Ok...what is the speed record that any of you can remember, driving from Swartkops Garage to CapeTown? By Who? And When?
My father was talking to me and says he knew a guy called Chummy Pretorius, who in 1972, in the latest Jag, drove on the dirt road from Oranjemund to Steinkopf, then the tar all the way to Cape Town in just over four and a Half Hours.... Anyone... I knew that Julian Louw did it in 5 and a half hours...anyone else know something?
e180
My longest time of 4 hrs, but only to Steinkopf LOL
Old VW Bus
I can remember Greg, Stuart Radcliff and myself taking 17 hrs, we ran out of petrol. By the time we got to CT it was time to come back
laughpoint
Hey Mike you forgot about Hugo.....! bling1
Ja...but Hugo whereIgo, does not count, coz he drives in a straight line, through the mountains...
Anything less than 7.5 hours would be virtually impossible. I know I tried in my 1960 Chev Impala V8. This car could cruise at 110 miles per hour all day long. Other fast cars in those days were the Mazda RX2 (Dixon brothers) Alfa 2000 Belina (Keith Gass) Alfa 2000 GTV (Derek Anderson). And yes I remember Chummy Pretorius, his Jag XJ6 was slightly souped up and If I recall gave some trouble once. I bought my first 1600 VW Combi from Chummy. The Combi took forever to get to Cape Town.
Hi Leon,
I agree with you - if you do the mathematics you will see that to travel the 800km to Cape town in 5 hrs you have to average 160km/h and that will take some doing even with tar all the way - what about the pass, speed cops etc.
regards Angus
Quite agreed .. I hear too many of these impossible stories / urban legends ... cape town to PE in X hours .. fuel consumption fantastic even at those purported breakneck speeds .. etc ?? Huh !!
Solar geysers that are not on electrical backup and timer and the household gets warm water even through winter ??
Sure if the road to CT was dead straight and one had a car capable of holding to average of 160 KPH then there we go by all means ..
Methinks some people live in dreamland ...
Just plain impossible on the roads that i know to well
I travelled a lot in Germany in times of no speed limit. Fast car up to 230 kmh to get an average of 160, thats the speed you need. No way a damm stupid.
Go back to the mathematics !!!!
I've done it in 1 1/2 hours in a Jet
Strange thing talking about travel times ... and yes alfreds comment on Jet travel .. In Europe .. on a business trip .. Me and my one director wanted to travel from Brussels to Dusseldorf .. we debated air or rail .. and opted for the train journey ( he was gaga about rail travel anyhow ) .. if we had to travel to Airport check in wait .. take off land , disembark .. collect luggage .. travel from airport to city .. i think we would have scored about half an hour .. instead we had a relaxed high speed train journey though some beautiful countryside quaint villages , cities .. a lekker lunch .. arrived fresh unstressed ,, took our luggage and went of to respective accomodation .. Hurrah first world travel ...
I did Cape Town to Omund in 6 hours on sunday average speed of 133.33km/h I stopped once for petrol for 10min there was almost no traffic and the weather was awesome it is intirely possible to do it in 5 hours but my car just cant maintain that speed without breaking something
We did it in 6.5 hours on one of our trips, stopped twice for petrol, roads were quiet and on the long stretches Mike was averaging 170km's - the bakkie was purring along, as if she was made to drive at that speed - not bad for a 2002 2.5 Turbo Diesel!
Good job my mom was sat in the back though or else Mike would have a got an uhmm, uhmm - watch your speed!
motorbike
Ssssssh! :wow1:
Oh, and we stopped for a quick bite to eat at the Klawer Wimpy!
