Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

As a result of the home IT support work I do, I meet various people, and there's always time for a chat while we wait for the computer to do something. I meet people with remarkable achievements, who are now just living out a quiet retirement. One such person is Ken Bass, a former Formula 3 driver in the 60's, who then did some rallying in the 70's. With his permission, I am now able to re-distribute his first hand account of the adventure. It's not a Porsche, but it's the mechanical challenges that interest me, and hopefully some of you. Enjoy!

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1970 Daily Mirror World Cup Rally - A BMW story
I am sure all historic rally enthusiasts are aware that this year is the 40th Anniversary of the 16,000 mile World Cup rally. I thought the story of one of the private entries was well worth recording, particularly the events which happened after the rally was over.
Car No.90 was a BMW 2002ti driven by Ken Bass and Graham Waring. Ken was an ex-Formula 3 racing driver and property developer and his good friend Graham, an ex-Ford apprentice with his own business specialising in the preparation of saloon cars for racing, in Romford, Essex.
Ken decided that a left-hand drive specification car would be an advantage and bought the car direct from the BMW Concessionaires in London. The car was imported into Dover where Ken had it collected in January 1970 and delivered direct to Graham’s garage in Romford.
This brand new car was stripped of all the upholstery, all the seams were double welded and a roll cage and two race type front seats fitted. Competition spec springs and dampers were fitted, the engine was detuned to a compression ratio of 8.5:1 to suit the poor grade petrol in South America and an oil cooler was also built in - all the preparation work carried out by Ken and Graham.
With no service back-up, a comprehensive spares kit was loaded including 4 spare wheels/tyres, a radiator, and two dampers. To cope with the high altitude in South America, oxygen equipment was procured. On the 19th April this marathon event started from Wembley Stadium, with Ken & Graham starting exactly 1½ hrs after the first car, facing a 4500 mile ‘run’ to Lisbon arriving on 25th April. This European leg also comprised 5 primes (flat out special stages) over well known testing gravel roads. The BMW behaved itself, arriving at Lisbon 39th equal overall out of the 71 arrivals, a very respectable position – 25 cars had already retired due to mechanical problems or accidents. And so to South America with the remaining 71 cars safely transported to Rio de Janiero aboard the SS Derwent. At 20.00hrs on 8th May the cars departed in one minute intervals in the order of classification at Lisbon, with only another 11,500 miles to go !!
Their first problems occurred in Uruguay when, between Montevideo and Colonia when car no.55, the Royal Navy BLMC 1800, stopped suddenly to avoid some obstruction and Ken ran into them. The 1800 was dented but the BMW suffered a broken radiator, some body damage and lost virtually all their lights which was to prove a problem in the dust.
A second accident occurred with a head-on in Argentina on a mountain road with a lorry. This smashed the radiator and oil cooling system. As they had already used their spare radiator they got the lorry driver, who did not speak English, to tow them to his house in the middle of the mountain where he set to and repaired the radiator by soldering it up in darkness with only a gas light to see with - the oil cooler had to be by-passed. This seriously delayed Ken & Graham, who were now on the border of Bolivia. Soon after crossing the border they ran out of petrol, about 2 miles from a town which they could see in the darkness. They pushed the car into what seemed like a deserted town with the exception of a barn-like building, with lights coming from cracks in the door and very loud music. They banged on the door which was opened by a very inebriated policeman with a drawn pistol. They both cried out “Rally”- it was a wedding party, but they were taken in and they were obliged to eat cake and drink some red wine - it was about 2 hours before they could coerce some petrol. Covered in wedding confetti they quickly left and it was just after dawn broke at around 0800 that they arrived at the next Control where they found they were last – the Controller had almost given up on them and was about to close the Control. As they clambered from the car a considerable amount of confetti fell out which was picked up by one of the Daily Mirror Reporters. Next day in the Daily Mirror in the UK was “Ken Bass marries a Bolivian Mayor’s daughter for a tank of petrol”. Ken said “my wife understood that I had to get home to her !”
The next disaster was on the plateau of a mountain also in Bolivia where one of their dampers disintegrated, They could not remove the spring from the damper at the roadside so Graham took the spring with the old damper together with the spare and hitched a ride to the nearest town to find a garage where he could get the spring compressed to receive the spare damper.
As he left with the damper, Graham said to Ken “change the jets in the carbs as we were going to climb to a high altitude whilst I am getting the shock changed” By this time there were probably 20 Bolivians around the car, the majority of them ‘spaced out’ – it seemed that most Bolivians strolling along this road aimlessly chewed coca leaf (coked up!). Ken proceeded to change the jets, in doing so with the oil filter off and the venturis off the carburettors, petrol was dripping all over his hands. His spanner slipped on a nut created a spark and set light to the engine. He promptly went to their 4 gallon water can in the boot and emptied it on to the source of the fire, but this just created smoke and had no effect. Several Bolivians promptly scooped up handfuls of sand from the edge of the road and just threw it at the source of the fire all over the carburettors. It took Ken probably 1 – 2 hours to clean the sand up, washing and blowing with the foot pump. The fear was that a stone had got down one of the venturis into the cylinder head - anyway with luck it did not and it started without a big bang and kept running until the end of the rally.
Now with failing dampers the BMW pressed on but in Ecuador they finally ran out of luck when the rear suspension collapsed with a fractured trailing arm and they were out of the rally. Worried that they would be stranded in South America, they managed to find a lorry to transport the car to Buenventura in Columbia where a vessel was laid on to carry the rally round the ‘Darien Gap’. The Italian Lines ship M.S Verdi carried the remaining 26 runners plus the BMW and several other ‘walking wounded’ through the Panama Canal to Cristobal. Once ashore, Ken & Graham had the suspension welded and made their way to Mexico City.
During their journey through South America, Ken & Graham had been very pleased to see, on occasions, signs held up advertising free BMW service, probably because there were two other competing BMW’s, one of which finished just outside the top ten.
It was obviously a disappointment not to be classified as finishers, but as private entrants without any outside sponsorship they had proved to be tenacious competitors.
When the intrepid pair arrived in Mexico City, they were contacted by BMW who asked if they were prepared to loan the car for an engineering inspection and evaluation of the car. Ken agreed and the car was shipped from Mexico to Cannes, France where it was collected by Graham who drove the car to BMW at Munich. BMW kept the car for 5 months and then transported it to Dover where Ken picked it up on a lorry. BMW had made an inventory of the body parts required to repair the car and these were shipped with the car to Dover, free of charge. Ken had the work done by a bodyshop in Romford at the cost of £650 and then promptly sold the car for £850 which he later regretted.
However, this was not the end of the story of car No.90 on the 1970 World Cup rally.
BMW Concessionaires, Park Lane, London invited Ken & Graham to their 1970 Christmas party, where Ken was asked to say a few words about his experiences with the 2000ti on the rally (Graham was unable to attend because he was off ski-ing !). This was received well by the guests and it was a great shock to Ken when he was then presented with the keys of a new BMW 2.8, their current top of the range model !!!
What an amazing final chapter to their Mexican adventure – I wonder if there are any other rally competitors who have met with such generosity from a car manufacturer ?