FORD’S RALLYING MK1 AND MK2 ZEPHYRS
Before the Cortinas and Escorts, Zephyrs and Zodiacs formed Ford’s first-ever o cial rally team. This is their incredible story.
There was Blue Oval life on the rallying stage before the Mk1 Escort came along, and in the ’50s and early ’60s it came in the shape of the classic Zephyrs, as Robson reveals.
This is a remarkable story, and a real credit to the robust standards of Ford’s engineering in the 1950s. In spite of their mundane specifications, Zephyrs and Zodiacs were always competitive rally cars, in a career which included outright victories in the Monte Carlo, the East African Safari, and the RAC Rallies of Great Britain.
Yet, in a way, it happened in a haphazard, and unplanned way, with no long-term strategic vision — but merely the intention of trading on two of the cars’ remarkable strengths ‚ reliability and sheer strength.
Ford first
This was effectively Ford UK’s first-ever works team, its drivers, usually led by Ford main dealer, TC (Cuth) Harrison of Sheffield. First time out Ford persuaded the Dutch rally ace Maurice Gatsonides to drive a Zephyr, and he won the Monte Carlo rally outright. The wily old fox spent weeks practicing on the regularity sections, which included a 47 mile regularity circuit in the mountains, including the Col de Braus, and though the Gatsonides/Worledge partnership could not always be secondaccurate, they only incurred a two-second penalties for being off the ideal schedule. Even so, it was the team’s only major success of the year.
For 1954 and the Monte Carlo rally there were major changes, allowing specification improvements. New cars had high compression heads and triple carburettors — which produced 90 bhp.
Ford’s strong team was led by Gatsonides, Cuth Harrison, Jack Reece, Nancy Mitchell and Denis Scott, and the accent was on performance rather than time-keeping, and the final challenge was a five lap race around the Monaco GP street circuit. Although they were fast on the GP circuit, they could not keep up with Louis Chiron’s Lancia Aurelia GT, or with some of the works SunbeamTalbots, so Ford had to be satisfied with Harrison’s 13th place.
After this, however, the cars gradually became more competitive, but because they were heavy, and lacked disc brakes until 1960, they could rarely do more than win classes. Time for the Mk2.
New team
Because the new-generation Mk2 models were launched in 1956, there was neither time, nor money, to run a big motorsport programme, until a team of Mk2s contested the Alpine rally.
Three cars all used much-modified engines which had triple Zenith carburettors. Thus equipped, two of them (driven by Cuth Harrison and Denis Scott) kept clean sheets, and Cuth drove the best- placed saloon car in the entire entry!
For once the works team had little luck in the Tulip rally but they made up for this in the French Alpine rally, where six Zephyrs took the start, three of them running with prototype front disc brakes and triplecarburettor engines — one which has been splendidly recorded on a Shell-financed film of the event, which shows just how rapidly rally cars were being driven, even in the late 1950s. Although just 25 of the original 58 starters made it to the finish, two of the unmodified, drum-braked Zephyrs took class honours — with Edward Harrison (son) beating Cuth Harrison (father). Not only
that, but Edward took fifth, in a startling display, headed only by four out and out sports cars.
1959 was the year in which Jeff Uren was appointed Competition Manager (originally on a one-year consultancy contract). This, too, was a season in which Ford decided to invest heavily in an attack on the Safari, which had become a prestigious international event.
Did Ford (and Jeff Uren) think they could win? It seems so — for they knew that the Zephyrs were strong, but they could also draw on Vic Preston’s invaluable experience. For the very first time, this was to be an official Ford Motor Company entry.
Though the team cars started as favourites, Safari-luck hit hard, the result being that there were breakages were none were expected. Even so, Denis Scott was third at half distance (12 minutes off the pace), and even took over second place in the second leg, though he ended up 16 minutes behind the winning Mercedes-Benz saloon. Ford, though, also took the Manufacturers’ Team Prize, which made very good copy for the advertising agencies.
On the Tulip rally, too, there was a quite unexpected bonus, when new recruit Peter Riley, with Dickie Bensted-Smith of The Motor as his co-driver, took a rousing third place overall, beaten only by the Jaguar 3.4 of the Morley Twins, and Keith Ballisat’s works Triumph TR3A. As an added bonus, Ford won the team prize too.
Ford’s fortunes, clearly, were on the way up again, for in the picturesque French Alpine rally, where of the nine Coupes des Alpes awarded to unpenalised crews, three of them went to Zephyr drivers.
All in all, for the Zephyrs it had been a fascinating and high-profile season of motorsport, and it ended flamboyantly, when
Gerry Burgess’ car quite unexpectedly won the RAC rally.
This was the first of the new-look RAC rallies, with more emphasis on fast open-road motoring. Because of this new approach, Ford was not expecting to win any major awards in an event which meandered on for four days, taking in the far north-west of Scotland, the Welsh mountains, and the finish at London’s Crystal Palace race circuit.
At its height, the event was hit by a blizzard in Scotland, where the route from Nairn to Braemar was blocked. In the end just 31 crews, 15 of them arriving within their one hour lateness limit, reached Braemar by other routes. Gerry Burgess hurtled round the blockage, through Dufftown, eventually reaching Braemar 29 minutes late. No other car approached that figure, and the Zephyr won its only RAC rally.
New blood
By the early 1960s, Ford’s works team of Zephyrs and Anglias was looking more professional than ever, yet the Zephyrs were coming to look outpaced by lighter and more nimble rivals. Although they were still the backbone of the team, they often struggled to stay on the pace. Even so, there seemed to be one last opportunity for them to win the Safari, but as in previous years local conditions, brilliant driving by the opposition in Mercedes-Benz models, and the usual dollop of bad ‘Safari luck’ against non-African drivers meant that the best Zephyr could only take third place. That third place, though, was taken by the redoubtable Anne Hall.
Except that this was the longest Safari so far — all of 3350 miles — and that it was run in mainly hot and dry conditions, the event evolved much as usual. No fewer than five works Zephyrs — driven by Anne Hall, Gerry Burgess, Tommy Wisdom, Vic Preston and Cuth Harrison — took the start, while three of them — Anne Hall, Wisdom and Cuth Harrison — took third, sixth and seventh places overall, and also lifted the Manufacturers’ Team Prize. It was a great way to bring the Zephyr’s African career to a close.
Even so, as a rally car, the writing was on the wall for the Mk2 Zephyr as it passed its fifth birthday. Even though the ‘works’ cars were now using front-wheel disc brakes, they were simply not fast enough to beat other cars with similarly-sized engines. Perhaps the final insult came in the 1961 RAC rally — the first RAC to use special stages throughout its route — when Raymond Baxter’s works 3-litre Humber Super Snipe defeated every Zephyr in the field.
The next-generation Zodiac was never meant to be a rally car. New Cortinas — and, most significantly, Lotus Cortinas — were now on the way, but that is another story for another day.