1972 Ford Escort RS1600 Rally

A Kenyan safari guide tells of this car landing so nose down that everyone thought it was going to go end over end

by Thor Thorson

This 1972 Ford Escort RS1600 Mk I comes to auction directly from the finish line of the Kenya Airways East African Safari Classic rally, where it was driven to victory by triple Safari winner Bjorn Waldegard and his son Mathias.

One of only two such Escorts prepared by Historic Motorsports in their Daventry workshops to what is generally reckoned to be the ultimate rally specification ever achieved for a Mk I Escort, WPU 242L took over 872 hours to build and, pre-Safari, was test-driven and further developed by Waldegard in both Wales and Kenya. Unusually, too, the winning car is being offered complete with all Safari Rally extras in place.

First run in 1953, the Safari has always presented one of the toughest tests of car and crew, not to mention workshop and service crew, on the planet.

The “Classic” version of the great event is open only to cars of a type made before 1975, so no four-wheel-drive or turbocharged machinery can take part,...