Always racing to be faster
FORD: MOTOR COMPANY THERE SINCE THE BEGINNING Nearly a century of commitment to racing results.
The existence of Ford Motor Company can be attributed to its motorsport successes. Founder Henry Ford famously said “auto racing began five minutes after the second car was built”.
Local motorsport developed slowly but when the country’s first racetrack opened in Kimberley, Ford was there, with Durbanite Sylvester MacKenzie competing against 14 others in his Ford V8 Special.
Then, in 1934, MacKenzie and JH Case, in their homebuilt V8 Specials, took part in the country’s first international Grand Prix in East London.
Saloon car racing only took off in the late ’50s, and saw Ford South Africa gradually switching from big American saloons to smaller, more nimble European models. Soon privately entered Anglias and Consuls filled local racetracks, the best-known perhaps being the Broadspeed Anglia driven by Gordon Briggs.
While the Anglia helped put Ford on the motorsport map locally, it was the Mk1 Lotus Cortina with its Cosworth-developed Twin Cam engine – plus drivers like Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart overseas, and Kosie Swanepoel and Basil van Rooyen locally – who established Ford’s motorsport credentials.
The ’60s was a halcyon period for Ford in racing and a golden era for SA motorsport.
Locally, tuners fettled the Kent engine in the Anglia to provide home-grown specials like the GSM Dart, and Kent engines also powered the Formula Ford single seaters for decades after the series was established in 1967.
Ford ruled the roost in saloon car racing with the Meissner and Superformance-developed Ford Cortinas, piloted by Koos Swanepoel and Basil van Rooyen.
The Olthoff Galaxie won the 1965 SA Saloon Car Series, and in 1966, Swanepoel and Van Rooyen received Ford Mustangs (even though the Mustang was not officially available here).
Van Rooyen triumphed in the championship that year, repeating the feat in 1967.
The Mustangs made way for Escorts and in 1969, Peter Gough in the Cosworth FVA-powered Meissner-prepared Escort won the Sports Car Championship.
Also memorable were the victories of the flying Zakspeed Mk2 Escort RS touring cars in the Wynns 1 000km races at Kyalami in 1975 and 1977.
The Escort’s rallying legacy shines bright in SA motorsport.
’60s
With Ford Motorsport, under the guidance of Bernie Marriner, the Escort Mk2 BDA in the hands of the legendary Sarel van der Merwe and co-pilot Franz Boshoff proved invincible, with the pair winning consecutive championships from 1979 to 1982.
No story on Ford’s motorsport exploits can be complete without mentioning the Cosworth V8 DFV engine. Developed with Ford money, the iconic DFV dominated Formula One for many years, and took local racing heroes such as John Love and Dave Charlton to multiple SA F1 championship victories in the ’70s.
Changes to local rules in the ’70s led to the creation of some memorable home-grown heroes, the most famous arguably being the Ford Capri Perana V8 developed by Johannesburg businessman Basil Green.
Made even more memorable by its distinct orange Gunston livery, the Perana with its lightweight Mustang engine swept all before it in 1970.
Driven by Bob Olthoff in the Group 5 category, it won 13 of 14 races and broke the saloon car lap record at all SA racetracks.
With the arrival of the Mk5 Cortina in 1979, Ford SA fitted it with the local three-litre Essex V6 and a unique rear suspension, and called it the XR6.
In order to compete in the Group 1 series, Ford unleashed the uprated XR6 Interceptor. Only 250, all red, were built and the XR6 excelled in the hands of Sarel van der Merwe, Geoff Mortimer and Serge Damseaux.
The Sierra XR8, with its distinctive double fin rear wing, was locally developed by Ford Motorsport using the carburettor-fed 5.0-litre V8 from the Mustang. About 250 road-going versions of the fastest production Sierra were built.
In the early ’90s Ford secured sponsorship from Sasol, and for nearly a decade participated in virtually every form of local tintop racing.
Ford stalwart Van der Merwe campaigned a Rousch-built Ford Mustang with a 450kW 6.0-litre V8 in the WesBank Modifieds, winning the series in 1994.
In 2000 and 2001, “Supervan” again campaigned the Mustang in the WesBank series, now alongside the popular Gugu Zulu. Van der Merwe showed he had lost none of his talent by winning the series in both years.
Ford switched allegiance from circuit racing to rallying and off-road racing from the mid2000s, and in 2011 Zimbabwean
Conrad Rautenbach and his local co-driver Robin Houghton caused an upset by dominating the National Rally Championship in their M Sport-developed Ford Fiesta S2000.
This dominance continued, with Mark Cronje and Houghton winning the 2012 and 2013 National Rally Championship titles in their Fiesta S2000 (again sponsored by Sasol) in 2012, bequeathing Ford their first Rally Manufacturer’s title in 36 years.
In 2015, Cronje and the Fiesta S2000 added another title to the Ford trophy room.
Ford SA has had a relationship with Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) spanning over 25 years.
Neil Woolridge and Kenny Skjoldhammer won the SA OffRoad Championship in 2006 in a Ford Ranger.
In the renamed SA Cross Country Series, the V8-powered Ford Ranger, designed and developed by NWM and supported by Ford SA, were front-runners for several years, winning on debut in 2013 with Lance Woolridge behind the wheel, along with co-driver Ward Huxtable.
Numerous race victories for the Ranger followed, culminating in the Woolridge-Huxtable partnership scoring backto-back Class T Production Vehicle titles in 2018 and 2019.
In 2021, the team debuted its all-new EcoBoost 3.5-litre V6-powered T1 Ranger and won on debut with Lance Woolridge and co-driver Elvéne Vonk.
The NWM EcoBoost Ranger was redeveloped for the new FIA T1+ regulations for 2022, with young stars Gareth Woolridge and Boyd Dreyer scoring their maiden overall win at the final race of the season of the South African Rally-Raid Championship.
A halcyon period for Ford in racing
The Anglia helped put Ford on the motorsport map