The London–Sydney Marathon was a car rally from the United Kingdom to Australia. It was first run in 1968, a second event was organised in 1977 and a third in 1993 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the original. Two further rallies have subsequently been contested in 2000 and 2004.
The original event was won by Andrew Cowan, Colin Malkin and Brian Coyle, driving a Hillman Hunter. Fifty-six cars finished.
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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 jr, 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 race.[1]
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-mile 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 across Australia:[3][4]
| Europe and Asia | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leg | Date | Start | Finish | Allowed time | Description |
| 1 | 24–25 November | London | Paris | 12h 32m | 2300hrs depart Crystal Palace, London; 0400hrs depart England at Dover on the cross-channel ferry to France; 1132hrs arrive Le Bourget Airport, Paris. |
| 2 | 25–26 November | Paris | Turin | 13h 32m | To Italy via the Mont Blanc Tunnel; 0052hrs arrive Turin. |
| 3 | 26 November | Turin | Belgrade | 21h 12m | Autostrada towards Venice before crossing into Yugoslavia; 2204hrs arrive Belgrade. |
| 4 | 26–27 November | Belgrade | Istanbul | 15h 31m | Through Bulgaria by night into Turkey; 1335hrs arrive Istanbul. |
| 5 | 27–28 November | Istanbul | Sivas | 12h 25m | Crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, through Ankara and the Bolu Pass; 0300hrs arrive Sivas. |
| 6 | 28 November | Sivas | Erzincan | 2h 45m | Heading east across unsurfaced roads; 0445hrs Erzincan. |
| 7 | 28–29 November | Erzincan | Tehran | 22h 01m | Cross border into Iran; 0246hrs arrive Tehran. |
| 8 | 29–30 November | Tehran | Kabul | 23h 33m | Follow one of two routes to Islamquita in Afghanistan, either the northerly route across the Alburz Mountains skirting the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, or the shorter but more treacherous route along the north edge of the Great Salt Desert;[5] 0219hrs arrive Kabul, where timeous crews can enjoy a 6.5 hour rest before the Khyber pass opens. |
| 9 | 30 November | Kabul | Sarobi | 1h 00m | 0842hrs depart Kabul across an obsolete, loose-surfaced road through the Lataband Pass; 0942hrs arrive Sarobi. |
| 10 | 30 November–1 December | Sarobi | Delhi | 17h 55m | Cross Pakistan in a day into India; 0337hrs arrive Delhi. |
| 11 | 1–2 December | Delhi | Bombay | 22h 51m | Pass through Agra and Indore; 0228hrs arrive Bombay. |
The remaining crews departed Bombay at 3 am on Thursday 5 December, arriving in Fremantle at 10 am on Friday 13 December before they restarted in Perth the following evening. Any repairs attempted on the car during the voyage would lead to the crew's exclusion.[6]
| Australia | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leg | Date | Start | Finish | Allowed time | Description |
| 12 | 14–15 December | Perth | Youanmi | 7h 00m | Depart 1800hrs from Gloucester Park, traversing smooth but unsurfaced road; 0100hrs arrive deserted mining town of Youanmi. |
| 13 | 15 December | Youanmi | Marvel Loch | 4h 03m | Through semi-desert via Diemal to asphalt road at Bullfinch; 0503hrs arrive Marvel Loch. |
| 14 | 15 December | Marvel Loch | Lake King | 1h 59m | Into the Nullarbor Desert; 0702hrs arrive Lake King (crossroads). |
| 15 | 15 December | Lake King | Ceduna | 14h 52m | 2154hrs arrive Ceduna. |
| 16 | 15–16 December | Ceduna | Quorn | 6h 18m | 0412hrs arrive Quorn. |
| 17 | 16 December | Quorn | Moralana Creek | 1h 17m | 0529hrs arrive Moralana Creek. |
| 18 | 16 December | Moralana Creek | Brachina | 1h 30m | 0659hrs arrive Brachina. |
| 19 | 16 December | Brachina | Mingary | 4h 10m | 1109hrs arrive Mingary. |
| 20 | 16 December | Mingary | Menindee | 2h 12m | 1329hrs arrive Menindee. |
| 21 | 16 December | Menindee | Gunbar | 5h 18m | 1839hrs arrive Gunbar. |
| 22 | 16 December | Gunbar | Edi | 4h 26m | 2305hrs arrive Edi. |
| 23 | 16–17 December | Edi | Brookside | 1h 00m | 0005hrs arrive Brookside. |
| 24 | 17 December | Brookside | Omeo | 1h 55m | 0200hrs arrive Omeo. |
| 25 | 17 December | Omeo | Murrindal | 2h 06m | 0406hrs arrive Murrindal. |
| 26 | 17 December | Murrindal | Ingebyra | 1h 31m | 0537hrs arrive Ingebyra. |
| 27 | 17 December | Ingebyra | Numeralla | 1h 29m | 0706hrs arrive Numeralla. |
| 28 | 17 December | Numeralla | Hindmarsh Station | 0h 42m | 0748hrs arrive Hindmarsh Station. |
