Caledon’s Blue Crane Western Province Regional Rally is an important weekend for the new-look acciDent Guru rally team as two new navigators join the drivers of the team’s pair of S3 class Volkswagen Golf 1 GTis for the event set to race through the lush springtime wheat fields on 27 August.
Championship leader Paul van Wyk will have Henry Köhne reading the notes for the first time in the Overberg. “We want to continue our good run this season,” the Capetonian acciDent Guru managing director who holds a sizeable 25-point overall championship lead explained. “We ended up second overall on the Klipdale Rally, won in Ceres and finished third overall in Malmesbury, so I have a comfortable lead in both the overall and Class S3 championships.”
“Our objective is to finish the remaining events in as high a position as possible without taking any unnecessary risks over the yumps and hazards to be sure Paul takes the title,” new navigator Kohne, who sells Volkswagens at Rola in Vredenburg and lives in Langebaan pointed out. “Our ageing Golf can’t take the hammering so well anymore, even if the number 419 car is inherently remarkably reliable!”
“That reliability is courtesy of Brenton Crow’s meticulous preparation at acciDent Guru’s new mechaniCar Guru division,” Paul van Wyk added. “To finish first we need to first finish as they say, so another strong finish is exactly what we want in Caledon.”
There is another change of staff in Team acciDent Guru’s second S3 Golf 1 GTi, where national navigator Shaun Visser takes up the hot seat alongside SA National Rally Championship regular and acciDent Guru co-owner Piet Bakkes. “We formed in a formidable team in national rallying in our S2000 Toyota Auris which was recently sold to Australia,” Bakkes pointed out. “Now we’re looking forward to competing together in the recently re-built number 469 acciDent Guru Golf.”
“Piet is looking forward to a better result after some a difficult season so far,” new navigator Visser from Hartbeespoort explained. “He missed the first event in Klipdale before rolling out of a comfortable second overall in a mountain stage outside Ceres. “AcciDent Guru then remarkably rebuilt the car in two weeks before the Malmesbury rally, but the car was not set-up properly, so Piet just nursed it to the finish.”
“This time the car will be properly set-up!” Bakkes, a farmer and businessman who spends most of his time either at his Vredefort farm or in Somerset West promised. “And I will also have the added benefit of power steering to assist with the notoriously tricky handling of a Mk. 1 Golf, so we are rally looking forward to this rally.”
Team acciDent Guru’s third car – the ever-spectacular father and son team Etienne and Mauritz Malherbe’s consistently sideways classic red Datsun 180U will sit the Caledon Rally out while acciDent Guru returns the car to its former glory following its unfortunate roll at the last event.
The crowd-pleasing Malherbes who run Silverton Radiators in George will however be back in action on the National Toyota Cape Dealer Rally around Malmesbury 16-17 September. “We won the regional class at the national last year with Paul in second place behind us,” Etienne recalled. “We will be back and we’d like to make it a Team acciDent Guru 1-2-3 this year!”
AcciDent Guru and mechaniCar Guru of course also offer their rally and race-winning service to the man in the street at the red workshop on the banks of the Swart River on the Marine Drive Service Road in Paarden Eiland, Cape Town – remember that next time your car demands any form of tender loving care.