The first ‘Award’ and a new Club

16

Once the last cast had gone I was able to get back into the LH seat of any driver that would have me, be it for navigation or stage events. By now BigT had passed his test and bought an Anglia van, which became the ‘Autoservice’ service wagon, and now with me on the maps we continued our regular support duties as well. Aside from The Circuit – which I’ll come back to in a few weeks as a standalone chapter, our big event was again Donegal. As mentioned earlier, ‘Clanger’ had replaced the lightweight Anglia with this Mk1 Escort. It featured a 1760cc pushrod engine and all the usual tweaks common to the rallying privateer of the day, seen here being co-driven on this occasion by Johnny Crossle. We were also now looking after the third ‘Chap’, Richard Garrett, who had stepped up to an Escort 1300E and was contesting the smallest of the highly competitive Group 1 Classes, usually co-driven on Internationals by my regular navigation rally pilot Davy Hadden. I only ever did one event with Richard Clinghan, which was a Galway Summer Rally in this car and it brought his best ever rally result with a 20th Overall and 5thor 6th in Class. Aside from reading the stages as best as one could from 1/2” maps, I recall that the majority of my co-driving duties over those two days was curbing ‘Clanger’s’ propensity to ‘attack’ every corner of every stage as if it was the last! But it obviously worked.

I’d acquired a very basic Super8 movie camera via a pharmacist who was lodging with us. During this Donegal I shot a dozen or more reels of the event and then edited and spliced them together to make ‘A Feature’. This was done by visiting stages as we travelled between service points. I’d get to the side of a stage, shoot off a three minute reel and then head on to resume our duties. I unearthed this and other films I’d shot a while back, put them away again, and can’t now remember exactly where they are. I will find them and have them transferred to DVD for all to enjoy. There’s even some ‘In-car’ footage from a forest stage rally I did with the younger Crossle brother, Bobby. Regulations at the time strictly prohibited competitors using cameras in the cars, but in the depth of a forest in the Sperrins, I reckoned I’d get away with it and I did.

I’d managed to blag enough signatures on my competition licence to upgrade to National Grade, but some CoC’s wouldn’t give a signature to a navigator, so I decided I’d have to drive on some events to finally get my International Licence, with the vain hope of maybe getting to do ‘The Circuit’ or Donegal at some point in the near future. October ’74 I entered OZ’s for the Donegal Club Navigation Rally with BigT on the maps. These were fairly straightforward affairs with plain grid-reference map navigation and a veiled excuse for the boys to have a blast around the county back roads for a couple of hours on a Friday night. You were handed the route to plot on the map an hour before your due start-time, so it was just a case of laying it down and then following it. The only tricky bit was that most of the Passage Controls were Secret Checks, so you had to be sure to stick to the correct route. OZ’s nor me were particularly quick, but BigT and I were now well skilled on route following on 1/2” maps, which meant that we actually got every check and time control, although we dropped a minute or two at most of the latter. Remarkably, when the results were posted we were 4th Overall and whilst the first three got trophies, the first five crews also each won a gallon of the new Castrol GTX oil – my first ever motorsport competition award. Flushed with our success we also did either a Cookstown or Dungannon event, can’t remember which, and although we did finish we were well down on the results sheet, but that didn’t matter.

I’d been on the Committee of Donegal Motor Club for a couple of years by this stage, mostly helping out the CompSec Jim Callaghan on Knockalla Hillclimb and prep for the Navigation Rally. Because the Donegal International Entries Secretary Gerry Drumm lived about a mile away in Lifford I also pitched in there with him and his wife Kathleen. The International paperwork was especially labourious due to the sheer quantity and there were no computers, printers or photo-copiers back then, it was all typewritten, carbon copied and snail mail. Bulk copying of Regs, Entry Forms, Final Instructions etc. were done on a hand-cranked Gestetner device, which was usually my job – winding away for a couple of hours at a time fuelled by Kathleen’s excellent home baking.

