Marathon: The Story of the London to Sydney Motor Classic

Cars SCARCE!
A worn, much-read battered copy but still firm and complete.
pp. 145+ list of entries and results.
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The London–Sydney Marathon was a car rally from the United Kingdom to Australia. It was first run in 1968, a second event by the same organizers was run in 1977 and a third in 1993 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original. Three further rallies have subsequently been contested in 2000, 2004 and 2014.

The 1968 event inspired different organizers to create the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally, the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally, and the Dakar Rally.

The original 1968 event was won by Andrew Cowan, Colin Malkin and Brian Coyle, driving a Hillman Hunter. Fifty-six cars finished.
The original Marathon was the result of a lunch in late 1967, during a period of despondency in Britain caused by the devaluation of the pound.[1][2] Sir Max Aitken, proprietor of the Daily Express and two of his editorial executives, Jocelyn Stevens and Tommy Sopwith, decided to create an event which their newspaper could sponsor, and which would serve to raise the country’s spirits. Such an event would, it was felt, act as a showcase for British engineering and would boost export sales in the countries through which it passed.

The initial UK£10,000 winner’s prize offered by the Daily Express was soon joined by a £3,000 runners-up award and two £2,000 prizes for the third-placed team and for the highest-placed Australians, all of which were underwritten by the Daily Telegraph newspaper and its proprietor Sir Frank Packer, who was eager to promote the Antipodean leg of the rally.[1]

The route
An eight-man organising committee was established to create a suitably challenging but navigable route. Jack Sears, organising secretary and himself a former racing driver, plotted a 7,000 miles (11,000 km) course covering eleven countries in as many days, and arranged that the P&O liner S.S. Chusan would ferry the first 72 cars and their crews on the nine-day voyage from India, before the final 2,600 miles (4,200 km) across Australia:[3][4] Result

The Ford XT Falcon GT which placed 3rd in the 1968 Marathon
Roger Clark established an early lead through the first genuinely treacherous leg, from Sivas to Erzincan in Turkey, averaging almost 60 mph (100 km/h) in his Lotus Cortina for the 170 miles (270 km) stage. Despite losing time in Pakistan and India, he maintained his lead to the end of the Asian section in Bombay, with Simo Lampinen’s Ford Taunus second and Lucien Bianchi’s DS21 in third.[2]

However, once into Australia, Clark suffered several setbacks. A piston failure dropped him to third, and would have cost him a finish had he not been able to cannibalise fellow Ford Motor Company driver Eric Jackson’s car for parts. After repairs were effected, he suffered what should have been a terminal rear differential failure. Encountering a Cortina by the roadside, he persuaded the initially reluctant owner to sell his rear axle and resumed once more, although at the cost of 80 minutes’ delay while it was replaced.[2]

This left Lucien Bianchi and co-driver Jean-Claude Ogier in the Citroën DS in the lead ahead of Gilbert Staepelaere/Simo Lampinen in the German Ford Taunus, with Andrew Cowan in the Hillman Hunter 3rd. Then Staepelaere’s Taunus hit a gate post, breaking a track rod.[7] This left Cowan in second position and Paddy Hopkirk’s Austin 1800 in third place.[8][9] Approaching the Nowra checkpoint at the end of the penultimate stage with only 98 miles (158 km) to Sydney, the Frenchmen were involved in a head-on collision with a motorist who mistakenly entered a closed course, wrecking their Citroën DS and hospitalising the pair.[10]

Hopkirk, the first driver on the scene (ahead of Cowan on the road, but behind on penalties) stopped to tend to the injured and extinguish the flames in the burning cars. Andrew Cowan, next on the scene, also slowed but was waved through with the message that everything was under control. Hopkirk rejoined the rally, and neither he nor Cowan lost penalties in this stage.[11] So Andrew Cowan, who had requested “a car to come last” from the Chrysler factory on the assumption that only half a dozen drivers would even reach Sydney,[12] took victory in his Hillman Hunter and claimed the £10,000 prize. Hopkirk finished second, while Australian Ian Vaughan was third in a factory-entered Ford XT Falcon GT. Ford Australia won the Teams’ Prize with their three Falcons GTs,[13] placing 3rd, 6th and 8th.[14]