South African motorsport legend Willie Hepburn passes away

The South African motorsport community learnt with sorrow about the death of veteran racer Willie Hepburn this week.

Aged 81, Hepburn died of natural causes at his home in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, on Tuesday.

After a motorsport career spanning 58 years, Hepburn lay down his helmet two years ago.

Where it started

During his tenure in the Adrenaline Game, he built, prepared and competed in a total of 31 circuit racing cars

In 1958, Willie went to work for legendary car tuner Basil Green in Edenvale as an apprentice mechanic.

He was immediately drawn to the motorsport side of the business, and found himself modifying Ford Anglias and Cortinas.

Most of the cars he worked on ended up on the race tracks of what was then Transvaal.

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In those days, you could race a road car in club events and many of the Basil Green customers did just that.

Willie wanted a race car too but could not afford to buy one. Thus, he created his own by shoe-horning a 1500 cc Cortina engine into the body of a Morris 1000 in 1965.

The “Mortina” proved seriously quick and Willie drove it to many class victories at the Wembley Hotrod track, the Krugersdorp Hillclimb and club races at Kyalami.

Legend takes-off

When he eventually rolled it, the car was replaced by a V8-engined Chevy II, that Hepburn drove in drag races at the Rainbow venue on the East Rand during the late 1960s.

In 1971, he took a road-going 1967 Chevrolet bakkie to the Kyalami Top Speed Runs and amid Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Jaguar E-Types and the like, set the day’s highest speed of 145 mph or 232 km/h. 

The arrival of the Rotary-powered Mazdas in the 1970s brought Willie the chance to work with a compact, lightweight powerplant that could yield amazing amounts of power.

Between 1975 and 1978 he built, tuned and successfully raced a variety of Mazda RX-2 and Capella models in both standard and modified form.

In the process, he won a large number of Inland Regional and National championship races.

From V8s to touring cars

In 1979 the powers that be created a Manufacturers’ championship for saloon cars with unlimited modifications.

Hepburn built an Opel Rekord V8 for that title chase, while also driving a Chevrolet Chevair in the Group One championship for standard cars.

In 1981, he built a Chevrolet SS that he raced that year and the next in the Star Modified Saloon Car Championship.

Sponsored by Eddie Keizan’s Tiger Wheels concern, Hepburn earned R1 000 per race victory – a lot of money, back then – and he proceeded to clinch the national title in 1982.

In 1983, the Mazda RX-7 arrived and Hepburn rekindled his relationship with rotary engines. For the next three years he raced RX-7 examples in both standard and modified form, winning the 1984 Group One title.

In 1984, the Mitsubishi Tredia arrived and the turbocharged flagship model proved an excellent race car in the all-new Stannic Group N championship for standard cars.

The Tredia Turbo was fast but suffered understeer and axle tramp while trying to transport massive amounts of power to the front wheels.

Willie’s example was destroyed in 1985 when it lost its brakes at the end of the old Kyalami main straight, passed eight other cars before Crowthorne Corner and rolled many times.

The next two years Willie raced a Mazda 323 in the ever-growing Stannic Group N series, winning his class on many occasions.

He returned to his true jungle in 1988, running a V8-engined Ford Sierra XR8, fondly nicknamed “Animal” in the WesBank Modified Saloon Car title chase. He also raced a Ford Laser in the Group N series.

Creating the legendary Opel V8

A long-term relationship with Opel started in 1989, when Hepburn was contracted to build five V8-engined Opel Rekords for the WesBank Modified title chase.

He drove one himself, while also running a successful privateer Group N Opel Kadett Superboss.

In a change of pace, he built a twin-turbocharged, seven-litre Pontiac TransAm in 1990 and set an overall South African Land Speed Record of 372 km/h on the N3 highway near Villiers.

It is still the highest speed ever recorded by a road legal car in South Africa.

He kept racing the Rekord in Modified races from 1991 to 1999, plus a number of outings in the Group N Superboss.

In 2000, he ran a Chevrolet Camaro in the WesBank V8 Saloon Car championship, while also visiting the United States to take a Ray Cohen McLaren to two victories at the Seattle Raceway.

The Camaro served until 2003, becoming a blueprint for four more customer cars, all built at Willie’s workshop.

Two-thousand-and-five and 2006 saw Hepburn race a Ford Mustang in the WesBank V8 Saloon Car title chase, while Hepburn continuing with the Rekord in club events.

Not ready to retire

In 2007, the year provisionally set for Hepburn’s retirement, he built a Chevrolet Corvette for the WesBank title chase, dubbed the “Flying Naartjie” due to its lurid orange colour.

He raced the Corvette until 2013 when he won a race at Killarney in the Western Cape. He was 71 – to this day the oldest person to win a national championship race in South Africa.

In between, Willie won a number of Historic Car races in the venerable Rekord and a Penske Camaro. The Rekord also did duty at the Simoa Hillclimb.

A huge crash with a Ford Capri Perana at Zwartkops in 2014 left Willie with cracked ribs and a temporary visual impairment.

He recovered to race the Capri, and received Motorsport South Africa’s ultra-rare Lifetime Achievement award at the end of the year.

Since then, Willie has run the Rekord in Super Saloon and Historic Car races.

 “I never went racing thinking I was a superb driver, but I knew I could make cars go really well – for me, that still is the challenge of racing.

“That is why I never raced for a factory team – I could never race a car without preparing it myself,” he said.

Willie and his wife Sue have been regular and popular visitors at local racetracks until just a month ago.

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