Australian Rally Cars of the 1950s

Well, to conclude my epic adventure into 1950s Aussie model- and diorama-making, I thought a final summary showcase would be in order. So, pictured below are the real 1:1 cars that did a long, long arduous lap of Australia (or at least some of it) and on the right the little 1:43 scale model I created for my dioramas.

As usual, click on each photo and it will come up a lot bigger for you.

On the left, 1953 Redex winner Ken Tubman in his Peugeot
203, and on the right, my little plastic version of it, built from
a Heller kit.

On the left, Possum Kipling crosses the finish line in the 53
Redex in his 48/215 Holden, and on the right, the modded up
Trax diecast car.

On the left, the Cinesound Film Unit Peugeot 203, which
travelled all 6500 miles of the 53 Redex, to bring regular
newsreel reports to cinema-goers in the age before TV.
On the right, the Solido diecast model, heavily modified.

On the left, Wilf Murrell and Alan Taylor cross the finish line
of the 1956 Ampol Trial, which they won in their Peugeot 403.
On the right is the plastic Heller model I built.

On the left, Jack Witter in his VW Beetle, which DNF'd in
the 56 Ampol, and on the right, a Lledo diecast model
with lots of mud and other modifications.

On the left, the Davidson family's Morris Minor, which also
DNF'd in the 56 Ampol, and on the right the Corgi diecast
model, trying to look the part.

 

 

1956 Ampol Trial diorama - update 2

We now have the beginnings of a blue Peugeot 403

And we have a driver and navigator in position in the interior.

 

Here are Wilf and Alan, the Peugeot-driving winners, at the big presentation night, where the prize was 14,000 pounds, which was a heck of a lot of money back then. They also won a replacement Peugeot 403, trips around the world and lots of other goodies. It was the richest motor racing prize in Australia at the time, by a long way. One thing I've realised with my little model Wilf and Alan is that I've got their ultra-short hair all wrong!

And here's a pic of Wilf and Alan somewhere during the rally, with a busted windscreen. They look a whole lot cooler in this photo than they do at the prize-giving. Based on this photo, and the notorious story of the 1956 Rally's extremely muddy roads, I plan to grunge up the 403 with more mud and dirt than I used for the Peugeot 203 in the Redex diorama.

As for the other entrants, in the VW and the Morris Minor, I've got a little bit lucky, but I'm also out of luck for good reference photos of the cars themselves, so I'll have to ad lib how the cars look in terms of livery, etc based on the few stills I have from the colour DVD.

This is the cheap Corgi model of the Morris Minor that I will base my diorama car on. It's actually a later Morris Minor 1000 from the 1960s, but I am going to "add" a split winscreen bar to the windscreen. Fortunately, the later Series II Morris Minors of 1956 did have the horizontal grilles of the later Morris Minor 1000s of the 1960s, so I can leave the grille as it is.

Where I ran into some good luck was with the Morris Minor team, father Cyril Davidson and his 16-year-old daughter Lesley, who as the youngest entrant and also a female entrant attracted lots of press attention, including these cheesy photos:

The Davidsons' car was entered by his garage, "Zane's Drive Yourself Cars", a car hire place in Melbourne which advertised Holdens for 8 pence a mile or Morris Minors for 6 pence a mile. So that gives me a few ideas for the car's ivery, which isn't very distinct in the stills I have taken from the AmMpol Trial colour DVD documentary.

Also, in the newspaper article, Cyril Davidson says he chose Lesley as co-driver because he weighs 15 stone, and she only weighs eight stone and she could also drive well, so in a little Morris Minor saving every pound of weight was crucial. Onya, fat Dad!



Sadly, their car #46 failed to finish, but it wasn't Cyril's first Round Australia Rally. He was also in the 1953 Redex trial (in a Holden 48/215, which also didn't finish).