| 29 | 17 December | Hindmarsh Station | Nowra | 2h 01m | 0949hrs arrive Nowra. |
| 30 | 17 December | Nowra | Warwick Farm | 3h 30m | 1319hrs arrive Warwick Farm. |
| 31 | 18 December | Warwick Farm | Sydney | Arrive in procession, Sydney. | |
Roger Clark established an early lead through the first genuinely treacherous leg, from Sivas to Erzincan in Turkey, averaging almost 60 mph in his Lotus Cortina for the 170 mile 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]
By this time Bianchi and co-driver Jean-Claude Ogier had built an apparently unassailable lead ahead of Paddy Hopkirk's Austin 1800 in second, but approaching the Nowra checkpoint at the end of the penultimate stage with only 150 miles to Sydney, the Frenchmen were involved in a head-on collision which wrecked their Citroën and hospitalised the pair. Hopkirk, the first driver on the scene, gave up his chance of victory when he stopped to tend to the injured and extinguish the flames in the burning cars. That left 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,[7] to take an unexpected victory in his Hillman Hunter and claim the £10,000 prize. Hopkirk finished second, while Australian Ian Vaughan was third in a factory-entered Ford Falcon.
While the original event was to prove a triumph for the Rootes Group and BMC, 1977's rerun, this time sponsored by Singapore Airlines, belonged to Mercedes. The German marque claimed a 1–2 finish and had two other cars in the top eight, with Andrew Cowan in a 280E repeating his success of nine years previous, followed home by team-mate Tony Fowkes in a similar car. Paddy Hopkirk, this time driving a Citroën, took the final podium spot.[8][9]
Nick Brittan, a competitor in the original event in a Lotus Cortina, established his company as an organiser of modern endurance rallies with a 25th anniversary re-run of the marathon in 1993.[10] He persuaded 21 drivers who had competed in 1968 to return, including Andrew Cowan and Roger Clark, and altogether 106 teams from 17 countries entered. Cowan drove the same car as the first time, having his Hillman Hunter loaned to him by the Scottish Automobile Club museum, while other competitors drove pre-1970 era cars. The entry fee was £12,900, and the estimated cost of participating was put at £45,000.[11]
The 16,000 km race had three major differences to its ancestor. First, the changing political climate in the Middle East meant that several countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan were now out of bounds, although in Europe, Turkey and Australia much of the original route was retraced. Also, the old scheduled open road sections were replaced with more modern timed special stages for safety reasons. Finally, with the demise of the great passenger liners there would be no great voyage across the Indian Ocean to Australia, Brittan instead negotiating for two Antonov An-124 cargo planes to take the vehicles to Australia.[10]
The winning driver was Francis Tuthill in a Porsche 911, ahead of the Ford Falcon GT of Ian Vaughan who finished third in 1968. Kenya's Mike Kirkland, a stalwart of the Safari Rally, took the final place on the podium in a Peugeot 504.
A second rerun was organised in 2000 as a "Millennium celebration of [the] first epic event."[12] Again, much of Asia was inaccessible for political reasons, with two airlifts instead of the single one of 1993. Now, after crossing Europe and Turkey in the first fourteen days, the competitors would be loaded on to the Antonovs for the trip to northern Thailand, driving south through the country and into Malaysia for twelve days before being flown to Australia for the last eight days of the race.
Of the 100 starters who left London 78 reached Sydney, with Stig Blomqvist and Ben Rainsford scoring victory ahead of Michèle Mouton in a Porsche 911, whose co-driver was 1993 winner Francis Tuthill. Rick Bates and Jenny Brittan in another 911 took third.
The third rerun was a combination of modern Group N (showroom-class) cars, and pre-1977 classics, all limited to two wheel drive and a sub-two litre engine. New Zealand, in tandem with Lincolnshire, England race-preparation specialists Langworth Motorsport, scored a 1–2–3 podium clean sweep with three Kiwi-piloted Honda Integras; overall winners Joe McAndrew and Murray Cole, runners-up Mike Montgomery and Roy Wilson, and Shane Murland and John Benton in third. The highest-placed classic car was a Ford Escort RS1600 driven by Britain's Anthony Ward and Mark Solloway, which finished sixth overall.[13]