Tuesday, January 13, 2009

John Woolley

Reappearing in the 1980's (or at least the registration 6003VC did!) it was campaigned by John Woolley, and others, in (it seems) every historic rally for nearly a decade.

Many thanks to Sean Kukula for providing the following history of 6003 VC's busy career at this time;

I did quite a few events in the car including the Rally Britannia 3 times (An event that ran in front of the RAC rally during the Sunday on the spectator/stately home stages), the Telford Historic, Imber stages a couple of times, Epynt (Between Xmas & new year where it was so icy you could barely stand up in the services area which resulted in a rather exciting moment which involved us running out of braking room & going straight down a very steep bank only just avoiding the river at the bottom). Another classic was the Coronation Rally at Pembrey in January which again was very icy. A recent storm had made a telegraph pole weak which then broke near the top bringing the wire with it across the road, we were next car on the scene & somehow the wire got caught on the sumpguard hence we did a very commendable impression of a plane landing on an aircraft carrier! Later in the day whilst trying to regain the time lost a rod came out of both sides of the block & also the sump pan (At around 8000 rpm), the gudgeon pin had broken but the rod didn’t, it just turned into a squashed “S” shape.

The car was sold to Jim Murray who had previously rented this or another car from John. I then did 3 rallies with Jim, Rally Britannia, The Mid Wales Stages & also the Imber stages (not sure in which order)


John and Allison Woolley in 6003 VC
on the 1990 Monte Carlo Rally

Road Book for the 1994 RAC Rally (6003 on the front cover!)
Courtesy of Sean Kukula (Artwork by Ian Shapland)

1 comment:

  1. I had fantastic fun rallying 6003VC and also John Woolley's 2 litre Vitesse, during 1990/91. Both were very rapid and remarkably strong considering the punishment they got. I can still remember the thrill of 6003VC on full throttle!

    People told me they could hear 6003 VC screaming a mile away!

    It was a pleasure to have rallied with Sean Kukula and Bill Granger
    in these cars.

    One of my most memorable events was to the Circuit of Ireland Retro in Sept 1990 with Roger(?) Ealand - our first rally together. We had some very scarey moments as the instructions were somewhat confusing during the early stages, until Roger told me that he was Dyslexic. We figured out a method to avoid the confusion then and had a great rally.

    I did 12 historic stage rallies in these triumph's.

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