Heritage: The Longest Rally – The 1977 London-Sydney Marathon

Still today the longest driving competition ever held, The London-Sydney Marathon covered nearly 19,000 miles on three continents spread over 30 days and nights. Mercedes-Benz finished 1-2-6-8.

Article Graham Robson

Images Daimler Archives

The year 1977 presented Mercedes-Benz with a unique challenge: The upcoming London-Sydney Marathon. In response, deep in the company’s Untertürkheim factory complex, development engineer Erich Waxenberger labored to prepare five brand new Mercedes-Benz W123 280Es for the monumental rally. No expense was to be spared: Specification, preparation and crews all needed to be exactly right.

The longest rally

Six weeks after starting from London’s Covent Garden Royal Opera House, the weary rally survivors reached Sydney’s Opera House in Australia. Not only did one of the W123s (crewed by Andrew Cowan, Colin Malkin and Mike Broad) win the event, but also four of the five Mercedes-Benz works-prepared cars finished in the top ten. A fifth Mercedes-Benz, driven by Achim Warmbold, had been leading when it suffered fatal suspension damage.      

This sweeping victory was certainly not preordained. At the time, Mercedes-Benz had no official motorsports program. The W123 had only just been launched in 1975, while the new-generation twin-cam M110 2,746cc 6-cylinder engine was by no means at the peak of its development.

Finding just the right rally crews for the ordeal ahead was no simple task either. Sponsored by Singapore Airlines, the London-Sydney Marathon would be the longest rally ever held – fast, arduous and often battling atrocious roads. Highly experienced rally team boss Waxenberger, supported by a generous factory budget, made all the right personnel choices.

In a recent exclusive interview for The Star, winning co-driver Broad takes up the tale: “I had tackled the 1977 Scottish Rally with Walter Röhrl in an Opel. At dinner one evening, I talked to Andrew Cowan [he had won the original London-Sydney event in 1968], who told me he might be doing the 1977 event, either in a Mercedes-Benz car, or a Citroën CX2400, but nothing had been settled. He told me that he was definitely going three-up, with Colin Malkin as his second driver – but he wanted a co-driver/navigator. He also needed a crewmember to do all the pre-event surveys, practicing and stuff.

“I said, ‘I could do that,’ but thought no more about it. Two days later, Andrew called again, asked me to get involved, and told me that he had just decided to go with Mercedes-Benz. I had to plan to take three months – months, not weeks – to get involved in all this, but since the family was just selling its business to a larger group, that was no problem.”

Preparations

To begin, the factory prepared a group of new 280E sedans with beefed-up bodies, suspensions and sturdy roll cages, along with aluminum hoods and trunk lids, and Perspex side windows instead of glass. The engines were tuned in standard low-compression form (fuel in the Middle East and India was expected to be awful), paired with manual transmissions and beefy rear-suspension components from the 450SEL. New Pirelli P6 tires shod stock steel wheels. Sturdy sand ladders were fixed to front and rear bumpers, although Broad recalls that they were made of titanium: “Light as a feather!” he said.

In true Mercedes-Benz motorsports fashion, an impressive array of service, repair and support facilities was organized. No corner was cut, no detail missed. Fuel-sponsor Mobil provided high-quality gasoline wherever possible and Waxenberger arranged for the company’s worldwide workshop facilities to be on tap at every major control point.

In fact, in nearly every respect, this was a true factory works team, with the keenest competition coming from a group of front-wheel-drive Citroën CX2400s, with Paddy Hopkirk and 1974 World Cup winner Jim Reddiex as headline drivers. Mercedes-man Waxenberger had thought deeply about this huge event: Each of his crews seemed to have a different strategy, though there were no team orders and no pecking order in the five-car lineup. Cowan was tipped as a possible winner, Tony Fowkes already had Mercedes-Benz rally experience in the U.K. and Warmbold was a fast, ambitious German hero; Alfred Kling, German rally champion in the 1960s, would drive the fourth machine as a back-up service car to the young bloods who would set the pace.

A fifth factory-prepared W123, piloted by Herbert Kleint, was charged with making a film of the unfolding event, with crewmember Herbert Vormbruck tasked with manning the camera. In the end, Car No. 27 made the film and finished the rally, taking eighth place in the bargain.

