Rough Escort Was A Heap Of Junk

Newcastle Herald

Saturday March 27, 1999

WHEN dual Australian Rally Champion Neal Bates was 16-years old he decided he needed wheels.

So, armed with $1200 and the faintly skewed logic of most teenage males Bates set off in search of a car.

He eventually found his pride and joy hiding behind a blue oval Ford badge.

`It was a Mk1 Escort RS2000, a 1970 model,' he recalled.

`It was very rough. Basically the body was a heap of junk but it went really well.'

The Ford was in Bates' hands before he was legally allowed to drive it on the road but although he was unable to drive on the public roads of his native Canberra he was not barred from motorsport.

`I did some hillclimbs with it, lap dashes, motorkhanas, that sort of thing.'

Was it the car that started him on his quest for Australia's rallying crown?

`No, that came later. A few of my mates went rallying and it looked like fun so I bought a Datsun 1600 and joined them.

`I won my first rally by seven minutes and its been downhill ever since!' he laughed.

Bates bought the Datsun in 1984 after waving goodbye to the old Escort.

`When I got the Datsun it was already running as a rally car with an 1800cc engine, a four-speed gearbox and drum brakes.

`By the time I'd finished it had a 2.4 litre engine, a five-speed gearbox and four-wheel discs.'

Parting with the trusty `Datto' was something of a painful separation.

`It was in the final round of the 1987 NSW Rally Championship. I was leading the rally and leading the championship and I rolled the car.'

When he gets the time he putters around in a Toyota Prado four-wheel drive but the car he would most like to own, he says, is the road-going version of the Toyota Le Mans sports-racing car.

`Now that would be something!'