Stars & Stripes
PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB TILL
(New Series of SA exclusive race cars)

I’m sitting in the seat sometimes occupied by Sarel van der Merwe and – in spirit anyway – another great of South African motorsport, Bob Olthoff. And boy, do I feel out of my depth. It prompts the question: just how does one drive this thing without making a complete arse of oneself? The ‘thing’ in question is a 1963 Ford Galaxie, driven to victory in the 1965 SA Production Car championship by Olthoff and now campaigned by Van der Merwe and others in Historic Racing. Driving it is a bit like trying to waltz with a bad-tempered hippo on ice skates. It weighs almost 1 700kg, puts out 500-plus horsepower (that’s more than 373kW) and feels mostly out of control. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so insecure behind the wheel of a motorcar.

Fortunately, the car I’m driving is not the actual Galaxie lightweight built in the USA by good ol’ Nascar boys Holman and Moody and then campaigned by the famous Willment outfit in the UK (Olthoff and the likes of Jack Sears forming part of the driver line-up) before it came to South Africa in 1964 for the Nine Hour. Olthoff stayed on and so did Ford’s behemoth.

If it was the actual car, I’m sure that its owner, Peter du Toit (also the driving force behind the Zwartkops Raceway around which I’m slithering), would not have agreed to let me loose in it. But this is a rare car, being a Galaxie slantback rescued from a smallholding outside Pretoria some four years ago. It was originally brought to the country as a back-up in case the actual Olthoff racer was damaged enough to require a new body. Du Toit paid R1 500 for it, not including the chickens which had taken up residence inside its spacious shell ...

It underwent painstaking recreation to become a lookalike of the Willment machine and since its debut at the end of 2006 it has thrilled race crowds around the country. It is impossible to miss it out on the tarmac. For starters the wheelbase is almost 2.9 metres, but the sheetmetal extends well beyond the axles both front and rear – none of this namby-pamby wheel-at-each-corner stuff for real racing drivers. The bootlid looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier and is flanked by those huge circular tail lights. It’s a detail echoed in the round fuel and temp gauges which book-end the elongated speedometer. A glance underneath the rear bumper reveals leaf springs that seem to go on forever and a pair of huge telescopic shock absorbers. In the middle of the axle sits a differential housing the size of a beach ball, inside which is a Detroit Locker limited-slip unit.

The original Galaxie slantback owes its existence to Nascar racing in the States and the car did well on the superspeedways. In roadgoing form the car was equipped with a 7.0-litre pushrod motor with either 410 horses (306kW) or, when equipped with two four-barrel carbs, 425. That’s roughly 317kW, so while the specific output is fairly unimpressive, it’s still a nice big number. And of course there’s enough torque to push mountains around.