After visiting the control point at the Victory Park, the participants of the Motor Challenge proceeded to the Lower part of the city, near the confluence of rivers Volga and Oka. Lenin square n front of the Nizhny Novgorod Fair was the place where the crews could take some rest and make the necessary repairs.
Suspension lubrication on a 1938 Chevy. You don’t witness such things every day.
The same goes for the engine tune-up on a 1930 Crysler…
…or various maintenance procedures on a 1941 Chevy.
Spare parts and tools everywhere, even the rear window is removed to access all the stuff (it is hold by special clamps for fast removal, should be a typical mod for rally cars).
1997 Volga GAZ-3110 support team car followed the motorcade during its stay in Russia.
Assistance car, filled with consumables and tools to the top.
Removing the exhaust manifold on the Bentley engine.
Seems to be a relatively easy job (if the bolts are not rusted !) – quite surprisingly for such a cramped engine bay, access is excellent.
British prewar sports cars:
1925 Bentley 3-4½ (Bill Cleyndert / Jacqui Norman, GB)
1935 Bentley Sport Special (Claus Coester, Switzerland / Tjorven Schroeder, Denmark).
Cockpit.
1933 Alvys Firefly (Alex Vassbotten / Ole Havn, Norge).
Aluminum-bodied 1933 Rolls Royce Phantom II with a Malaysian crew (Hok Kiang Sia / Eric Kuan Rong Sia).
1972 Austin Mini (Paul Hartfield / Chris Hartfield, GB). The name says it all – the car is unbelievably miniature.
1964 Volvo PV544 (Dom Bernaz / Jean-Yves Di Martino, France).
This 1965 Volvo PV122 Amazon (Claudine Bloom / Andrew Twort, Scotland, GB) is nicknamed “Amy Amazon”. A coeval of my 1965 Volga.
A nice collection of European sports cars:
1967 Aston Martin DB6 (James Alexandroff / David Jones, GB).
US-spec Mercedes-Benz 450 SLC (Joost Van Cauwenberge / Jacques Castelein, Belgium).
This Porsche 356C came all the way from Lebanon (Charbel Habib(LB) / Walid Samaha).
Classic Porsche Neunelfer (Peter Lovett, GB / Tim Smith, Australia).
First generation 1954 Sunbeam-Talbot Alpine (David Roberts / Jo Roberts, GB).
American classics:
1917 American LaFrance Tourer aka “The Beast” (Ingo Strolz / Werner Gassner, Austria).
1927 Nash (Lloyd Reddington / Treacy Reddington, Canada).
1939 Chevrolet Coupe (Renate Hanselmann, Liechtenstein / Andreas Gabathuler, Switzerland).
1940 LaSalle by Cadillac (Jeff Barden / Linda Bellinger, GB).
1940 Pontiac Coupe (Andrew Laing / Ian Milne, GB).
1941 Chevrolet Coupe (Rudy Hug, Switzerland / Andreas Astaller, Denmark).
1957 Chevrolet 210 4-door Sedan (Jeff Urbina, USA / Chris Pike, NZ).
As I get it, the Two-Ten was almost a stripper model by American standards of its day – not your typical chrome-clad Bel Air.
302 small-block V8 ?
Map of the rally on the trunk lid.
1969 Ford Mustang Mach I (Gunther Schmidt-Lindner / Jillian Schmidt-Lindner, Australia)
1974 Leylan P76 (Gerry Crown / Matt Bryson, Australia). White paint with horizontal blue stripe makes it look like a Russian police car.
ZAZ-968 from Belarus.
Some really cool cars there. Thanks!
Fabulous, simply fabulous.
What Ed said. And that American LaFrance tourer – WOW!
Reminds me of the 1908 New York to Paris Race, which inspired the 1965 comedy “The Great Race.”
I’m not sure I would trust a 20 year old Freelander or Volga as a support car….
As I get it, they let local people on their own cars to join the motorcade for a checkpoint or two in the role of assistance cars, so at least the Volga was not an official support vehicle. They also had a fleet of brand new red Toyota pick-ups, just in case )
Ye gods a P76, rare car on any part of the planet, one did well in the Targa Florio back in the day, prompting a special tape stripe model, with the paying customers not so much.
Those guys have done several of this type of rally, and they are pretty fast too.
The Targa Florio edition of the P76 was named after they won the Targa Florio stage on the 1974 World Cup Rally. The journalist and writer Evan Green was one of the drivers and later wrote a book called “A boot full of right arms” because so many people would give one to have gone on the rally with him!
It is interesting to see the variety of cars, plus some of the tweaks done by the teams – especially that 1941 Chev!
Thanx for sharing this ! .
.
-Nate
I love the looks of that 1940 LaSalle by Cadillac.
This series just gets better. The Sunbeam Alpine, Aston DB5 and Rolls Phantom could well be my choices, but if you want to get to Paris the Volvo Amazon might be a sound choice