image19
With no one else in the car i think it helped my time quite a bit! You know how woman are they always looking to do a little shopping! sorriso2
Used to do that trip regularly in the 70's and early 80''s. Can't really remember how long it used to take, but do recall that "fuel" consumption was around 2 cans per 100 km..!! image 11
I think I might take the cake on this one, met up with some old school mates (whose parents owned the steakhouse/rooms/petrol station opposite the Clanwilliam dam) joined a party and hit CT all of 48 hours later. Cool hey! drinking-41
well done Yvette in true O'mund style .. i recall I always used to do a good clip in my Club when travelling solo .. minimal stops ...seeemd to be able to do it in about 8-9 hours .. till the one night I agreed to travel in convoy as one guy was taking his nissan down for trade in and it was problematic s o it was me in front and an unnamed passenger who promised to keep me awake by keeping conversation incase the journey got long .. did the usual leave town at 18 00 expecting CT at about 02:30 .. well little nissan was a nasty nissan .. it broke down .. fuel filter and other troubles .. each time got it on the go including ditching the fuel filter .. each time we ate padkos ( I would never eat just stop for a smoke and a quick cooldring stretch and on my way again ) at some point we left nasty nissan behind .. it needed first aid so stopped at some or other town .. eventually we were at picketburg or somewhere at sunrise my " talkative passenger " now with seat rolled down and fast asleep .. suddenly I remembered nothing .. next thing i know I'm doing some crazy speed inexcess of 140 and heading for a concrete road marker on the other side of the road Haaqh ! yank steering wheel .. now heading for road marker on other side of the road .. yank steering wheel again .. this excercise repeated a few times with car bumping off side off road into gravel and flying back onto road tryes screeching , by now sleeping beauty passenger wide awake and clinging to the dashboard .. ( could swear he left finger claw marks in dashboard and maybe emptied his guts ) throughout this whole episode I must take my hat off to the handling capabilities of the little citroen club .. I'm sure any othe car would have rolled especially with the leaving of the road and flying back on again at high speed .. got car under control after the hectic manouvres .. had a shitfit with passenger and told him to now talk talk talk as I was tired .. got to CT with no more incident dropped passenger off .. next time .. no convoy ... I want to do my own speed and time ...
I too hate convoys.... in fact if MR no Name brand stops to tail me for the next 100km... I would rather pull of the road...... hate tailgating.....
image24 image14
8_1_220(55) There are guys who claim to do it under 5 hrs. When you look at the cars they drive, it might be possible. Dangerous but possible. I was doing about 150 outside the Port one day when a certain rep from Springbok in a silver bullet came past me at the speed of white lightning. I probably was not even thinking about the pass yet when he must have been in Springbok.
It's not uncommon to hear of Alex Bay Border to Springbok.... in 90 minutes...... image14
In Context, approx 250 km in 1.5 hours gives you an average speed of 167 Km per hour.
Through Port Nolloth, through the twists in the Annenous pass, Steinkopf, Think about it. From Steinkopf to Okiep & Springbok one has to look at 240 to 250 to make up for time lost on the pass & what about the trucks etc.
I also wondered about that,,,,,,,,? Werner Reishauer did it in 90 minutes.... and I reckon Ol' Klonk Visser from CBS beat that.....
Strange but true......
Quote from: Michael Alexander on October 26, 2008, 02:30:41 PM
It's not uncommon to hear of Alex Bay Border to Springbok.... in 90 minutes...... image14
These guys are goooood
We'll be taking it easy ...
With a car full of Yorkshire woman, I should hope so......... image14
Hi all,
Way back in the early Sixties Roger (?) and I – being young, ten foot tall, bullet-proof and not overly blessed with brain – opted to have a go at the road speed record from Cape Town to Oranjemund which then stood at seven hours and 10 minutes.
I was driving a late model Ford Fairlaine V8 with a skimmed down head. I can\t remember the exact tolerances but they were tight. The car had a new set of steel belt radials with mud pattern treads. It had an 80-litre tank, brimful for the occasion. As I recall, we reached the bridge on the smell of the last litre.
Speed record attempts were taken seriously in those days. Stopwatch starts and finishes were monitored at each end and the report went to a committee which convened in Casey's Bar. A successful attempt could be expensive, depending on how many were drinking in the bar when it was announced.
The distance was set at 503 miles measured between Jimmy's Café in Long Street and the gate at the bridge. Jimmy, an ex-Oranjemunder, saw us off from Long Street at precisely 10am. The departure time was then posted on a card to one of the committee members. At the bridge the arrival time was taken by whoever was on security duty and phoned through to Casey's.
The times were then chalked up on a small blackboard behind the bar to await the next meeting of the committee. They would pronounce learnedly, and at length, while you kept their glasses filled. If you were a winner, it was announced to the bar at large which then joined in the celebration while you picked up the tab. As I said at the beginning, we were not overly blessed with brain.
