OLD vw rally photo.

A friend of mine sent me this photo it is of the 1958 ampol rally. Does anyone know who the driver and navigator of this car number 112 are? number plate is BCS-857
Does anyone have any other OLD rally pictures of vw's.

I have some old photos of my 63 club car 'Herb' It belonged to my late uncle and he used to rally it (or trials as they called it) back when it was new. It used to race up here at Lowood. They blew the motor in 69 and parked it under the house until I dragged it out in 04 and gave it a makeover - whilst a lot of my cars seem to come and go I cant get rid of this one. Some of the elderly folk still come up whilst we are at the Leyburn Sprints and tell tales of the old dub - which is pretty cool.

Will dig the photos out and post them.

Cheers

Peter

I reckon the taller guy is the same as in this photo from the '56 Ampol, i.e. Ted Townshend, from
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/08/01/2321808.htm

hth

Wow some great photos there.

I have just finished writing a detailed 5-part article on the 1955 Redex Trial, which was published in Club Veedub Sydney's magazine Zeitschrift. There was a lot of intrigue over the result of the 1955 Redex, with many appeals and reappeals over the result and CAMS having to override the Redex company and its directors, Reg Shepheard. Even the RAC in London got involved. The trial took 3 weeks to run but another 3 months (!) before the final results were known. Even then Redex witheld the prizemoney for another couple of months. The VWs of Laurie Whitehead and Eddie Perkins eventually finished 1-2. Redex got out of the trials business after that. In 1956 there was a breakaway from CAMS by a group of NSW motor clubs, and the Ampol Trials were not run under a CAMS permit; technically they were 'illegal'. The Mobilgas was the 'establishment' trial. It took 2 more years to smooth things over.

BTW, Volkswagens won all three Mobilgas trials - 1956, 1957 and 1958, and one of the Ampol Trials, 1957. A Peugeot won the Ampol in 1956, and a Holden in 1958.

I found a really great place to find old Redex photos was the National Library's 'Picture Australia' database. You can do a search on anything you like - try doing a search on Redex, or Ampol, or Mobilgas. Try doing a search on Volkswagen - plenty of Clayton factory photos too. The website is http://www.pictureaustralia.org/index.html

who was redex favouring to win in 55'? wouldn't have been holden would it? 🙄

Don't be silly!

Malcolm Brooks' Standard Vanguard was the first provisional winner, followed by a Morris Oxford and a Ford Customline. The two VWs were each penalised 500 points for 'chassis cracks' in the floor. Redex said they were 'structural'. The VW drivers (and other drivers too) appealed to CAMS, who got the NRMA to reinspect all the cars. Carl Kennedy's Peugeot was firstly named as a new 'provisional' winner, when the Vanguard also had cracks. The VWs' penalties were removed when CAMS ruled that their cracks were 'superficial', and were returned to their 1-2 position. The cracks were in the floor, under the floormats, where they had driven over sharp rocks during the trial and the rocks had torn the floor sheetmetal.

Redex didn't like being overruled by CAMS so they appealed to the RAC in England, who were the British Empire representatives of the FIA world body. The RAC eventually stated that the CAMS ruling was binding, as they were the RAC's representatives in Australia. Reg Shepheard's dissatisfaction with this was the major reason that Redex did not continue with Trials after 1955, although he was quoted as saying that he had nothing against 'German cars' !

Holden didn't win a 'Round Australia Trial' until 1979!

my '54 is an ex rally / time trials car ,it was campaigned from 1963 to around 1974. the old guy i bought it off in 1988 was one of the original mechanics from the team.he bought it & put it back on the road in london up till around 1979.after that time it just sat on his drive rotting away.
when i got it , it was still fitted with the skinny 60's race seats,2 point harneses[wow a lap belt...lol].the block was seized,it had a jag fuel pump on the firewall ,porsche super 90 carbs,oh & porsche 356 speedster drums all round [which i have retained on the car] speedwell guages & a speedwell rear anti rollbar...60's go faster mods at it's best..lol.
the guy i bought it from had all these b/w pics of it racing in the 60's,i had asked to borrow them so i could scan them in ,but he was a little reluctant to say the least to let me borrow them.[it took me 2 years to persuade him to sell me the car!].
so ,as much as i WANT to post up racing rally pics of my ride i can't...bugger..😂
[ but i got the shots of when i first got it wiv all the rally mods still on it...
😵‍💫

Wow, that's brilliant! Your '54 is a real collectors' item. Are considering restoring it to its 1960s racing condition? PLEASE bring it down to the Nationals next May!

There wouldn't be many historic Australian VW trials cars left. I know that the Perkins family in Victoria has a number of of them, mostly as parts. I don't even know what became of Laurie Whitehead, so tracking down his subsequent history would be difficult. He was also a VW dealer in St Kilda until the early 1960s, so there would be a lot of VW stories out there waiting to be found.

The only historic racing VW I know of that is anywhere near original is the 'factory' race Beetle still owned by Barry Ferguson, which he drove to victory in the 1967 Southern Cross Rally. He later restored it and drove it in the first Bourke to Burketown Bash in 1985.

Here are a couple of redex trial pics taken from
old movies....


LEE


Apologies for poor resolution

here you go .....
😵‍💫👍👍
http://www.rallybugs.com/index.html

Lee, that VW #120 in the 1955 Redex was driven by NSW-based Theo Borrer. He made it as far as Darwin but withdrew from the trial there due to damage.

16 VWs started the 1955 Redex; 6 made it to the finish.