THE IDEA for the London to Sydney Marathon came about over a lunch between Sir Max Aitken, chairman of Beaverbrook Newspapers, and Tommy Sopwith, racing driver. From the initial idea things moved quickly and an overland route from London to Bombay, shipment of the competitors to Fremantle in Australia on the P&O liner Chusan, and a tough route across Australia to the finish in Sydney - a total of 10,000 miles - was soon devised.
Ford, BMC and Citroën were expected to provide the main competition with several outsiders capable of springing a surprise in the final results. However, most commentators discounted the sole Hillman Hunter entered by Rootes and driven by a team of drivers led by Andrew Cowan. BMC believed their modified Austin 1800 "Land Crabs" were likely winners on account of their great strength and their ability to cover rough roads at high speed thanks to their Hydrolastic suspension.
The lead BMC entry was to be the 1800, driven by Irishmen Paddy Hopkirk and Alec Poole together with Tony Nash.
After a huge publicity build-up the London to Sydney Marathon started from London's Crystal Palace, where massive crowds turned out to witness the start of the adventure. The BMC cars were seen off by Lord Stokes and were very much the pre-event favourites.
Overland to Bombay passed without incident for most of the crews, but when they arrived in India huge crowds turned out everywhere to witness their passing. Paddy Hopkirk recalls, "it was like driving through a sea of people - all immaculately dressed in their best white robes.
"You had to swerve the car to get them to pull back, and sometimes you couldn't get out of the car to service it - while of course people would also pinch bits off the cars."
The Hopkirk crew were placed 4th at Bombay and confident that they would be able to push for the lead in Australia.
The sea voyage on the Chusan was apparently memorable for the wonderful food and great parties.
It seems the parties developed to the point where the captain of the Chusan took the precaution of having the swimming pool drained each night and covered with a net in case any inebriated rally crews managed to fall in!
Australia proved tougher than any of the crews had anticipated and the Hopkirk 1800 fractured its steering rack housing on one of the stages and lost further time on the road section after the Snowy Mountain Stage.
By now it looked as if the Citröen of Lucien Bianchi and Jean-Claude Ogier would be the winners but on the last day they were involved in an accident with a car driven by a local. It was a serious head-on crash and Bianchi - who was asleep at the time - received serious injuries and was trapped in the wreckage. Hopkirk and his crew were first upon the scene and having extinguished a fire, set about freeing Bianchi from the wreckage.
While all this drama was taking place, the Hillman Hunter of Andrew Cowen which had always been in the leading group came through to take a truly memorable win and the £3,000 prize money.
The London to Sydney Marathon was a great success and started a short-lived fashion for very long rallies, but none of the subsequent events matched the toughness and drama of the original event which came to be known as "The Long Drive".