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After owning AKY 188B which was an Appleyards 1071 and sold by Tony Fall and just reading Smoke Grey's thread on the Orangebox, which was not an Appleyards car but was a huge part of the North of England rally scene I'm wondering how many other cars were prepared by Appleyards Bradford. I know that Marcus Chambers worked there and Tony 'borrowed' his rally cars from the showroom at the weekends!! It looks like Appleyards was a rally privateers haven in the early days.

Tim

Reading between the lines (and reading the lines) in Marcus Chambers' autobiography "With a Little Bit of Luck" implies the opposite. He mentions his covering up (minor bodywork repairs) for Fall's unauthorised use of demonstrators on local rallies and Ian Appleyard's lack of interest in the dealership's employees.
Not sure Appleyards officially "prepared" any rally cars then, although preparation would have been carried out there "in own time".
I assume by the time of Fall's use of AAK200B and CAK500C on Internationals (and the latter in particular featuring prominently in photos in the specialist media) he had actually bought them, albeit at a favourable price?

Chris Knowles Fitton bought a 'dry' 1275S in fiesta yellow off Tony Fall, reg CAK999C, that was always prepared at Appleyards and apart from the colour was a mirror image off Tony Fall's red CAK500C.

They were also the regional Special Tuning dealer, so will almost certainly have prepared customer cars too. I have no facts though.

M

Quite a few old ex works rally cars went through Appleyards aswell.