A week ago, dressed in a period correct British Leyland rally jacket and sporting the beginnings of a Tony Pond-style moustache, Chris Ingram – one of Britain’s best young rally drivers of a generation – stood quietly at a deserted Sweet Lamb test venue looking at the Triumph TR7 V8. Almost in awe of the machine, Ingram was about to step back 40 years to a different time and a different type of rally car. Minutes later, after barely five miles of gravel running, he returned with a big smile.
That first test was the initial step towards the five-day Roger Albert Clark Rally adventure through the forests of Wales, Scotland and England that is due to finish in Carlisle next Monday afternoon. Alongside the 156 other starters, Ingram more than anything wants to finish the longest and toughest special stage rally in Britain.
Like fellow international standard drivers Kris Meeke, Oliver Solberg and Osian Pryce, 2019 European Rally champion Ingram was keen to tackle the contest that revives the spirit and challenge of the RAC Rallies of the 1960s and 1970s. Long days, not much sleep, stages in the dark, brutal Kielder, and a massive sense of adventure all mean the event is far removed from the modern-day European and World Rally Championship events.
But unlike his famous rivals, Ingram is not in a Ford Escort Mk2. Instead, he’s driving the newly finished TR7 V8 from David Appleby Engineering and the car is truly a work of art. It’s one of a batch of six built at the team’s base in Somerset.
Long-time marque expert Appleby is painstakingly producing the cars to exacting period specification using an ex-Pond machine as a benchmark, with most parts remanufactured.
Appleby worked for Austin Rover Motorsport in the 1980s and competed extensively. He has a long history with British Leyland cars, from TR7 V8s through Rovers to Metro 6R4s, and later did his own updated version of the 6R4 in the DAM 4100.
“It’s something I’ve had a passion to do for a long time: a proper recreation of factory TR7 V8s,” explains Appleby. “We’ve had an ex-Roger Clark car, one of the last works cars, on loan to use as a datum and we’ve been able to take bits off, get them measured and scanned and remade. Everything is to original specification. We could have done a modern interpretation of the car, but what would be the point in that?”
Source: Autosport