by the final day we learnt how to work well together with him giving quite of lot of information - how anyone can sit there in the Terror Trip seat calculating and giving accurate instructions beats me, but he did it as calmly as handing out cakes at the vicar=s tea party.

The incident which jolted me into acceptance of the need for full instructions was at the Clarendon Stage in the middle of Day 2 when Joe bravely kept his mouth shut as I hot-headedly drove through a spoon drain much too fast and consequently took out the entire exhaust system from the engine back. Lucky it didn=t tangle under the car, but it did make for a noisy day until we got it fixed.

Our uphill performance was frustrated on Day 1, and to a lesser extent Day 2, by a server miss in the engine which was not evident until it was under load. It turned out that this was due to greatly over-rich mixture at medium throttle openings, which hadn=t shown up under the dyno under full load conditions in Melbourne the week before, but gradually coked up everything thereafter. My old friend Peter Bradey, together with John Hurley of Kent Town Autotune, got to the bottom of the problem in the end after several set of new spark plugs and changes to carburettor jets. The sage Graham Hoinville - who can tell what knowledge lies concealed behind that passive face? - observed that this is an endemic problem he as encountered with >performance= dyno-tuning, they get the full throttle setting right but tend to gloss over bottom end tuning inadequacies with rich mixture. This and other, lesser, mechanical problems weren=t so much a question of bad luck as >lack of match practice=. Peter and my wife Wendy did a brilliant job catching up with us going round the long way ... obviously the support cars weren=t allowed on the closed road sections ... to greet us at service spots with fresh spark plugs and other necessaria. Which all goes to show that you can indeed get good help these days.

Each day the starting order was adjusted to each competitor=s position in the field so as to maintain approximate one minute intervals between the cars. Thus consistent cars would have spend their rally in much the same company all the time. But our mechanical gliches and steep learning curve resulted in wildly varying results - our generally poor showing on Day 1, including a gasping 47^th on the Sedan Hill stage, and our self-inflicted exhaust pipe debacle on Day 2 left us with the also rans early on. Contrast this with a more respectable Day 3, and 6^th in a depleted field on Day 4, including 4^th place on the 21 kilometre not-so-hilly Paris Creek special stage, and we had contact with varied sectors of the field. In the end we finished 12^th overall and met a lot of people on our see-saw progress to that position!

Apart from the engine tuning problems which weren=t its fault, our car was simply wonderful. Not vices under duress is so confidence-building. Liek a true thoroughbred, the Lotus Elan makes an average driver seem passably competent - there were many other much faster cars in the rally, but none would have been easier to manage. It would only need much stiffer springs and a slighly hotter engine to turn it into a reasonably competitive historic rally car, but this would spoil it as a road car so we don=t intend to subject it to these indignities.

Even though this event was more seriously competitive than the >touring= rallies we have participated in before, it was just as sociable. In a group of enthusiasts like this nobody cares who you are, where you come from, or which position you are in the field. Also, since I spent part of my youth in Adelaide, every now and then at control points and so on we were greeted by AHow=re you going, Surfie@ followed by my slow recognition of a once familiar but now wrinkly face under the toweling sun hats they wear - this happened several times. Nice.