THE works Porsche 924 that won its class in the prodigious 1979 Repco Round Australia Reliability Trial is currently being restored in Adelaide.
Almost 45 years after he was photographed standing beside the car at a rest halt on the 19,000-kilometre marathon, current owner Stewart Kay has enlisted Porsche specialist RSR Classic to perform what he describes as a ‘sympathetic rebuild’.
In a rally famously won by Peter Brock with a soul-destroying Holden Commodore 1-2-3, Kay’s Porsche 924 was driven to a class victory and ninth outright by the German pairing of Jurgen Barth and Roland Kussmaul.
While most teams went three-up, the Germans battled the arduous conditions with just the two occupants, with little time to sleep or recuperate.
The car is still in remarkably good shape and has enjoyed a competition history post the ‘79 Repco Trial, but whether it gets driven in anger again is still undecided.
It was the first right-hand drive 924 to arrive in Australia in 1976 and was built into a rally car by Alan Hamilton’s renowned Porsche dealership in Melbourne. Its class win in 1979 was the first international victory for a front-engine Porsche in an FIA-sanctioned event.
Mechanically, the car will be refurbished to as close to its original build as possible, but traditionalists will be thrilled to know that the original paintwork on the car will remain ‘as is’.
“I will certainly be using the car for display and show purposes, but I’m not sure if it will do another rally in anger,” Kay says.
“I have an original ex-Peter Fitzgerald 1999 Nations’ Cup Porsche GT3 that is road registered, meaning I can use it whenever I want.
“That’s what I want to do with the 924 as well, to be able to pull it out of the shed and drive it to a show, or on a Sunday morning cruise.”
