THE FRIDAY SIMOLA HILL CLIMB, KNYSNA
One of the great things about the annual Simola Hillclimb at Knysna in May is the way the Classic Car Friday component of the weekend has grown each year in status and the depth of the entry.
This year we had three or four cars vying for fastest time of the day, and of these, the top two entrants were in contention for the quickest sprint up the hill, until the final runs, when Franco Scribante’s Gunston Orange Chevron B19 howled to an emphatic win.
That Chevron is unique in that it is superbly prepared by the Scribante team, and brilliantly driven by Franco, who had already achieved six Fastest Time of the Day titles at the annual Knysna event. The 1971 Chevron B19 has a great racing history in South Africa dating back to the early 1970s, when examples were driven by such legends as Britain’s Brian Redman and John Hine, and South African former 500cc motorcycle GP ace, Paddy Driver.
The Gunston colours on the car harken back to the money-laden days of cigarette company sponsorship in motorsport, Gunston having been a famous brand in the days of unfiltered, soft-packet nicotine-laden products. In those days in South Africa, it seemed as if every top-flight single-seater or sports racing car was sponsored by a tobacco company.
In 2024, in the clean air and 35-degree heat of Knysna, Franco was challenged all day for the fastest time by his arch-rival, Andre Bezuidenhout, who was driving a Formula Atlantic spec single seater, a Lola T460. Both these cars used screaming 9 500 rpm Cosworth BDG four-cylinder engines, producing in the region of 300 horsepower (223 kW). That’s a serious amount of power for cars weighing around 550 kg.
In the Top 10 shoot-out, Bezuidenhout had come within a half second of Scribante’s practise runs, but in the final, the Lola’s gearbox selected a whole lot of neutrals on the run-in to the finish. So Scribante won his seventh Classic Car Friday title, and for an idea of how quick this 50-something-year-old car is in 2024 terms, it’s average speed over the 1,9 km-long climb was a whisker over 160 km/h – and that included some super-tricky bends and the standing start!
More than the sheer speed of that Chevron was its sound. It was the loudest car competing on Classic Car Friday and its 9 500-rpm rev limit was sheer music to the ears of spectators young and old alike.
I spent a lot of my time on the Classic Car Friday at the Monster Energy facility overlooking the tricky first bends on the course, followed by the first long haul up the hill. You can tell an awful lot about a car’s capabilities at this point, as well as a driver’s commitment.
Cars that impressed me included a very hot Anglia running a two-litre Ford Motor, driven by Groot Brakrivier’s Dave van der Merwe, and a classic all-original Lotus Elite, running a Climax 1,2-litre overhead cam engine, just as it did back in 1962. This car, restored by its owner Richard Clarke of Cape Town over 30 years ago, featured in Car magazine back in the late 1980s, when I was assistant editor at that publication. It still looks as good now as it did then.
Another impressively driven car was the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Veloce, driven by historic car regular competitor Trevor Tuck. A rabid Alfisti, Trevor’s car proudly proclaimed the fact that his Sprint was celebrating 70 years of Alfa Giuliettas this year.
The most impressive car for me, other than the winning Chevron, was Oliver Broom’s dark green two-door Cortina GT. Oliver was right on the limit exiting the first bend, and then, unlike just about every other saloon car, his old Cortina pulled each succeeding gear ratio right up to 7 000 revs and beyond, all the way up the hill. He even changed into fifth gear before the top left-hander!
Yes, I know, original 1964 Cortinas only had four-speed gearboxes, but Oliver readily admitted he’d upgraded to a five-speed ’box. He was very proud of the fact that his car ran a pushrod Kent engine in this day and age, when just about every historic-racing spec Ford these days is running a 2.0-litre Pinto overhead cam motor. I suspect another factor regarding Oliver’s impressive Hillclimb performance was that he’d taken the trouble to fit a low diff ratio. The Cortina not only hooked fifth up the hill, where other cars of its era were struggling to pull fourth gear, but the old Cortina was still accelerating and building revs in fifth!
