ITS ALL HAPPENING
says Bill Tuckey - Motoring Journalist - Australian Motor Magazine March 1969
Like all good fairy tales, everything ended happily.
After months of chewing their fingernails to the elbows, CAMS officials and rally experts breathed a collective sigh of huge relief when the London-Sydney Marathon ended with nothing more nasty than a Gestapo vendetta by the NSW police and a very peculiar and not a little smelly accident to the leader Lucien Bianchi's Citroen when he had the money virtually in a Belgian bank.
It can be said now that there was very serious concern at high levels in motor sport about the effect of this giant publicity on rallies. One well-known NSW rally panel official said, albeit a little pontifically: "The Marathon will either make rallies in this country or ruin them for all time."
As it turned out, it has made them.
Ampol's announcement during the Marathon that it will run a cross Australia 10,000 mile epic in June 1970 stirred everybody. Rallies, which in 1968 looked a whiter shade than pale, have come back with a bang. Suddenly it is respectable to rush around the countryside in gaily-painted cars, where before it was considered definitely dangerous and possibly detrimental to the public interest. It is even hoped that the current wrangling going on in NSW between CAMS, the police and the local country councils may be eased by the jolly-good-show atmosphere generated in some sort of fantastically accidental way by the London-Sydney brouhaha.
So many people have planned serious rally programs for 1969. At the time of writing, Chrysler, which had the London-Sydney dropped into its lap, is discussing plans to rally one or more Hillman Hunters. The GM-H dealer team has been re-formed, mainly by the inclusion of the Torana which did spectacularly well in two Victorian rallies towards the end of the year, ending up winning the Alpine outright.
Ford has said nothing, but one could assume that one of the Marathon GT's and a Lotus Cortina will figure in their program.
BMC is all but out of motor sport, due to a re-assessment of priorities in their organisation for Leyland, and it is a cruel cut of fate that they will not appear in a strong rally year after they have supported this branch of the sport for so long. And done so well in the Marathon.
Renault's help to the semi-works Gordini teams will be stepped up, and we should see one of the new disc-braked 404 Peugeots in action later on.
The word is that Barry Ferguson will continue to campaign in a big engined beetle, but VW fortunes are at such a low ebb now that he may be forced to switch to something else. Volvo has affirmed its very happy agreement with Amoco for the London-Sydney, and should be storming for the big rallies this year, while the Japanese firm of Mitsubishi, elated with the David and Goliath act of their tiny Colt fastbacks during 1968, will be investing more heavily. Even little Daihatsu will be in there plugging again.
Of the other car makers who could conceivably benefit from rallying, this leaves only Datsun, Toyota, Mazda and Honda out in the weather. AMI chief Ken Hougham is firmly set against rallies, and the State Toyota distributors are even less inclined toward motor sport in any form.
Nissan-Datsun is heavily committed to road racing, and Mazda couldn't care less. The good-performing Honda 600 Scamp will be released shortly, and one of these did so well in the 1968 Southern Cross that Bennett-Honda in Sydney might well rally one. And towards the end of the year comes the dazzling 1300 - and just watch that go.
The big secret to how well or how badly works support for rallies will go, will be determined by sponsorship. The traditional motor sport sponsors like BP, Shell and Castrol are consolidating and rationalising their investment for 1969 with a sound eye towards 1970, which with the Ampol Trial and the World Championship AGP promises to be a vintage year - and an expensive one.
Amoco will spend heavily in rallying, as will BP, but it is unlikely that Shell or Castrol will divert much money to it, as they are by far the biggest bankers in motor racing. You can count out the tyre companies, even though Dunlop did marvellously out of the Marathon.
All that remains now is for the rally group in the sport to put their house in order. Badly-run rallies, illegal trials and fly-by-night car clubs have made the sport a miserable headache for organisers and authorities alike. Some sense and some organisation must emerge in 1969, although if the attitude of the NSW police is any criterion it may soon be illegal to carry an oil company sticker on a car while it is parked in your own garage.
The key, of course, is that anybody involved in rallying can now expect slightly better publicity return. I don't suggest that the Grong-Grong Car Club 300 will receive the same sort of idolatrous coverage as the Marathon, but rallies have got some way back into the arena of public recognition from the limbo of night runs on outback roads into which they have been hitherto confined.
The big rallies, properly promoted and presented, will get some newspaper space, and despite all our beloved magazines and dedicated nuts like myself can do, the name of the game is still newspaper publicity.
Maybe even - hoping against hope - some of those newspaper motoring writers will see fit to write about rallies. Although come to think of it, they will probably ignore them if that other Jack Murray - is not involved.
Immensely strong factory support was the keynote of the Marathon, but it is very doubtful if even BMC's second outright will swing their thinking back towards motor sport during the coming year.
Australian Motor Manual - March, 1969
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