Of the 503 mile distance, just over 100 was tarseal. The rest was dirt or gravel and, for much of Namaqualand, drifted sand. We chose a Friday because that meant the graders would have been working for five days and maybe, just maybe, have graded most of it. Otherwise you risked hitting a "middel-mannetjie" of debris heaped up by the action of massive six-wheel articulated trailers operated day and night by Jowells Transport.
We reached the bridge at 4.55pm, a total elapsed time of 6 hours and 55 minutes. The time was vital. The bridge closed at 5pm each night and there was no appeal. If you didn't make it you had the choice of either sleeping in your car to await the 6am opening time or go back to the Port Nolloth Hotel and brak water coffee.
We never saw a speed cop throughout the entire trip. If they spotted us it could only have been our dust cloud. We knew motorbike pursuit in Namaqualand conditions was suicide so we felt fairly confident. I had my own stopwatch on the dash and keep one eye on the time. I hate to think what speeds we were doing on the final stretch but on stopping at the bridge Roger was white-knuckled. My fingers had locked around the wheel and I had difficulty getting them to uncurl.
The car? It lost the full exhaust system (somewhere around Steinkopf I think – the security guard told us he could hear us coming from two kilometers away) and the sump had a hairline crack. The tyres were virtually shredded and had to be junked.
Sadly, our record stood for a bare two months until another ten minutes was slashed off it by an even less brain-endowed pair. Two subsequent attempts resulted in two guys writing themselves off, whereupon Stan Devlin, the general manager, stepped in and forbade all registration of road speed attempts on pain of dismissal.
Thereafter, without the official oversight any records set up were suspect and road speed attempts stopped. Intrigued to find they have come back into fashion. However, take it from a doddering oldie, the no-brain aspect still applies.
Regards,
Bob
very interesting account Bob. I would imagine that with today's tar roads and modern high performance pocket rockets, i.e Golf GTI's, Opel OPC's and the like that handle a far better than the old 3 ton yank tanks we drove in those early days, 7 hours 55minute could be bettered. Heaven help you if you get caught travelling at the high speeds to achieve or better 7hours 55minutes.
My trip up in november my little Clio 3 passengers up .. finally left CT at nine am stopped for tea and snack at clanwilliam .. bitterfontein to fill up .. springbok to get sunglasses for bev and have another snack .. then a stopover at mc dougals ... arrived at bridge borderpost at 5 pm .. considering all the stops not too shabby ??
been thinking about this some more. OMD to Cape Town under 6 hours is a myth. I defy anyone to be able to do OMD to Cape Town in anything under 6 hours or so. Come on guys, as Clive mentioned you'd have to do speeds in excess of 240k's an hour for long stretches to make up for all the passes, corners, stopping for fuel stops, stopping to have a bite to eat. Your car would guzzle fuel and probably even start to overheat. What about other cars, trucks and busses on the road.
Too true Leon .. 6 hours is totally impossible .. 8 hours + - realistic in " relative " safety .. must admit I had white knuckle moments .. took great advantage of the long straight stretches .. but yes paid the penalty in fuel consumption ... close to 11/ 100 Km ... but no overheating .. engine seemed to thrive on the paces i was putting her through ... but i was running late as intent was to leave at 06:00 but yes by the time the girls got through airport the night before and I fed them and we chatted it became 02:00 I woke up at five and decided it would be suicidal to travel in a tired state .. lay in a bit longer .. . we left home at 08:00 realised I had left passport at home whenI reached century city .. had to turn back ... battled through incoming traffic .. got back to N 7 turnoff at abut 09:00 and yes got there by 17:00 ..
We did it in under 3 days once. Stopped in Springbok (Masonic Hotel), Stopped In Piketberg (family) Cape Town early next day.
I do it this way
O/mund - S/bok - 2hrs distance 240k's
S/bok - Klaver - 2hrs distance 280k's
Klaver - Table Veiw - 2hrs 30min distance 280k's due to passes ect takes a little longer
30min to refill in klaver and a quick pee
7hrs
Anybody doing it in 4hrs didn't get out of bed in the morning they still dreaming?