Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

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oilypaws
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Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

Post by oilypaws »

Last October, I had the exciting experience of entering my 1961 4-door Morris Minor in the New Zealand Targa Rally, and I thought I should write a post about it. Also scroll down for a couple of videos!

We entered the "Tour", which is an event where you bring your road car and drive the closed road stages following the proper rally cars (which require roll cages and the like). The tour is limited to 130 kph or 160 kph (depending on the group you are in) but the roads are pretty windy, and you can use the whole road on corners. And being in a (modified) Morris Minor, we took a long straight to get to 130 kph so we were basically driving it flat-out on all the closed road stages anyway.
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The event takes place over 5 days, with around 1200 km of touring and 700 km of closed road special stages - a serious workout for both car and driver. You have to have a navigator, and I was fortunate enough to have a friend with prior Targa Rally experience who did an excellent job of reading out the cautions and turns. We had no support crew - just a minimal set of tools and spares crammed in the boot.

My Minor is a bit modified, but I think it still retains a lot of the Minor character (torsion bar springs, no anti-roll bar, and original Armstrong dampers on the front):
* Marina 1275 engine, rebuilt, fast road cam, weber carb and custom exhaust. I estimate about 70 - 80 bhp.
* Marina gearbox, rear axle and front disk brakes
* Mostly standard minor suspension, lowered about 1"
* 13" Marina wheels with 165/80R13 tyres
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I put a lot of effort into getting the car ready, including having the engine rebuilt and overhauling the suspension. It was a bit rushed in the last few weeks because the rebuilder took 6 months to get the engine finished! I got it running and went for a run-in drive only a week before the event, and it had only done about 600 km by the time it got to the start.

However, it ran really well and the prep paid off because it survived a week of very hard driving without any problems at all. The cam upgrade gave it a nice bit of extra top-end, and I was very pleased with the balancing - it is now smooth and willing well past 5,000 RPM where it used to feel like all the power was going into vibrations over 4,000.

It was an awesome opportunity to drive some amazing roads. Also, I thought I was a good driver, but I sure learned a lot during the week! I was pushing it hard enough to get a bit of tyre movement, and overdid it a couple of times to the point where we were really scrabbling to stay on the tarmac, but fortunately managed to stay out of the ditches and fences, unlike some of the other cars! There were all sorts of surfaces and one day had light rain on a couple of very bumpy and windy stages, but the Minor is so responsive and easy to control that I enjoyed all of it. I was grinning after some of the slippery stages where drivers of more powerful cars were complaining. I used fairly "relaxed" tyres (GT Radials) which I think was a good choice - they are quite soft and forgiving, nothing happens too suddenly, and the Minor was never designed for super grippy tyres.

I think the car has about the right amount of power for the suspension and brakes - Any faster and it would really need major suspension mods. The Marina brakes (solid front disks) were barely adequate, and I had to be quite conservative on long windy downhills as they were getting very hot at times. Absolutely would not do such an event with the standard drum brakes!

All the other tour cars were modern GT tourers - Porsche, Merc, Audi, a couple of Lamborghini... so we were at the back, but (I like to think) not too far behind, and we even kept up a couple of times when some other drivers decided to take it easy for a while (see videos below!).
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I've wanted to try the Targa Tour for a while. I can't afford a Porsche, and rather than show up in a boring middling car (my Caldina GT-Four wagon was the backup option), I thought the Minor would be a fun challenge since it's so inappropriate for the event. It was a great experience, and I'm very proud that we made it to the end, which was my main goal.

Here's a couple of in-car videos I made. You can occasionally get a glimpse of the speed we were going from the rally navigation computer (i.e. phone) at the bottom-left.

Chasing Porsches - Day 1

Wet roads, hairpins, cliffs, forest, bad gear changes and wheelspin: It's got to be Whangamomona!

Following a Lamborghini back from Whangamomona

Shropshiremoggie
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Re: Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

Post by Shropshiremoggie »

Great post- well done :D
philthehill
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Re: Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

Post by philthehill »

Great to see a Minor put through its paces. :D

Well done.

panky
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Re: Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

Post by panky »

Brilliant. I loved how you were reeling the Lambo in :D
Engine sounded sweet too
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Edward1949
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Re: Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

Post by Edward1949 »

Thanks for this post.
Nice to see the clap-hands wipers doing their best!
Blaketon
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Re: Driving a Morris Minor in the Targa Rally 2019

Post by Blaketon »

I'd sooner drive your Minor!! It reminded me of this film - https://www.dukevideo.com/prd3287DA/Mon ... rchive-DVD - as there was a Morris Minor in that and as the commentator remarked "Morris Minors cope manfully", the 1991 event being very snowy.
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