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The Crankhandle Chronicle
JANUARY 2015
Tales of Our Cape Motoring Pioneers
By Derek Stuart-Findlay
DOUGIE VAN RIET
T
he talented and energetic Dougie van
Riet is held in high esteem in the annals
of South African motor racing. Born in
Kalk Bay in 1907 where his father managed a
local dairy, as a youngster he herded cows
across the local mountain slopes. Physically
he was built like a jockey and at school at St
Joseph’s College van Riet soon revealed his
sporting prowess as a champion gymnast,
swimmer and equestrian show jumper. Van
Riet bought his first motorcycle in 1922 and
recorded his first win three years later in the
Killarney Speed Trials held on the old
Malmesbury Road. 1929 was a busy year for
the young man, by then an executive in the
prominent estate agency Victor Jones. He
achieved his first big victory, the Villiersdorp
Cup Trial, on an Ariel 350 that year, and soon
afterwards supervised the team that laid out
the Rietvlei Speedway at Milnerton. To
compete on the track he bought a 1927 Austin
Seven tourer and he and his best mate, the
superb mechanic George Anderson, modified
it for racing, while his passenger Denne
Hawes used his motorcycle racing experience
to cantilever himself out from the back seat to
stabilise the car on corners. Their success soon
attracted the attention of Eddie Small, the MD
of F. Robb & Co, the agent for their Austin
spares, Anderson was taken on as chief
mechanic and van Riet as a salesman and
public relations officer. The tourer was soon
joined by a 1930 Austin Ulster sports car and
the cars were modified to contest aggressively
in track races and hill climbs. Van Riet then
acquired a supercharged Ulster and in 1931
won the Saldanha Bay Trial and, a year later,
six scratch races at Rietvlei in this car, setting
up a lap record for the track. But motorcycle
racing was still in his blood and van Riet and
Anderson were the only two motorcyclists to
finish in the Port Elizabeth trial on their BSA
500s, just six of 27 entries finished the
punishing 1 140 mile course. All this racing
activity warranted additional premises and
these were found in a rather run-down area in
the upper end of town between Hudson and
Chiappini Streets, the popular team was
immediately adopted by the local community
and soon kids were racing past the garage in a
soapbox with ‘Dougie van Riet Racing’
emblazoned on the side. A keen and gifted
Dougie Van Riet racing the Austin Brooklands
amateur pilot, van Riet obtained his flying
licence in 1933 and the famous Cobham’s
Flying Circus invited him to take part in an
aerial display at the controls of an Avro Avian
at Young’s Field in Wynberg. During the
following year van Riet rode probably his best
motorcycle race when he came second on his
BSA 500 to SA Champion Joe Sarkis on his
racing Sunbeam in the South African TT at
Port Elizabeth. F. Robb & Co became Robbs
Motors in 1935 when the Studebaker agency
and a number of British franchises were
acquired. By this stage van Riet and Anderson
had formed the Mossie Racing Team, which
included Vic Proctor as a prominent
motorcycle racing teammate, and in 1936 a
BSA Scout front-wheel-drive sports car was
added to the stable. This car became van Riet’s
choice for off-road hill climbs after gutter
bolts had been inserted through the front tyres
and three large nuts attached to each, the BSA
ripped its way up the hills leaving most other
cars spinning their rear wheels hopelessly in
its wake. In the same year a monster
Indianapolis special was imported by the
Studebaker dealer team to compete in the
prestigious Kimberley 100 race. It was
powered by a 5.2 litre straight-eight engine
and could only be described as ‘demonic’,
after testing the car on the Malmesbury Road
the designated driver refused to take it out
again. Van Riet and Anderson tried it out and
soon found that the chassis was cracked, one
shock absorber was out of action and the car
had no brakes. After a complete rebuild van
Riet took the car up to Kimberley and, after
Mario Mazzacurati had nearly forced him into
a storm water drain on a practice run, van Riet
sent him spinning off the track and went on to
raise the lap record by 16 mph. It was not a
good start to their relationship as racing
drivers but they later became good friends.
