Peter is a full time boat and car-racing driver. His results are remarkable.
Just a few: 5x SA Barefoot Champion, Springbok waterski racing driver, 15x (in 21 years) SA Formula 1
Powerboat Champion, 1989 3rd in the Powerboat World Series.
Now he is doing Motorsports. He won the Wesbank class in an Opel V8 in 1994, got 3rd in the
V8 SASCAR (South African Stock Car Auto Racing) Series in 2000 and 2nd in 2001.
Peter´s Gunston Perana
Read what Peter wrote me:
Joe
Sorry I’ have taken so long, but I am busy building a race track just east of JHB,
and don’t have much spare time.
The Perana that I own was built in 1969 by Basil Green specifically to race in the 1970
SA saloon car championship. The car was built to full International FIA Group 5
specification and was 1 of 2 cars that Basil built.
My car was driven by Bobby Olthoff whilst the 2nd car was for Basil himself.
Unfortunately Basil wrote his car off the 1st day he tested it in a 240km crash on the
old Kyalami Grand Prix circuit going through Jukskei sweep. After surveying the damage
Basil and Ford SA decided against repairing the car.
The car made its debut in January 1970 and was on pole position with the fastest ever
saloon car time around Kyalami. It proceeded to win the race by almost three quarter of
a lap and recorded a lap time of 1min 36sec which was only 8sec slower than the then
Formula 1 lap record.
During the 1970 season the car won all but 2 national championship events and broke the
lap record at every circuit in SA.
At the end of 1970 the AA who where then the controlling body of motor sport in SA,
banned the car and produced new regulations for 1971. These regulations where
effectively based on a production racing car.
At this point Z181, which is my car, was stored in Basil’s workshop for a number of
years and was finally sold to an oval track driver in the then South West Africa.
We found the car in 1987 and proceeded to rebuild it from scratch. It is now exactly as
it raced and has been checked out by Basil himself.
By the way Basil is a good friend of mine, and in fact, he and his wife are my middle
daughter’s God-Parents.
The technical specification of the car is that it has a 4 bolt main 302 Ford V8, which
is fed by 4x48 down draft twin choke Webers, and puts out around 400 horsepower.
It still runs a standard 4 speed Ford top loader gearbox. And the original diff.
The brakes, believe it or not, are Ford V6 Capri front discs and 1600 Capri rears, so
it goes real quick but doesn’t stop well at all.
I currently race the car in a number of historic events every year.
As soon as I have good digital photographs I will e-mail them to you. Hope that
this gives you the info you require.
Yours in racing
