East Africa Safari

Even Africa has fences nowadays, and these interested spectators find a convenient perch to watch the bumpy progress of Safari winners Shekhar Mehta and Lofty Drews in their Datsun 240Z. They finished just one minute ahead of team-mates Källström and Billstam; a scrutiny penalty levelled them, but the tie was resolved in Mehta’s favour on the “furthest cleanest” principle. Ford fortunes were not running high this year, and of five factory Escorts entered only one finished, that very sick indeed. The surviving pair were Vic Preston Jnr. and Bev Smith who drove with all the tenacity bred into East Africans to finish fourteenth. The Datsun is shown at Mua on the third day of the rally and the Escort at Ngong during testing a few days before the start.