The first gigantic section of the Marathon would sweep across Europe, Turkey and the Middle East, ending in Madras, India. This included seven rough and flat-out special stages – with little chance for real sleep along the way.

Cowan’s strategy was simple: he and Malkin would share the driving and Broad would handle navigation, time checks and all the usual jobs a car manager does. “I should not have driven,” Broad said, “but in Turkey, there was a long journey ahead without stages. So I drove for about 100 kilometers while the other two slept, until Colin woke up and demanded that he get behind the wheel again!”

To ensure they didn’t get lost or suffer exhaustion, the team’s in-car routine was to always have two members awake at the same time. This, along with the scarcity of official rest halts – there were only two before Tehran, Paris and Athens, then overnight halts in Kabul and Bombay – meant that the event had to be planned like a military operation. Were they on pills – uppers and downers? The firm answer from Broad was that they were not.

Before the rally, all of the Mercedes-Benz crews practiced sections of the route. Broad and Fowkes drove the Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Iran sectors in a prototype 280CE. Although they didn’t survey the Australian stages in advance, the teams flew to Australia to reconnoiter while the cars were shipped from Singapore to Fremantle.   

Even before the rally’s start, it was clear that most of the 80 listed entrants would struggle to keep abreast of the main contenders: the five 280Es; a trio of professionally prepared Citroën CX2400s for Hopkirk, Claude Laurent and Patrick Vanson; and a single Porsche 911 Carrera for the Polish driver, Sobiesław Zasada. Of all these crews, Cowan, Fowkes and Warmbold seemed determined to win for Mercedes-Benz while former Monte Carlo Rally winner Hopkirk wanted to improve on his second place in the original London-Sydney event of 1968. Zasada – well, Zasada was an aggressive lone wolf who was expected to be a pacesetter – unless his Porsche broke down.

Europe to India

Sixty-nine crews began the rally in London. The first few days were a tour of major European cities, all of which had connections to Singapore Airlines: London, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan, Athens and Istanbul. The first flat-out special stage, with performance against the clock determining positions at the next start, was in Yugoslavia. Other challenging rough-surface stages followed, and by the time the cars reached the first rest halt, the battle between Cowan, Warmbold and Zasada’s Porsche was truly underway.

Warmbold’s 280E led. However, Cowan sensed that Warmbold might damage his car by over-driving it, whereas Cowan was aiming to finish in first place rather trying to be the first car all the time. Cowan decided to back off – going fast, but not flat-out fast – and await events. He was convinced that leading at Madras was not vital. In his own words, the real race would “all happen in Australia.” Sure enough, in Iran not long afterward, Warmbold badly overcooked a rough stretch of road, his 280E became airborne, and then landed heavily, breaking a drive shaft, rear suspension corner and road wheel. Warmbold’s rally was over.

From that point, Cowan, Fowkes and the Porsche swapped the lead, fighting through the human maelstrom in a blur of Indian cities before arriving in Madras, a mere three minutes apart in penalties.

Singapore sprint

From the port of Madras, 46 crews then embarked on a short sea voyage to Penang, Malaysia, before launching into a sprint down the Malaysian peninsula to Singapore. Despite dismal route markings, the same three cars – with Kling’s 280E shadowing close behind them and trailed by Hopkirk’s Citroën, reached Singapore unscathed. As the marathon record shows, Fowkes’s 280E led the Porsche by a mere 42 seconds, with Cowan only two minutes and 15 seconds adrift.

Australia and victory 

With all their cars now safely in Singapore, most of the Mercedes-Benz team flew ahead to Australia to survey the route. Meantime, the SS Kota Singapura, the ship contracted to ferry the surviving cars to Fremantle, Australia, was discovered to have a damaged propeller shaft, delaying departure on the weeklong voyage by two crucial days.

