At a time when Colin Bond was Australia’s King of the Hills in his Lynx-Peugeot open-wheeler, one of his rivals was Ron Thorp in a dark green AC Ford Cobra, one of very few to make it to Australia.
Thorp competed on road racing circuits like Warwick Farm and did well at the Surfers 12 Hour sports car races at Surfers Paradise in 1966 and 1967, winning the Improved Production category both years. But this road-registered thoroughbred was at its best going up hills very quickly.
Thorp’s favourite event was the annual Mount Panorama hillclimb, run in the reverse direction up Con-Rod Straight and through the Esses to Skyline.
In Round 2 of the 1965 NSW Championship, Thorp came fourth outright behind three single-seater hillclimb specials. The Cobra, as always, was driven to and from the event by Thorp.
Graham Howard, reporting for Racing Car News, was obviously impressed - “watching the final run (the best, 40.88) from near Skyline, we had a head-on view of it, crouched down around its huge tyres, slithering out from the Dipper and bursting up to the finish as though it had unlimited power on tap.” Which it did.
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