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LMM76C wrote:I don't think anyone doubts 309 was a new car for the 66 RAC. What we didn't know, and the French Forum Auto has just informed us, was that there was a new jacket too.....

miniforever-66-rac-hill-big.jpg

....and what is Graham Hill gesturing with his right hand......??

LMM76C wrote: There is no hard evidence the Welsh car was the actual RAC 309 but it is logical it was (see earlier)

I would have thought BMC would have put Graham Hill out in the best car they had, ie a brand new one with 309 stuck on it. He didn't practice in it, he practiced in a well worn 311D didn't he?

Pete wrote:

LMM76C wrote: There is no hard evidence the Welsh car was the actual RAC 309 but it is logical it was (see earlier)

I would have thought BMC would have put Graham Hill out in the best car they had, ie a brand new one with 309 stuck on it. He didn't practice in it, he practiced in a well worn 311D didn't he?

As posted earlier, little doubt all the main players in works Minis had new cars for the RAC. No special treatment or "best" car for Hill. (The best car was GRX5D for Makinen as it had a 544 cam when all the others ran the standard 510, worrying about snow - was Aaltonen behind that decision, after the 65 experience?). No practice for the RAC then in the sense it is now understood ie. on the actual stages but Hill "tested" at Chobham under Hopkirk's wing, although nothing like the mileage J.Clark put in with R.Clark or on his own, both at Chobham and at Mike Cannon's farm in 3 separate Lotus Cortinas.

The Hill car, 309, retired early and was thus a shoe in (with a new engine/box) for Fall on the Welsh 2 weeks later.

I think this shot pretty much sums up Graham Hill's RAC Rally!

Good pic!

Mike Wood will be reunited with GRX 309D at Blyton, which we think he recce'd in back in '66. We'll also have at least two or three other early ex works rally cars in attendance plus a couple of good replicas.

Pete wrote:I think this shot pretty much sums up Graham Hill's RAC Rally!

his face says it all


.....'what am I doing here.......I could be at home....'

Pete wrote:Mike Wood will be reunited with GRX 309D at Blyton, which we think he recce'd in back in '66. We'll also have at least two or three other early ex works rally cars in attendance plus a couple of good replicas.

Was going to ask if 309 would be there. Maybe I should make the supreme effort and go for Sat evening, as I'd be very interested in Mike Wood's talk and booklet on the Coupe des Alpes and CAK500C (the car that first inspired me to get into rallying, when I saw it at the end of the 65 Gulf).
Will he be selling the CdA booklet direct (or via Don Barrow like the "Last Liege" booklet) after Blyton?

That's a good question, from what I remember the booklet won't be marketed like the Liege one, there'll only be very few made, he's only bringing a dozen or so to Blyton! I'd catch one of these slide shows whilst you can, Mike very rarely does them. The first one he did for me was in the early 90's (Cheshire MCR) and then another at Oxford Brookes in he mid 90's, so this will be the first one I've got him to do in the last twenty years. It's shutting Whizzo and Jeff up long enough for him to explain the pictures I'm worried about!

While on the subject of the RAC GRX 309D it was interesting to read in the Works and competition car register section of Cooperworld this month that Tony Arnold, builder of the 1995 recreation of the RAC car, bought GRX 309D from the late Jeff Hignett. To the best of my knowledge I can only assume that this purchase was for the identity only and no actual car parts from the genuine RAC GRX 309D. If anyone knows any different from this it would be interesting to know as what happened to the car after the RAC is still unclear.

Thanks
Dave

Very interesting feature on Ron Crellin in September issue of Mini World featuring photos of Paul Bate's original GRX 309D on the Flowers rally. Our intentions are to re unite Ron with Paul's car soon.

Have you managed to sort out the registration number for the car with the DVLA?

surf-blue-850 wrote:Have you managed to sort out the registration number for the car with the DVLA?

The registration number is attached to a fantastic replica / recreation of the RAC car, current whereabouts unknown to me. Any info would be appreciated. Cheers Dave

Just wondering as you have THE original car, whether the copy car had legal rights to the reg number? Could it be a clone of your chassis number etc?

Major can of worms!

Part of the chassis number is.........CA2S7799782

surf-blue-850 wrote: Major can of worms!

It is a major can of worms, it's complicated but it's certainly possible to untangle. The fact that BMC Comps screwed that chassis and reg number to four different cars doesn't help, however, the provenance of the car to which the reg and chassis number are currently attached has never been published , even when Mini World did a full feature story on it some years ago there was absolutely no explanation of where it came from or where it had been since Graham Hill supposedly drove it on the '66 RAC. That's not to say it doesn't have provenance but people can and do draw their own conclusions.
It's undeniable that Paul's rally car is the one that still carries the body number, was the first and original car that was registered GRX 309D by the works and has undeniable provenance of where it came from.
Not forgetting that there's a race car in the U.S with provenance aswell which was also registered GRX 309D (the final car) and was left in the U.S by BMC Comps after it raced at Sebring in '67. Now if Comps exported and sold that car officially in 1967 then why would the reg number have been available when the current car was registered in 1995? Well the simple answer is that DVLC torched all the paper records in the late 70s early 80's when they computerised the system. Maybe it wasn't exported officially to keep it out of the way of the taxman but Peter Browning does record it as 'Sold to BMC USA' in his book which would imply it would have been?

There's certainly lots of cases of other cars that were sold abroad and met their recently created twins when they were reimported many years later! Non of which could happen if DVLC hadn't have binned all the records (though I'm sure they could never have predicted situations like this back then!!)

Just got back from a great weekend at the Manchester classic car show, thanks to Pete for organising the stand. Photos and updates to follow. Also....we are re-uniting the car with Ron Crellin next Saturday.

Dave

A couple of pics from the weekend, with repro. lamp bar fitted for " show purposes ". When this was fitted the mounting holes for the original were exposed. A Healey reversing lamp was also re-fitted for the show which bolted straight to the existing holes in the boot lid.

Pictures of parts of the 970 engine that was with the car when Paul bought it. All our evidence suggests that this is the engine that was fitted by Jonny Organ when it left Abingdon. I have no pictures of the head but have seen it and this is a standard un-ported 12G940 11 stud. More pics to follow.

Dave

The crank requires a regrind as big ends are damaged. The crank pictured is a NOS crank that Paul had amongst his spares.