16 Gestetner

Meanwhile, a group of enthusiasts in the Derry area had been working on reviving the former City of Derry Motor Club and their plans came together in the summer of ’74. Some sort of growing reputation preceded me (A recurring nightmare that would haunt me in to the 21st Century) and I now feel privileged that I was asked to join the Founding Committee of the Maiden City Motor Club. Its ecumenical name was cleverly decided upon to avoid any connotations related to the City’s bothersome double-barreled name history, because we were indeed just car enthusiasts after all.

16 Tatty

Some would say bravely, I agreed to do a couple of events with Johnny Crossle again, not having sat with him since the Cortina had thrown us in to the Baronscourt trees on my first ever event. The ‘Rumpleroof’ Cortina had finally been retired and Johnny had built this replica of the famous Billy Coleman ‘Tatty Escort’, although this was only 1600 Pushrod powered and didn’t have all the trick Ford Rallyesport tweeks that TIU 250 had. I remember we enjoyed mosltly troublefree runs even though we were never close to having to make space to carry home a basket of trophies.

Meanwhile OZ’s took over where the Anglia had left off as weekend transport for assorted inebriated groups, mostly around the hostelries of Donegal. One unfortunate consequence of raking around the less well-made roads with four, five or sometimes six aboard a hydrolastic suspension equipped Mini, was the regular failure of rear units. Thus, after the first couple of incidents, I started to carry a modified wooden block with a pocket drilled on one side that fitted neatly over the chassis bump stop, to keep it in place. A bit of old tyre screwed to the opposite side continued to give a bit of suspension as the rear swing arm now rested on it. Not sure where I picked the idea up from but it got us home and me to work and the breakers yard to pick up replacement units, on a number of occasions.

We did have a couple of alternative transports for ‘The Squad’, as my father called us. The eldest son and daughter of a Doctor neighbour inherited their father’s eclectic taste in cars. In the 21st Century they would be referred to as early adopters because the Doc was the first in our locale to have a Saab, a Volkswagen 1600 Estate and a Daf. After being one of the first to have a 1 Litre Mini, the son replaced it with a Citroen Dyane 6, whilst the daughter had a Fiat 126 ‘Bambino’ as her first car. As he was running the family farm the Dyane was extremely practical for Philip with the back seat removed and for us very sociable, because it could accommodate six with folk in the right configuration. For those unfamiliar with the breed the inset photo shows the front bench seat and the gear level coming horizontally out of the dash scuttle. The change wasn’t fast and actually didn’t need to be. Both Philip and Margaret were happy to be chauffeured for different reasons, he had a steady girlfriend to canoodle with and she wasn’t that keen on driving, the car being a necessity to get her to her place of work. The Dyane was a strange driving experience initially, although exceptionally well suited to the less than perfect Donegal roads which it soaked up with ease. It wasn’t very fast and leaned alarmingly in the corners but would determinedly hold the road at whatever speed you could get it up to. Over time it became a real hoot to drive that I always looked forward to.

16 DyanFiat

Whilst the Dyane never had contact with the scenery in all its adventures, the Bambino sufferd one rather nasty incident at the hands of a very accomplished Mini pilot in ‘The Squad’. Forever known as “Willie Float” after a particularly aggressive drive in an Autocross event in a local quarry that had a substantial lake in the middle of it, which it looked like he would fly into on every lap. He generously taught me how to handle a Mini – the only practical driver coaching I ever received. On the one and only occasion he chauffeured Margaret they were returning from a hostelry in a village a few miles over the border. At one point the road had a Z bend under an old railway bridge which always provided an entertaining ‘throw’, especially in a Mini. Willie chucked the Bambino in to this as he was used to doing in his Minis but hadn’t realised the adverse effect of the Fiat’s rear swing-axle suspension. The inside rear wheel tucked under and when he threw the car the opposite way it slewed sideways and spat them in to the bridge wall instead of drifting out the way he was used to! He sheepishly admitted later that he thought the 126 was front wheel drive, like a Mini, and was unaware that it was rear wheel drive and its engine hung out the back, accentuating the ‘pendulum effect’ experienced by drivers of unmodified the back, accentuating the ‘pendulum effect’ experienced by drivers of unmodified Beetles and Porsches.

Chapter 17 will be published in a fortnight.

More from William here.