As a result of this setback, the marathon’s timetable in Australia slipped by a full day. Because there was only one available date for the rally’s high-profile finishing ceremony at the Sydney Opera House, the schedule was tightened, with entire sections in the Northern Territories abandoned. Even so, the cars would be constantly on the move – there was just one scheduled full-night rest halt on that final leg. To keep to time, Cowan’s 280E would have to average 78 mph from Perth to Ayers Rock in the center of Australia.Thus, the run from Perth to Sydney, by way of Alice Springs, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane – and every rough, grueling and blisteringly hot road-and-gravel track along the way – became a real road race. Then the Porsche faltered and the battle for first was between the two 280Es of the veteran Cowan and the young and aggressive, but inexperienced Fowkes. In the end, it was Fowkes who wilted, simply because he had insisted on driving two-up. Exhaustion set in and major mistakes were made. After leading at Perth, he slipped down the standings and ended 55 minutes off the pace at the end. By the time they reached Brisbane, with the hard parts largely behind them, the Cowan/Malkin/Broad trio felt they finally could relax and sleep in real beds for the first time in days; at last it looked like theirs was now truly “Job Done.”

And so it proved: When the challenging Marathon was all over, and the finishing cars and crews all gathered in front of Sydney Opera House, Mercedes-Benz jubilantly celebrated the four factory teams and their amazing 1-2-6-8 results.

Broad summed up the 1977 London-Sydney rally for The Star.

“Of all the drivers in the event, Cowan was undoubtedly the coolest and most professional,” Broad said. “Without drama, without expenditure of any superfluous emotion, he slowly but surely worked his way up to the front, always going just fast enough to remain comfortably ahead. Spectacular, no – he didn’t want to be spectacular. He wanted to win.”

For the 280E, this was an amazing success story – four out of five cars arrived in Sydney, looking as if they might be able to tackle it all again. The victorious vehicle had no mechanical dramas, suffered a single puncture in Afghanistan, and was completely unscathed in the harum-scarum run through Australia.

Just as it had so carefully prepared for every aspect of the London-Sydney Marathon rally itself, Mercedes-Benz mapped out meticulous plans to celebrate victory. Broad, expecting to meet his wife in Sydney, learned that the company had already diverted her to Stuttgart, booked flights for the crew to the factory and ensured that the winning car would be there to greet them when they arrived.

After being displayed to the entire Sindelfingen workforce, car No. 33 – still proudly carrying battle scars from the epic rally – went on a press tour and then into the Mercedes-Benz Museum, where it can be found to this day.

1977 LONDON-SYDNEY MARATHON

FIRST PLACE
Mercedes-Benz 280E • Car No. 33
Andrew Cowan, Colin Malkin, Michael Broad
(Rank Organization team)

SECOND PLACE
Mercedes-Benz 280E • Car No. 49
Tony Fowkes, Peter O’Gorman
(Johnson Rally Wax team)

SIXTH PLACE
Mercedes-Benz 280E • Car No. 59
Alfred Kling, Klaus Kaiser, Jörg Leininger        
(Alfred Kling, private entry)

EIGHTH PLACE
Mercedes-Benz 280E • Car No. 27
Herbert Kleint, Günter Klapproth, Harry Vormbruck
(Herbert Kleint, private entry)

Car No. 33, Mercedes-Benz 280E driven by Cowan, Malkin and Broad in First Place

Car No. 37, driven by Achim Warmbold, Jean Todt and Hans Willemsen, seen in the mountains of Southeastern Europe. An early rally leader, Warmbold was forced to retire after suffering catastrophic damage in Iran.

Factory image of 1977 rally car cockpit: Note toggle switches, Halda Twinmaster rally timer, and pens strapped to the dash.

Team cars in temporary service facility along the route. Mercedes-Benz set up service bases in Milan, Trieste, Veria, Lamia, Athens, Istanbul, Ankara, Kayserie, Muş, Van, Tabris, Teheran, Yazd, Tabas, Fariman, Kandahar, Kabul, Lahore, Delhi, Ajmer, Baroda, Bombay, Belgaum, Bangalore, Madras, Penang, Singapore, Perth, Alice Springs, Adelaide and Melbourne.

Car No. 49, Mercedes-Benz 280E of Fowkes and O'Gorman came in second place.

Car No. 59, Mercedes-Benz 280E driving by Kling, Kaiser and Leininger came in sixth place.

Car No. 27, Mercedes-Benz 280E of Kleint, Klapproth and Vormbruck came in 8th place.