Mitsubishi’s Magna All-Wheel-Drive Goes Rallying
with Legendary Ross Dunkerton at the Wheel

Team Mitsubishi Ralliart Australia’s two Magnas will debut at next week’s Rally of Canberra, with five-time Australian champion Ross Dunkerton leading the charge.

Preparation of the Magnas at Mitsubishi Ralliart’s new headquarters in Dandenong, Melbourne, has been the first major project of new team principal Alan Heaphy, the renowned touring car engineer and team manager whose motor sport roots were in rallying.

The Magnas will compete in the Australia Cup – the category for modern Australian-made cars – at each round of the Globalstar Australian Rally Championship.

With a drivetrain derived from the amazing Lancer Evolution, the Magnas will be the only Australian-made All-Wheel-Drive cars in the Australia Cup, taking on Fords and Holdens.

Having created Australia’s first mass-produced All-Wheel-Drive large sedan, Mitsubishi has set a benchmark for roadholding and traction that it is now aiming to take to a new level through its latest rally programme.

While Mitsubishi Ralliart’s Evolution VII Lancers driven by Ordynski and Finn Juha Kangas compete for outright honours in the Globalstar ARC, the Magna VR-X All-Wheel Drives will fly the Mitsubishi flag in the “Aussie Cup” in similar red, black and silver livery.

As well as the rugged and reliable Australian-developed QuadTec All-Wheel-Drive system, the new rally programme will take Mitsubishi’s five-speed INVECS II “Sports Mode” intelligent, sequential automatic transmission to Australia’s forest roads for the most demanding tests imaginable.

The Magnas have a 3.5-litre SOHC, 24-valve, electronically fuel-injected V6 engine developing maximum power of 159kW at 5500rpm and maximum torque of 318Nm at 4000rpm.

Mitsubishi Motors President, Tom Phillips, said that he was eagerly awaiting the results of the Rally of Canberra.

“The locally engineered and built Magna AWD is a fantastic car, and I am sure it will surprise quite a few people when they see it in the forest,” Mr Phillips said.

“The car is very strong and reliable, and we believe running in the Australia Cup will prove its performance credentials and establish its image beyond doubt.”

Heaphy said the Magna VR-X All-Wheel-Drives would compete “in pretty standard trim - which is a very good package to start with”.

“It’s one of the beauties of this programme that the rally cars will be essentially an All-Wheel-Drive vehicle that anyone can be driving in everyday motoring,” Heaphy said.

“We’ve gone to smaller, 15-inch wheels for our Pirelli tyres, but apart from fitting roll cages, competition seats and seatbelts for driver protection, some underbody protection and changing a few springs, they’re very much Magna All-Wheel-Drives that you could drive as your road car.”

Co-driving with Dunkerton will be West Australian police detective and former top cyclist Bill Hayes, while the other Magna will be driven by Michael Taylor with Lyndall Drake as co-driver.

The two teams gave the Magnas a shakedown today at Seymour, near Melbourne, ahead of going to Canberra for their competition debut in the Rally of Canberra on 8th & 9th May, which will be run in conjunction with the opening round of the FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship.

Apart from his five Australian rally championship titles, Dunkerton was twice Asia-Pacific champion, four times the West Australian champion and four times the Malaysian rally champion too.

In a career that began in 1962, he has been the outright winner of 99 rallies – including the Rally of Canberra four times.

Dunkerton retired from Mitsubishi Ralliart in 1995 having won 33 international events for the company in seven years.

He holds the record as the highest-placed Australian in a world championship rally (third outright in Rally New Zealand) and the only Australian to have won a world championship special stage (also in NZ).

He also competed in six Australian Safaris for Mitsubishi, winning that enduro in 1988 and finishing second two others years.

Another distinction on his outstanding motor sport CV is his second place in the 1996 London-to-Mexico Marathon.

Dunkerton, who has an All-Wheel-Drive Magna as a road car and has continued to rally occasionally in a turbocharged rear-wheel-drive 1979 Mitsubishi Lancer, said he was “really excited” about the Magna VR-X All-Wheel-Drive rally car.

“It’s a great motor car – it will be really good,” Dunkerton said. “It’s a bigger car. It will be a thing!”

In his renowned larrikin humour, Dunkerton – now in his late 50s - said: “The 10-CD stacker and air-conditioning will suit me down to the ground.

“My wife, Lisa, reckons I’m like clothes – if I hung around long enough I was sure to come back into fashion!”

Team Mitsubishi Ralliart principal Heaphy is looking forward to the new association with the legendary Dunkerton, having previously worked with ex-Formula One drivers Ivan Capelli and Mark Blundell, touring car drivers Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife as well as Wayne Gardner, Australia’s first 500cc motorcycle world champion who later turned to four-wheel competition with Heaphy as team manager.

“I’ve run a lot of teams for a lot of people but it’s a huge thrill now to be heading one that is affiliated with an Australian manufacturer and involved in my first motor sport love – rallying,” Heaphy said.

“Since my early years driving in rallies in northern Victoria, I’ve never experienced anything that has that unbelievable sensation of dawn in a forest, with the road a little damp, and that first stage getting underway. It’s awesome.

“Rallying tests cars and drivers to the limit on a variety of surfaces, so it’s the ultimate challenge in motor sport – for men, women and machine.

“The Magna VR-X All-Wheel-Drive is a great car to work with and we’ve assembled a terrific bunch of people on the project – those who will be in the cars at the rallies, and those who have built them in the workshop and will service them on the events.”