Safari Rallyt; Just one more time.

It is quite normal for people to tell you about their new rally car that is just about to make its debut on the world stage. But one car that will be doing the Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic Rally next week is doing this tough African rally as its last ever event.

The car is a Ford Escort Mk 1 owned by Josef Pointinger from Austria. He prepared it in the early 1990s specifically to do long distance rallies and, since then, it has been driven competitively for more than 70,000 km (44,000 miles). Its first big event was the London-Mexico of 1995 where it finished fourteenth overall. Two years later he did Panama-Alaska with it and finished tenth while on the London to Sydney in 2000 he was ninth overall. Pointinger then brought the well-travelled Escort to both the previous East Africa Safari Classics in 2003 and 2005 finishing sixteenth overall on both occasions. At the end of the 2005 event which he drove with Peter Hall, Pointinger was pretty sure that the Escort was headed for retirement, but he has not been able to resist one last drive in it.

What is really outstanding about these performances is that they were all done without the benefit of a service crew. Any service that was needed to keep the Escort running was carried out by Pointinger and his co-driver. However, for its last appearance, two friends have arranged to come down and follow the rally to make sure that it finishes its third Safari Classic. Pointinger´s co-driver on this occasion will be Wolfgang Nölscher though on his last appearance with the Escort - at the Ennstal Classic in 2006 - he shared the car with long-time Safari participant, Tony Fall. This hard-working Escort has also been driven by Hannu Mikkola, twice winner of the old East African Safari, on an event in Austria.


» Pressrelease från Safarirallyt, www.eastafricansafarirally.com.

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