Meet Glyn Hall, the mastermind behind South Africa’s Dakar onslaught

Motorsport breeds amazing, prodigious talent, with drivers generally the first to be honoured for their achievements. The adrenaline game also breeds absolutely brilliant engineers. They can conceive, design and build competition machinery on a fraction of the budgets and in a fraction of the time spans enjoyed by their more sheltered contemporaries in the ordinary motor industry.

Glyn Hall is, at the age of 64, the maestro of all South African motorsport engineers. Currently, he is the main force behind South Africa’s proud and competitive presence in the Dakar Rally – annually the world’s toughest motorsport event.

Last year, the Dakar was won overall by a South African built Gazoo Racing Toyota Hilux in the hands of Nasser Al-Attiyah and navigator Mathieu Baumel. The victory was the first of that magnitude for a South African created vehicle and a watershed moment for Hall, who has been established as one of the Dakar’s foremost team entrants over the last 18 years.

Giniel de Villiers drove the Glyn Hall designed and built Nissan Primera to four South African Touring Car titles, from 1997 to 2000. Picture: Tony Alves

The story has a much earlier beginning when, 40 years ago, a fresh-faced Briton arrived in South Africa, working as a technician for the Chevrolet Dealer Team and later Sigma Motorsport, run by then team manager Geoff Mortimer. Mortimer allowed Hall to build a 2.5-litre engined Chevair for rallies, and Hall immediately won the then Transvaal Rally championship with the car.

He was noticed by Ford team manager Bernie Mariner, who supplied Hall with a Escort BDA for 1982 that would clinch that year’s South African Rally Manufacturers’ title. Hall switched from driving to rally engineering in 1983, helping to build and prepare Audi Quattros and Golf GTIs for Volkswagen. Between 1984 and 1989 he built and prepared dozens of Golf rally cars, which became the country’s most popular forest racing vehicle.

In 1990 Hall and navigator Martin Botha took a Golf GTI to the overall South African Rally title, by dint of winning their class on a regular basis. Hall switched to Ford Motorsport in 1991 and built two Ford Lasers, with which he and Sarel van der Merwe won various rallies over the next two seasons.

Leeroy Poulter and Elvine Coetzee took a Toyota Auris to Toyota SA’s 100th national rally championship victory during 2012, plus that year’s South African rally title. Picture: Dave Ledbitter

In 1993 he was asked to build two Nissan Sentra Touring Cars, and he took over Nissan Motorsport at the end of that year. The Sentras did not win often, and the team signed Capetonian youngster Giniel de Villiers as driver in 1995, while Hall designed and built two Primera race cars unveiled two years later.

Hall, De Villiers and the Primera became a major force, winning the South African Touring Car championship title the next four years in a row, while setting the category’s lap record at every South African race circuit. Touring Car racing died in 200 and Nissan asked Hall to design an off-road racing bakkie, to boost the manufacturer’s sales in that segment. He did just that for them. After switching from track to off-road, De Villiers in 2001 won the South African Off-Road championship overall with a Hardbody – then went on to do it another eight times in a row.

A South African built Hardbody was sent to the Dakar Rally in 2002 and Stephane Peterhansel won a stage for the Nissan Europe team. Nissan Japan then asked Hall to build them three Dakar bakkies in 2003 and the next two years De Villiers, Colin McRae and Ari Vatanen won many stages in the event. Nissan took the Dakar programme in-house in 2005, never won a thing and withdrew in 2006.

Glyn Hall celebrates with Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel after winning the 2019 Dakar.

In 2010 Hall moved to Toyota under his Hallspeed banner, took over the manufacturer’s motorsport programme and started off by winning the 2012 Off-Road title overall with Duncan Vos, in a newly built Hilux bakkie. The same year they went to the Dakar rally with Vos and De Villiers, with the latter finishing third overall.

Locally, Leeroy Poulter and Elvine Coetzee took a Toyota Auris to Toyota SA’s 100th national rally victory during 2012, plus that year’s South African rally title. In 2013, 2015 and 2018, Gazoo Racing Hilux entries driven by De Villiers and Nasser Al-Attiyah finished second overall in the Dakar Rally.

Then, last year, Al-Attiyah put Hallspeed, the Toyota Hilux and Hall in the Dakar Rally’s hall of fame with a famous win, before scoring another second place this year. While that was happening, Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings won the 2019 and 2020 South African Cross Country titles overall with a Gazoo Toyota Hilux.

The Glyn Hall designed and built Toyota Hilux count among the world’s top Cross Country racing cars.

“We are ready for the 2021 Dakar, this time running Hilux bakkies for Nasser, Giniel, Henk and Shameer Variawa,” says Hall. While building the 2021 bakkies, the Hallspeed team ran into problems due to Covid-19 lockdown regulations and curfews. They solved that by the simple expedience of staying at work full time. That is the kind of attitude that wins Dakar Rallies.

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