1968 London-Sydney Marathon tribute run
A local tribute to the epic 1968 London Sydney Marathon will start off from Perth on October 28, with some eight of the 10 surviving cars from the original event expected to compete.
In the original 1968 version, after being shipped to Fremantle in WA, the field restarted from Perth and did the gruelling course to Sydney in a punishing three days.
For the revival, the field will be on display at the Motor Museum of WA on October 27 and will head off from Perth’s Wellington Square from 6.30am, October 28. This time the route is tackled over 10 days, swinging by Cooma’s Motorfest on November 5.
See our 2019 Cooma Motorfest gallery.
The Marathon concludes at Warwick Farm, Sydney, on November 6.
Among the field is one of the 1968 three-car team of Monaros, originally backed by the Sydney Telegraph newspaper. The highest-finishing car from the team was driven by Barry Ferguson, Doug Chivas and Dave Johnson, which placed 12th. (Image by Bruce Thomas.)
A trio of Ford Falcon XTs prepared by Harry Firth from Ford Australia fared somewhat better, with the top-placed car scoring third in the hands of Ian Vaghan, Robert Forsyth and Jack Ellis.
In the past we’ve featured the sixth-placed car (which survives today in the hands of Parry Bitsakis at Muscle Car Warehouse), driven by Bruce Hodgson and Doug Rutherford. See it here.
And the follow-up feature here.
Of course the original field was littered with interesting cars, such as Porsche 911. See our feature.
There seems to have been a mini-trend for building replicas of significant entrants in the event, such as the winning Hillman Hunter driven by Andrew Cowan, Colin Malkin and Brian Coyle. We have heard of two and have tracked down this example by Paul Anderson, out of Canberra.
That car will be in the tribute run and we’ll soon bring you a story on the build.
Another is a tribute Citroen DS, which was leading into the late stages of the rally, until it had a crash with a local car in Nowra, NSW. That was driven by Lucien Bianchi and Jean-Claude Ogier. That’s another story we hope to bring you soon.
See the Marathon home page. Plus the Facebook page.
And the Wikipedia overview of 1968 event.