Drawing inspiration from Safari Rally
Series of oil paintings memorably recapture glory years of motor race through continent, writes Vivien Horler
IN 1953, the year Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, someone came up with the idea of motor rally to celebrate the occasion. MIKE Norris relates how, in early 1953, an Italian immigrant to Kenya, one Enzo Cecil Tanfani, known as Eric Cecil, was having a drink near Nairobi with his cousin Neil Vincent and Eric Tromp. And, as usual, the subject turned to motor sport.
Vincent refused to be involved with racing at the Langa Langa track, saying: “I can’t be bothered with running around in circles, but if you would like to organise an event wherein we get into our cars, slam the door, and go halfway across Africa and back and the first car home is the winner, then I will enter.”
And that was the start of the Coronation Rally, later known as the East African Safari Rally and then just the Safari Rally.
It encompassed thousands of kilometres of rough roads through Kenya, Uganda and what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania) driven by standard saloon cars.
The performance of the vehicles became a barometer for ordinary drivers to decide on which car to buy next, says Norris, with local distributors’ sales graphs bearing this out.
“The rally quickly came to the attention of the international car manufacturers, who saw in it the finest testing ground in the world for their new models, and it soon became positioned in the World Rally Championship calendar, earning for itself the tag of being the ‘lngest, fastest, toughest and most glamorous annual motor rally in the world’.”
It ended in 2002, thanks to increasing populations and “the accompanying hazards encountered on public roads congested by burgeoning wheeled and foot traffic”.
Norris, who now lives in Howick, grew up in Kenya and every Easter would be bundled into the family car with a picnic basket, and wait hours beside a road, day and night, watching for the Safari to come whizzing by.
Later, as a teenager, he worked at various control points along the route.
In 1963, seven cars – the “Magnificent Seven” – out of an original field of 84, made it back to Nairobi, thanks to torrential rains, road wash-ways “and roads that were more suitable for tractors and potatoes than cars”.
Two years ago, Safari fan Chris Carlisle-Kitz bought the remains of the original Mercedes-Benz 220SEb which was driven by Jim Cardwell and David Lead in the 1963 and 1964 rallies, and began restoring it to its original “starting ramp” condition.
Carlisle-Kitz came up with the idea of creating a museum to celebrate the Safari, to preserve what memorabilia they could find before it was thrown out by people who believed no one cared anymore.
So while Carlisle-Kitz began collecting treasures for the museum, Norris produced a series of oil paintings to go with them.
A couple of years ago a friend suggested he write a book on the rally, but he said this had already been done, well and comprehensively.
Then, knowing Norris’s painting talents, the friend suggested: “Then why don’t you paint a book?” This volume is the result. He painted 23 pictures, in oils, of selected cars taking part between 1953 and 1972, the golden years of the rally, and they are reproduced here, along with some text for each year.
He says the Safari was a great event, “followed by thousands with a passion that few have matched in the sports arena. It deserves to survive in the annals of motor sport history”.
And in this volume Norris has done sterling work towards that objective.