The following was published in The BMC Experience, Edition 22.
Peter Brown navigating for Evan Green in a Mini Cooper S vividly recalls the very first competitive stage on the rally with Evan.
“That was my very first experience in a full-on works rally car. I mean, I’d been with club fellas who were quick or whatever, but to actually drop the clutch and take off in a works car, you suddenly realise that nothing stands in your way. You’re bouncing over rocks that you would otherwise have slowed down for and crawled over, and he’s just going straight at it, foot flat to the floor, and you think, wow, no wonder they get the times they do.”
The ride with Green was almost a fairy-tale debut for Peter with the team, finishing second. Rain on the 100-mile section over the Barrington Tops National Park late in the rally saw many competitors fail to complete the event.
“Barry Ferguson and Dave Johnson won it, but only after we pushed their HDT Torana out of a bog”, Peter reveals. “We got into the Barrington Tops and I think there were only 14 cars of the original starters that got through that final section. Ferguson left four points and about six minutes on the road ahead of us. When we got to him stuck in the bog, it made us the leaders by two minutes. We pulled up and I said, Evan, that’s Barry, we’re in front, you’ve got to go around him. He said, I can’t, there’s no room. With a huge drop-off on the left, it meant we had to get out and push him out, which we did. Then we jumped back in our car and got stuck in the same bog. I called out for them to come and help us, and the rules said that they should have lent assistance to us, but whether they didn’t realise or whatever, they took off, and that’s what cost us the Southern Cross International Rally that year.”