True veterans
Seen recently on the Tanzanite One Arusha Rally was the Datsun 260Z of Jayant Shah and Lofty Drews who were using it as an opportunity to try out the car prior to their participation in the Kenya Airways Safari Classic Rally in November. If Safari experience is a pre-requisite for success, these two gentlemen have it in large quantities. Between them they have done the original Safari Rally no less than thirty-six times, on four occasions together.

Throughout his rally career, Jayant Shah has remained faithful to Datsun. His first appearance on a Safari was in 1973 in a Datsun 1600SSS but it was not until 1978 at the wheel of a Datsun 160J that he finally got himself on the scoreboard with a ninth place overall. The following year he was twelfth, then eighth, then fifth and finally in 1983 driving one of the new Nissan 240RS he took his best result with a fourth place. He remained with a 240RS until Group B was cancelled at the end of 1986 by which time he had done the Acropolis Rally twice, finishing just out of the top ten on both occasions, and taken seventh place on the Argentina Rally. He then used a Nissan 200SX for three Safari rallies, two of them with Lofty, before dropping out of major rallying after retiring on the 1990 Safari.

Lofty Drews’ rally career stretches back even further. He did his first Safari with Tony Fall in 1968 with a BMC 1800 prepared at the factory but entered by the local dealer, Benbros. When Fall moved to drive Lancia, Lofty followed and finished fifteenth with Fall in 1969 in a Lancia Fulvia that got there largely thanks to the mechanical ingenuity and endurance of its crew. In 1970, Lofty was promoted to accompany Sandro Munari and oversaw the preparation of the Fulvias at his own house outside Nairobi. They were leading when they crashed on the last night while a broken drive shaft robbed them of any chance the following year. With no Lancias in 1972, Lofty drove with Brian Culcheth in a works Triumph 2.5PI and finished thirteenth. In 1973, he accepted an offer from Shekhar Mehta and won outright with a Datsun 240Z. After that it was back for two years with Munari, taking third in a Fulvia in 1974 and second with a Stratos in 1975.

Rauno Aaltonen then took him on-board at Datsun for a six year period during which they finished second on the Safari three times before moving together to Opel for two near misses at winning with an Ascona 400 and then a second and fourth place with its successor, the Manta 400. A couple of rallies followed with Jayant Shah, including the trip to Argentina, and then two more rides for Opel in their front wheel drive Kadett which yielded a ninth place in 1987. At that point, the Drews family moved to their present base in Queensland, Australia. With the inauguration of the Kenya Airways Safari Classic in 2003, Lofty has found an excuse to return to East Africa – he was born in Tanzania – to renew his acquaintance with “proper rallying”.

The Shah family is well represented on the Kenya Airways Safari Classic as, in addition to Jayant and Lofty in their 260Z, Jayant’s daughter, Prina, and son-in-law, Ekya, are also competing. Interestingly, their chosen mount is not a Datsun – or a Lancia or an Opel – but a Colt Lancer GSR with a history of its own. It is the very car that Davinder Singh, Joginder’s brother, drove on the Safari of 1974. That was the year that Joginder took Mitsubishi’s first Safari victory and Davinder finished twelfth in this similar car.