Van Riet’s first foray into international
racing was in 1934 at the 1st SA Grand Prix at
East London. Sir Herbert Austin had sent
Robbs one of only three single-seater Austin
specials ever built. It had been designed for
sustained high speeds on the steeply banked
Brooklands track with a 749 cc four-cylinder
engine fed by a Murray Jamieson supercharger that was almost as large as the engine
itself. Van Riet tried it out on the East London
circuit and was horrified, its three-speed
gearbox was totally wrong for normal racing
with enormous gaps between ratios, and its
handling he described as ‘spooky’. His welldeveloped Ulster was a lot quicker around the
track, so he dropped the Brooklands engine
into it but found that with insufficient time for
testing the carburettor on local fuels, the plugs
The Crankhandle Chronicle
Dougie and Pearl in the 1936 BSA Scout
fouled up, the exhaust valves deteriorated
rapidly and he was forced to retire after the
second lap. Back in Cape Town with the works
engine still installed in the Ulster, van Riet
won four of the five Cape Town hill climbs
during 1935. In October that year he and
Anderson set a speed record of 10 hours 40
minutes in the unblown Ulster for the 525
miles from Cape Town to George, over the
Montagu Pass and down the Langkloof to Port
Elizabeth. The tarred road ended at Somerset
West and to cope with the middelmannetjies
the front track of the Ulster had been widened
and the wheelbase lengthened. They were
determined to improve the record on the return
journey and when the clutch started slipping at
Riviersonderend, water was poured into the
bell housing to distort and lock up the clutch
plate, and after a push start they were able to
shave three minutes off the record.
The single-seater Austin Brooklands was
completely rebuilt and entered for the first big
race held in the Cape in January 1937, the 1st
Grosvenor Grand Prix, against the magnificent Auto Unions driven by von Delius and
The 1937 Kimberley 100. From the left: Dougie Van Riet,
Frank Thompson and George Anderson
Rosemeyer. The Austin was heavily
outgunned but van Riet was able to annoy
Rosemeyer intensely when he overtook him
on the sharpest corner of the course, Dead
Man’s Toe, going on to take seventh place as
the first South African home. Later that year
van Riet entered a team of three Austins to
compete in the Kimberley 100, he drove the
single-seater Brooklands, Anderson the
blown Ulster and Frank Thompson the
unblown Ulster. The Austin team cleaned up
the 100-mile fourteen-lap race when
Thompson finished first, van Riet third and
Anderson fifth.
But van Riet’s greatest triumph was to come
on 16 December 1937 at the 2nd Rand Grand
Prix held on the Earl Howe circuit. For this
race he and Anderson worked out appropriate
gear ratios and a fuel mix for the rarified Reef
altitude. This time the competition came
mainly from the Italian Scuderia Ambrosiana
team, led by Count Giovanni Lurani, driving
immaculately prepared Maseratis, while other
major threats were posed by the four-car ERA
team led by Raymond Mays and the rapid MG
Nothing too big or
too small!
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R-Type driven by Roy Hesketh. For 49 laps of
the short, hilly circuit van Riet and Hesketh
were locked in a wheel-to-wheel scrap, with
Hesketh just ahead, then van Riet made his
move by using the extra revs he had shrewdly
kept in reserve and managed to break away for
a fine victory and the high point of his career.
During World War II van Riet rose to the rank
of major in the South African Armoured Corps
and was awarded an MBE. In 1948 he won the
Van Riebeeck Trophy at Paarden Eiland in the
Austin Brooklands, setting fastest lap of the
day. Dougie and his wife Pearl retired a few
years later to Gordon’s Bay, where he went on
to become the local harbour master for 21
years and a founding member of the NSRI.
Dougie van Riet died in September 2003 at the
great age of 96, mourned as a legend in South
African motor racing and seafaring circles.
Acknowledgements to
South African Grand Prix by Brud Bishop,
CAR magazine July and August 1986,
Cape Times 25 October 1935, Cape Argus
11 September 2003 and Mark Palmer.
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