Also failing to finish in 1956 was the green VW I spotted, #78, driven by Jack Witter. But the good news with that car is that Jack Witter won next year in the the 1957 Ampol rally in a VW, so he has a good story attached to himself as well. Even though Jack DNF'd in the end in 1956, he was in second place behind the Peugeot 403 at the half-way point at Alice Springs, so his 1956 Rally performance wasn't too bad at all.

A new outback diorama begins ...

It's on again, I'm rallying around Australia in a 1950s Peugeot, but this time it's a 403, and the year is 1956. Some of you may remember my earlier effort, which you can see here. and pictured below.

 

That dealt with the first ever "Reliability Trial", the Redex of 1953. Well, by 1956 this had become almost a craze for Aussies, with two major oil companies (Ampol — owned by Caltex, and Mobil) both staging around Australia trials in the same year.

I'm choosing the Ampol Trial because a Peugeot won again! And also because the Ampol Trial covered some of the same roads as the initial Redex. And that has led me to my first and biggest-ever fudge ... for this Ampol dio I'm going to use the same river-crossing terrain I built for the Redex dio. That's because I don't have any space left here to build another huge 45 x 45cm hunk of terrain. So it all comes down to modding some cars and plonking them on the pre-made river crossing.

Here's the winning team with their Pug 403, Wilf Murrell and Alan Taylor. These are all the photos I can find of them (so far). In the grand tradition of these Aussie Trials, Wilf and Alan weren't motoring pros. They both came from a small country town in NSW called Hillston, Alan was a grazier and Wilf (a former flight lieutenant in World War Two), owned and operated small country town power stations, including the one in HIllston.

And here's the runners-up, Max Goldsmith and Bob James, in the only photo I can find of their 1200 VW, number 17. VWs performed superbly in all the reliability trials of the 50s, winning a few, including the 1956 Mobilgas trial.

I'm building the Pug from a Heller plastic kit, which was the same brand of kit I used to build the 203 for the Redex diorama. The advantage of the plastic kit is that it's much easier to convert to right-hand-drive, and to modify in various ways.

 

For example, I have started to fashion from little plastic bibs and bobs the beginnings of their roo-bar/headlight protector. Much more filling and sanding till it's smooth, but it fits well enough for starters.

Getting a "correct" VW Beetle is more of a problem. The VWs of the mid-50s had small oval rear windows, while the VWs of the earlier 50s had small oval split-screen rear windows. I found this split-screen VW (by Vanguards) on eBay for two English Pounds, so I am using it as a starting point.

I've also located an old 1950s documentary on the Ampol Trials available on DVD, and my local library has ordered it for me on an inter-library loan. For my previous dio I located a great full colour movie of the 1953 Redex which basically provided more reference photos for modding the three cars in that diorama than I ever found by searching Google. So I am hoping to find lots of info there. If I see a split-screen rear-windowed VW during the DVD, I'll be tempted to base my VW on it.

AND ... I'm looking for a candidate for a "third" car in the diorama ...

There were four Simca Arondes entered, but none finished. 1/43 models of Arondes to modify, however, are easy to come by and are a tempting choice, as Simca Arondes were a well-known and (I think) fairly well liked car of the late 50s and 60s in Australia.

I'm not sure how many Morris Minors entered, but one did finish. 1/43 models of Morry Minor vans are a dime a dozen, but the sedans are a bit harder to find at a suitably low price.

Fourth and sixth placed were Standard Vanguards, but at the time there were two different Standard Vanguards being sold in Australia. One was the older model with a very rounded 40s-look body shape, and the other was a tidier more modern model. The older Vanguards had done well in the reliability trials of the previous years, and so a few were entered in 1956, but I also have a photo with the more modern car in it, so I guess I could include either in the dio, but the problem is that models for both aren't that cheap to source.

An Austin A90 did OK, but 1/43 models of it fetch ridiculous prices, and a Ford Customline finished, too, so it's a prospect as well.

What I plan to do is wait until I get the DVD of the 1956 trial, and that should answer some questions about which car becomes the third one in the diorama.