The Flying Sikh of the Safari Rally

The Safari Rally was the most gruelling event on the motorsports calendar. 1964 was a particularly harsh year - of the 94 cars flagged off, only 21 finished, none being a Volvo.

Volvo invested heavily in the 1964 Safari Rally, with four white Volvo PV544s. Unfortunately, the manufacturer was faced with a staff strike, leading to delays in delivering the cars to Kenya for the race. A crashed car belonging to driver Tom Trana was left behind in Kenya with Amazon Motors.

Joginder Singh bought the abandoned car from the local dealer, on a hire purchase basis. Joginder and his brother, Jaswant Singh, rebuilt this car themselves. 

They modified and improved the Volvo to make it even more suitable for African conditions. They even devised a special technique for getting out of the mud - two handles fitted to the rear of the car.

As Joginder sat at the steering wheel trying to get the narrow rear tyres to grip, Jaswant would stand on the rear bumper rocking the car to put more pressure on the drive wheels. This was a human traction control system.

With a lot of local backing, the Singh brothers entered the Volvo PV544s privately into the 1965 Rally, and won spectacularly, with a clear 100-minute margin on the road, leaving the works teams that had entered at a loss for words. 

This was the largest winning margin ever in the history of the rally. The “Flying Sikh” had arrived! He went on to achieve a hat-trick of victories. Amazon Motors annulled the hire-purchase contract after the race and gave Joginder the car.

The winning car, still belonging to the Singh family, is proudly displayed at the Volvo Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden. “The Flying Sikh” passed away in London in 2013 at the age of 81, but left unforgettable memories of how he would dominate the “World’s Toughest Rally”.