The 8th BP Rally, organised by the Light Car Club of Australia, was held from May 4 to 9. The Director was Donald Thomson, assisted by Graham Hoinville and John Pryce. Ross Runnalls summarises the event …

Reg Lunn and Geoff Thomas defeat the Swedish invasion

This was the first time the BP became an International Rally, in order to accommodate Erik and wife Pat (Moss) Carlsson in a pair of diminutive Saabs. It retained international status until the last event in 1973, but saw no more international entries after the Carlssons. A British film crew was also flown in to document the internationals’ participation. The organisers thought it the happiest BP yet, maybe because they had no protests. Maybe the competitors were putting on their best smiles for the cameras.

Despite that distraction, or because of it, Reg Lunn broke through for a win in his Ford Cortina GT together with previous winner Geoff Thomas.

12 interstate crews were part of the field that started from started from Adelaide, Goulburn, or Melbourne on Wednesday night for a Rally Stage that assembled at Daylesford for the final night run to Geelong, for a three hour break before the start of the 1420 mile Trial Stage at 11.15 am on Thursday 6 May. Seven Divisions followed to Warrnambool (depart after an overnight break 8 am Friday for a 36 hour grind before the next sleep), Stawell (depart 1 pm), Kaniva (depart 7.45 pm), short break at Hopetoun, Swan Hill (depart 4.45 am Saturday), Echuca (depart 10.30 am), short break at Benalla, Mt Buller (depart 8 am Sunday after an overnight break) to Chadstone finish at 3 pm.

The first three Divisions were easy enough with 14 crews clean at Warrnambool, ten clean at Stawell, and ten crews four points or less at Kaniva. Finding the way around the west side of Rocklands Dam presented the only challenge for some.

The horror unfolded after a short break at Hopetoun. In the words of DKT: “In our time we have devised some really interesting sections – we recall “Tarnagulla from the W.”, the Knocker Track near Omeo, a contentious bit near Mosquito Flat, the N. Stawell forest, Arnold N. last year, Wallacedale in the old Sun Rally, the sand hills of Burroin, Lorquon as mapped, Percydale, the Whroo forest – there’s been quite a few. But we can’t recall any that so spreadeagled the boys as the simple task of entering Wathe N. from Wathe. Can you imagine three dozen cars in a black dark paddock full of dry sand hills, the mapped roads there but not there, if you follow us, other tracks by the dozen, cries in the night, burning logs everywhere looking more like the control than the control does – ah well, let’s draw a veil over it all; it’s all over now”. 12 crews WDed, including the eventual winners. Best on 17 points was the novice crew of Tom Cox and future BP Director Mike Osborne, who benefited from arriving late on the scene after problems earlier in the Division. The following sections into Turriff West and Pier Millan continued to cause problems for rattled crews, so that at Swan Hill, Lance Fiebig and Peter McArthur from SA led on 65 points down. Other than some slippery tracks around Barmah, the going improved in daylight through Echuca and Benalla to the overnights top at Mt Buller, where Reg Lunn had crept into the lead on 79 points, but with four crews hovering in the 90’s. Sunday was not a dawdle home with finding Dry Creek out of the Strathbogie forest, and then negotiating a wet and grassy Native Dog Gap troubling many. McPherson/Home and Woodfall/Forsyth cleaned the Division to leap from equal sixth to second and third outright respectively at the Chadstone finish.

A Ford team won the Teams prize, but Holden won the Manufacturers Award.

41 crews started and 36 finished.

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