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After 33 years it's back!
After 33 years of near total hibernation Vauxhall Firenza 'RKR 101M' is back in action and has completed it's first competitive event since 1975.
The 'Droop Snoot', so called because of its distinctive front end was driven by Lyle Cathcart with son James (GVCC member) as navigator in the Classic Rally Tours Monet Rally in March.
James Cathcart reports on the Droop Snoots long awaited return.
There was a moment of silence and unspoken panic in the car as the engine refused to fire when the ignition key was turned just minutes before the start of the first rally. Surely the much anticipated return of RKR 101M was not going to be over before it had begun? After the third or fourth attempt it turned over and fired up and our event was underway.
We were one of 22 crews in cars ranging from an Austin A35 to a Peugeot 205 Rallye taking part in the first Classic Car Tours event of the season. The rally assembled at a motorway service station on the A16 near Abberville in France where road books and rally plates were distributed ahead of two regularity sections through the lanes and villages south of the town. (A Regularity Section is where cars have to follow a set route shown as a Tulip instruction or other short hand in the road book with distances measured to 1/100th of a mile. Traveling at an average speed of not more than 30mph cars aim to arrive at secret time controls on the correct second). Shortly after leaving start the engine of the Firenza began missing, but a quick blast at full throttle down the motorway on the transport section seemed to clear it.
The last time the car was used in anger was in the autumn of 1975 when it was also driven by my father Lyle. Six months earlier he (with long time co-driver Mike Cockle) had driven the car in the 1975 International Caravan Road Rally. The car complete with caravan in tow was part of the Drake & Fletcher / Team Lee Davey outfit which won the team award. Vauxhall made 204 of the Firenza Droop Snoots. RKR 101M is one or the original 21 pre-production which raced at Thruxton and then went into the ownership of Drake & Fletcher Maidstone.
Lyle has recently been re-united with the car and has spent the last 10 months preparing it for light/non damaging competition. We used the Monet Rally as a shake down to find out how the car handled and what improvement and repairs were needed after three decades resting in a barn. Amazingly, the car passed it's MOT first time and with new springs, new cam belt, new hoses and some new electrics fitted the car was put on the rolling road and tuned by Sanspeed in Bexley. With the addition of a Brantz Tripmeter, Rally Clock and new seat belts it was ready for use in road rallies again.
The first section on the Monet Rally used a Tulip diagram roadbook to indicate the direction of travel at junctions and although navigation was relatively straight forward, it was the positioning of the controls (eg 0.23mi last white post of the right, 0.12mi last white post on the right, 0.13mi last white post on the right) which kept crews on their toes. The rally took us south from
Abberville through the Somme and Seine valleys
towards our overnight halt in Rouen. We passed through picturesque hamlets and fabulous chateaux in clear crisp spring-like weather. The second 'Regularity' used written route descriptions and landmarks along side distances and ideal times. This is known as'Jogularity'. By the end of the first day we were placed 14th having dropped 22 seconds. While this shows a vast improvement on three or so years ago when we were picking up penalties of this size at a single control it's still a long way off the standard set by the three top crews who had shared the lead having with just 4 seconds of penalties of after day one.
Having covered some 100 miles the signs of the cars age and lack of use were beginning to show. Dad was having great difficultly in getting it in gear and although gear selection was never a strong point of the car the nature of the problem suggested a serious problem was lurking somewhere under the bonnet. In addition to that the earlier fuel problem which was making the engine stutter had worsened. The combination of these two mechanical problems was causing some concern and at one stage early retirement was contemplated.
After a sleepless night kept awake by the worry of the temperamental nature of the cars performance some remedial tinkering was made to the fuel system before breakfast. The advice had come in a series of text exchanges between dad and MMKMC President Mike Jordon. The first competitive section of Day 2 saw the rally head off into the forests around Rouen. The first control was sneakily positioned at the end of a long muddy and slippy lay-by and although I had identified this as a probable location for a Time Control (due to the very short distances between direction changes) I had not taken into account the slippery surface of the track, nor the wreck of a burnt out car on the apex of the bend which the Firenza came dangerously close to as it charged into the corner. Of course in rallying a new day means the previous days results can be turned upside down by a wrong slot or miscalculated arrival time.
We saw several of the previous days top crews
arriving at junctions out of sequence and from the wrong direction.
As the second day progressed so the team work and communication in the Firenza began to improve and both driver and navigator were beginning to remember everything we'd forgotten during the 9 months away from the action. But no sooner had it all started to come together when a moment of hesitation over a confusing route instruction meant time was wasted retracing a few hundred yards of the route. This left us running almost three minutes behind schedule and while some of that time was made up before the next Time Control the distance wasn't long enough to get back on the right time. To add to the misery an error in adjusting subsequent due times to the wrong minute lead to an unavoidable 60 second penalty at the next control. This ended any hope of a respectable finish.
The rally wound its way through the rural France, through dense forests and narrow lanes around large open fields. Unlike in the UK families, old and young, were stood in their gardens and at the end of their drives to enthusiastically wave at the cars as the rally went through their villages. Even the heavy rain on the Sunday afternoon didn't put them off. However the marshals were getting soaked as they stood behind trees, beneath hedges and round corners with stop watch in hand ready to jump out as the rally cars approached. The rain also highlighted some minor leaks in the Firenza with water seeping through round the windscreen, side windows and boot.
The sting in the tail on this event was a tricky Tulip route accompanied by separate sheet of average speed tables. The secret time controls were placed at random points on the route and not necessarily on a junction (or Tulip). Somewhat surprisingly we coped with this relatively well and apart from one hold up behind a local car, penalties were smaller than expected. It was now the car which was causing more concern than the navigation. The gear box problems had got worse to the extent that it was by now impossible to select first gear altogether and moving through the other gears was almost as hard. The only solution when leaving from a stationary position was to turn the engine off, select first and then go.
Once again a premature retirement was considered, but we stuck with it until the end of the last Regularity and picked up 10 seconds on that last part of the rally.
Through a process of elimination the problem was identified as being with the clutch rather than the gear box, so back at the hotel work was carried to manually adjust the clutch to it maximum which eased the gear selection issue. The remedy was enough to allow us to get back to the ferry first thing the next morning.
RKR 101M finished 14th overall and while that wasn't as good as we'd hoped for at least the Droop Snoot had got us round. Ironically it was the crew that were more rusty than the car - spending much of the time trying to get back in the swing of things. However the mere fact that after over 30 years in retirement the 'Droop Snoot' was not only back in competition, but had also completed the event was something of an achievement and gave us a sense of personal satisfaction.
The car is now due for a number of minor improvement and replacements before it's next outing. For the record the Monet Rally was won by Mark & Sue Godfrey in a 1966 MGB. They dropped 24 secs overall.
Forgot to in the above mention our points for the weekend totalled 263 ( compared with the winners 24 sec !)
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