A time consuming delay on the N2 saw us departing from Jeffrey’s Bay rather later than anticipated on Thursday afternoon, all two of us with the little red Datsun on the trailer. Two spare tyres (the tyres on the car had already done two days of the 2024 Algoa Rally, and possible a few more regionals) a jack and two filled fuel cans complimented the neat Silverton Radiators gazebo and plastic ground sheet.
Enroute news came in that the Born to Fly brothers had a spot of bother landing the i20 Hyunda, but their service bay represented a full scale air investigation with parts distributed everywhere. Did we mention that a rather large figure had only recently changed hands to acquire this NRC1 beast. No pressure, buy a new car, roll it spectacularly and then set about rebuilding it overnight!
Obviously a easy as taking the Datsun off the trailer and setting up the gazebo in the good company of the Ocean Truck Sales team (who we might add had rather a large contingent of cars to maintain for the weekend). Oliver de Man was busy, really busy, and traded his steering wheel for those duties most fear to even mention.
Former Kenyan champion, Lee Rose, needed a vacation and accepted the opportunity to drive the 477 KE70 Corolla with Ingrid Jeacocks in the suicide seat. She giggled a little more than usual as Lee simply do not rally with “normal” notes and she had to develop a new shorthand skill. The other KE70 (512) had returned to it’s former owners and the East London based Langhein brothers had virtually rebuilt the car. Justin and Dane, ably assisted by their 68 year old father Evan were as ready as they could be for just their second rally.
Wayne Malherbe (yes, there are now two of them) and Corné “Midget” Blom were ready (not sure they even knew for what) in their neat 517 WM Plant Hire Volkswagen Polo 250 1.4 but the rally presented them with a serious oil leak during shakedown. Somehow everyone and everything fell in place.
Friday started with Recce of the Saturday stages and with the ceremonial Auto Pavillion start completed everyone found themselves awaiting the start of the specially graded and spectator friendly Spiderweb stage. Then special stage two had to be cancelled when a cattlegrid opted to contain the cars as well. Nothing like a little bit of chaos to get an event started but returning to Spiderweb as SS3 soon had the event back on track.
Vlaktes was more reminiscent of Krulle as the entire 21.78km consisted of direction changes and it had to be completed twice. Magical when car and crew work together but a left front puncture for the last six km had Etienne working hard. Very sportingly Paul van Wyn and Matt-Jason Köhler had made way for the Datsun when their Audi called it a day and then very sportingly they stopped to assist the “outoppies” in changing the wheel.
The highway spectator stages had the Datsun and Audi park behind each other about a 100m past the start as both cried enough for the day. Having waited for everyone to clear SS8 the cars eventually returned to the Daniel Pienaar School for overnight repairs. Great when you have a team of mechanics present to replace or fix whatever the problem might be but in this case the driver was named Etienne, the service team manager was named Etienne, the mechanic was named Etienne and the spares to fix the problem was simply named Welder! Sometime, much later the Friday night a few hours of sleep was possible (only a few). With a combined age of 177 years even the Datsun was complaining about the 04h30 Saturday start to Longmore.
But, then, Sinkdam got the day going and all was forgotten. The weather held and the 38km stage really made everything worthwhile before settling in for the final two stages. Culturama in the rain becomes a very different animal and unfortunately claimed a few.
As an essentially one man team Etienne Malherbe did exceptionally well as the little Datsun actually did not miss a beat all weekend, those four bolts on the driveshaft was simply spitefull! Yes, a new set of tyres would be worth at least 1.5 seconds per kilometer, working windscreen wipers would have been welcome too, but then we would have had less to talk about afterwards.
Doubt whether anyone but Etienne MALherbe could extract more from the 1974 Silverton Radiators Datsun P710 2.0, but most definitely he would be capable of much more should anyone out there be willing to assist him in transferring the mechanicals into a “new’ bodyshell.
The chauffeur is a proven success – en dit was ‘n voorreg om te kon deel in nog ‘n Algoa ervaring!
Wel gedaan Etienne!
20250725 ARC Algoa Rally – SS6 – 511 ARC3 Etienne Malherbe – Patrick Vermaak – Silverton Radiators George Datsun P710 2.0. 
20250726 ARC Algoa Rally – Etienne Malherbe 
20250726 ARC Algoa Rally – SS3 – 511 ARC3 Etienne Malherbe – Patrick Vermaak – Silverton Radiators George Datsun P710 2.0. 10th Overall 0123064 (2) 
20250726 ARC Algoa Rally 511 Clubmans Etienne Malherbe – Patrick Vermaak – Silverton Radiators George Datsun P710 2.0
Published by: Patrick Vermaak
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