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Originally Posted by Tubbsy8
I know this car it was and think still is owned by a guy who owned Carings in Upshire (near Waltham Abbey). He used to be a rally driver for the works team (Unipart) and has 6R4's and Lotus Cortina rally cars among other racing cars. he took me out in it once, my god what a beast. It was so loud you can here it 4 miles away. The exhaust was a 4inch straight through with no silencer. The story he told me was that he was supposed to be driving it in the himalayan rally but broke his arm 6 weeks before in an accident. As a result he arranged for someone else to drive it, this may have been the three ladies as a PR stunt. It is without doubt the same car.
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Which car do you mean?- the one in the pics (I think we established that the shortened car in the pics is what remains of the ex-Ken Wood 'Golden Wonder' Scottish Championship car- an early ex-works car, later sold to Duncan Jaffray who shunted it and re-shelled it into a shortened shell) or the one Corliss talks about having nearly bought some years back?
If it's that one, then two thoughts come to mind- Firstly, Philip Young did the Himalayan event several times in the early 80's in an remarkable variety of (usually BL) cars- everything from a Morris Minor to ex-works Austin Healey 3000 and TR8, and they were usually sponsored by Unipart- I can't swear to it, but I've got a vague recollection that he might have used a Rover at some point?
The Healey and TR are (or used to be at least) in the Gaydon museum:
http://www.austinhealeyclub.co.uk/Na...n%20Healey.jpg
Alternatively (or maybe connected?) Ian 'Del' Lines bought 3 ex-Austin Rover Middle East Rally Team Vitesses in 1985 and used them on a variety of events- We've talked about these before earlier in the thread, as one of them was shunted and reshelled into an ex-TWR Bastos race shell. There's a good piece on the SD1 Owners Club website about Del Lines' cars, and re-reading it I spotted something interesting I'd missed before:
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In all Del’s team did around 25 events with “A377” and “A683” with some success. The program came to a temporary halt in early February 1986 when, due to ‘driver error’ Del planted the Pond car A379 VUK into a large, one thousand year old tree in Longleat Park – in full view of his then Bank Manager! “A683” was sold to Mick Moore in Lancs and “A377" was used on a Himalaya rally in 1986 and not seen for some time, it is now being rebuilt by the present owner for another rally in Asia.
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http://www.roversd1club.net/features...e-ianlines.asp
The 3 cars were
- A377VUK (ex-recce car)
- A379VUK (ex-Tony Pond)
- and A683NJO, (ex-Abdullah Omar)