Highway team race for podium place

HIGHWAY duo Rob Prece and Kingsley Wood took part in the Simola Hillclimb recently and finished an impressive second.

The race, which has firmly established its status as one of the world’s most exciting and competitive motorsport hillclimb events, takes place in Knysna during May. The event is run over three days with cars dragging away to ‘race against the clock’ every minute up the steep and windy hill.

During this time, the usually quiet garden-route town comes to life, and over 17 000 spectators attend.

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All of South Africa’s top drivers, as well as overseas stars, participate in the festival, and some drivers even build special cars.

The festival kicks off with the Free Fan Festival followed by the first track action – ‘Classic Car Friday’ – which caters exclusively for historic, classic and vintage cars – pre-1985.

Purely invitational entries are always oversubscribed for Classic Car Friday.

This year, the honour of being invited to Knysna’s prestigious event fell to the Highway-based motor-racing team of Rob Prece and Kingsley Wood and their unique PowerKing Golf.

The PowerKing Golf

In 1979, Wood, who is a Pinetown factory man, built the racing car to his own design in his garage at home and welded a space frame together from metal tubes which were laid out on a wooden platform supported by four fuel drums.

The car was constructed for the Manufacturers Challenge racing class where he competed against the factory-entered supercars of the era. The ‘Challenge’ was eventually stopped due to the prohibited costs incurred by the car companies involved.

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During the lead-up to the event, Prece and Wood undertook long after-work hours of frantic preparation to restore the 42-year-old racing car for Simola. This included preparing the turbocharged engine to its original 1979 specification in order to conform to the ‘period’ rules.

Then, overnight, Rob ‘dashed’ some 1 200kms to Knysna, and after 18 hours of towing, the racer and trailer finally arrived at the destination.

“It is a daunting hill to drive, and besides the tricky corners, the bumpy surface makes it a tricky experience,” said Prece.

Classic Car Friday

Despite being a newcomer to the track, Prece improved his times on each run and eventually finished second in the class – a scant tenth of a second slower than the winner. Interestingly, the PowerKing also outpaced many much more modern cars that ran on the weekend.

“It is an unbelievable event and a privilege to take part in. The organisation is superb, and next year, we will be much faster, having more time to prepare and make adjustments to the suspension and motor to suit the hill,” said Kingsley.

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