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The Bull Run South Africa

 

If you were recently travelling through the Karoo and saw men with gas masks, white overalls and a paint-splashed convoy of cars older than thirty years on the roadside, you weren’t dreaming.

They were competitors in the first South African Bull Run, the unofficial brother of an episode of the British TV programme Top Gear, wherein Jeremy Clarkson and his fellow presenters crossed the Makgadikgadi Pan and the Okavango in wrecks cheaper than R15 000.

Hermie Koen and Rieger van Rooyen hit on the idea. They planned to crisscross the Western and Northern Cape’s gravel roads in four-door sedans older than 30 years that cost no more than R15 000. They challenged their friends to join them.

The group grew from an initial four competitors to the twelve cars that left Cape Town early one winter’s morning.

Each car had a name. Each one had a story too. There was an old hearse, somebody’s mother’s old Chev and a canary yellow Peugeot station wagon with grass on the roof.

The oldest wheels was a 1956 Wolseley of the brothers Michael and Greg Cummings. It was the cheapest car too, and apart from a flat wheel, the only one that gave no problems. They had bought the car, the shocks of which were shot, for less than R3000 and simply fitted new tyres. The corrugated gravel roads shook the dust out of every crack.

Then there were two Mercedes-Benzes (a 1971 280 S and a 1981 200), a 1972 Chev Kommando, a 1976 Chev Constantia, a 1976 Datsun 300C, a 1977 Ford Granada, a 1978 Toyota Cressida station wagon, a 1976 Peugeot 404 station wagon, a 1984 Mitsubishi Tredia and a 1966 Volvo 122S.

I went along in relative comfort in a Land Cruiser bakkie with Rohan Schoeman. We were the support crew and the only vehicle that had some confidence that we wouldn’t run into trouble.

The Cruiser towed a trailer that could carry a car. It also carried boxes of stationery and clothes to be handed out to schools along the way, a spare wheel for each car, jerry cans and tools.

 

Sounds like a hell of an adventure!

Read the full article http://www.driveout....ning-old-bulls/

 

http://www.driveout.co.za/wp-content/uploads/cache/2013/07/bullrun-09/1656178.jpg

 

http://www.wegry.co.za/sites/default/files/user1/Bullrun-20.jpg

 

http://www.wegry.co.za/sites/default/files/user1/Bullrun-13.jpg

 

http://www.wegry.co.za/sites/default/files/user1/Bullrun-17.jpg

Edited by Jaguar Shark

Sir Malcolm Camobell, he broke the land speed record for the first time in 1924 at 146.16 mph (235.22 km/h) at Pendine Sands near Carmarthen Bay in a 350HP V12 Sunbeam, now on display at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu. Campbell broke nine land speed records between 1924 and 1935, with three at Pendine Sands and five at Daytona Beach. His first two records were driving a racing car built by Sunbeam.

On 4 February 1927 Campbell set the land speed record at Pendine Sands, covering the Flying Kilometre (in an average of two runs) at 174.883 mph (281.447 km/h) and the Flying Mile in 174.224 mph (280.386 km/h), in the Napier-Campbell Blue Bird.

 

He tried setting a couple records in the Karoo in the late 1920's too!

 

http://www.sirmalcolmcampbell.com/images/tour.jpg

 

http://www.sirmalcolmcampbell.com/images/auction.jpg

 

http://www.sirmalcolmcampbell.com/images/sirlesesne.jpg

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