1972-1975: The Escort club

Unable to afford running the XU-1, Leeds and Cooke decided to get a class car and chose a twin-cam Escort GT1600 provided cheap by Camper Ford, where Geoff was the used car manager. The car was prepared by the dealership’s predelivery guy, Ross Gammidge, who went on to long stints with Lansvale and now Scott Taylor Motorsport, while the engine was blueprinted by John Goss’ mechanic, Bruce Richardson. It was an impressive cast, and it produced results, the pair taking Class B honours by almost a minute.

“It did not miss a beat. I think we led our class almost from start to nish, even when we stopped for tyres. Digby said, ‘That’s it for me, I’m not doing it anymore.’ We won our class and that was his very last race. So I bought the balance of the Escort from him.

“The following year I drove with Jimmy Murcott, who was a lovely fella. He was racing twin-cam Escorts too, so we combined forces and ran in my car, which once again ran faultlessly thanks to Ross, and we nished third in class and 13th outright.

“Jimmy then got an Alfa so in 1974 I was with Peter Finlay, who had just come back from running Formula Ford in England. It started to pour with rain at Bathurst so I said, ‘OK, Finlay, you’ve just come back from the UK, you’d be used to the rain,’ and put him in the car. But with the wipers on all the time the alternator packed up and it started to run the battery at, so the engine would start to miss. Pete was smart enough to turn the wipers off for periods of time and the miss would go away until he needed them again, and we nished fourth.”

Leeds wrecked the Escort in a big accident at Amaroo in 1975. He then accepted an offer to race one of Bob Holden’s normally reliable Escorts at Bathurst, but a succession of engine failures left Geoff a non-starter.