In the pleasant-sound stakes, another car worth mentioning was the Lola T70 Mk IIIB run by Anthony Rix. This old Lola, a 1969 model, was employing a Chevrolet V8, which is normally a very gruff-sounding engine with a typically deep V8 rumble. Rix’s Lola emitted a scream worthy of a four-cylinder Japanese Superbike, and he told me in the Knysna pits that this was down to a special 8-into-one exhaust system he had made for the car.
Not only did Rix’s Lola sound great, but it was also very quick and he drove it extremely hard. It was good enough for a Top Six time overall, despite bogging down at the start line, and I reckon it was a top-four contender without that start-line fluff.
It was great to catch up with some old friends in the Knysna pits between runs, as many stars of the past were on hand to give the classic cars in their collections a bit of healthy exercise. One of these was rally ace from the 1990s, Enzo Kuun. Enzo had brought out his road-going Ferrari F355, an immaculate example in 1994 spec, apart from the aftermarket exhaust he had fitted, which gave the Ferrari V8 a characteristic shriek. Road car or not, Enzo gave the Ferrari horns as he powered up the hill, setting some very respectable times in his valuable road-going classic from Maranello.
Another old friend I bumped into was Farouk Dangor, well-known today as the owner of Speedy Car Sales in Klerksdorp. In the 1990s Farouk was a very accomplished racing driver, and he was in Knysna with his 1989 BMW M3 in SA Touring Car spec, as he had raced it over 30 years ago. This is the rare first E30-shape four-cylinder M3 which was not available for general sale in South Africa.
I last saw Farouk in a pit-lane environment in 1992 at the Nurburgring 24-Hour in Germany, where he was sharing a drive in an E30-series M3 with well-known saloon car ace Peter Lanz. What has always stuck in my mind about Farouk then was how immaculately unflustered he looked during qualifying for the famous race on the tortuous 22 km Nordschleife circuit. And here he was in 2024, looking just as cool and composed as ever!
A driver I had never met in the old days, but one I had admired greatly from the stand at Crowthorne Corner at the original Kyalami track in 1978 was a fellow called Pop Diedericks. An almost unknown from Bloemfontein, Pop astounded everyone by beating all the established stars in the Group One championship that year in a Fiat 131 2000 Racing model.
The Fiat fell foul of failing to meet the required homologation sales numbers, so that one season was pretty much Pop’s only spell in the national motorsport limelight. Yet here he was in Knysna, a fact I was tipped off about by Gary Bernd, another old friend, who owns one of the 16 remaining road-going Fiat 2000 Racing models ever built. Pop had kept the championship-winning Fiat all these years, and here it was again in fine fettle, to take up a public challenge once again.
On this occasion, Pop’s son Gabriel was doing the driving honours, and the road-spec Fiat gave an excellent account of itself, before running into fuel-pick-up problems. Next year the Diedericks clan will be back with the Fiat, and rumour has it that 70-something Pop will once again be the man behind the wheel of the very rare 131.
Other good people I bumped into there, included Timothy Abbot and his daughter Jennifer. Jennifer was giving the family’s Porsche 914/6 a solid workout and survived an early spin to record very good times in the rare “Volks-Porsche” sports car, considered very much an oddity back in 1970, but now an increasingly sought-after classic. Tim pedalled his well-preserved Porsche 356A, an early collectable version of the famous 356 Porsche range, and another notable Porsche for me was the immaculate, cleanly-styled 1973 911 3.2, driven with great panache by Gavin Rooke.
Porsche honours in the Finals were upheld by Rui Campos, with a fastest closed-roof time for the day in his brutal 911 RSR 3.8, resplendent in Martini Racing colours.
One more car I should mention that made my ears prick-up was Hedley Whitehead’s 1964 Austin Cooper S. It sounded wonderful as he did a couple of “burn outs” before the start line, and looked superb, in its unusual livery of white bodywork with a black roof. Back then, all the Mini Cooper S models I recall were painted British Racing Green, but apparently, they could be ordered in different colours back then, early on in the model’s life-cycle.
All-in all, a great Classic Car Friday, and full marks to organisers Ian Shrosbree and Chick Ramsay for another great event. As Arnold Schwarzenegger would have noted: “We’ll be back!”
by Stuart Johnston
