The ambassador's choice from Congo to Capetown.

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Mark Hirst tells the story of his 1962 Panhard DB Le Mans: “What I know is perhaps more legend than truth, but the original owner of my Panhard was ambassador in the Belgian Congo. When they had the uprising there in the sixties he drove the car from the Congo via Angola and Namibia to Cape Town in South Africa. A while later he drove to Johannesburg and traded it in on a Peugeot. From there the history is unclear until it ended up with a Swiss man named Zermatten. The Panhard was in a garage presumably for repairs when my cousin Doug Walton saw it and made an offer on it. Doug could not get the Panhard motor running successfully. Tried everything he could to get it going finally stripping the engine before transplanting a VW variant motor into the car so that it was useable. He sprayed the car the green it is now and had driven it a few times on Kyalami, our local F1 Circuit at the time. I was 16 at the time and asked for first option on the car if he ever sold it. In 1982 Doug needed extra money to further educate his sons and offered me the car at R3500.00, which was a lot of money at the time. I could have bought a low mileage second hand car about two years old at the time. This was a substantial part of my savings and many people felt I had wasted my money. But up till now I have done about 12000 miles in the car and after all these years I still love it and find it a pleasure to drive. The suspension gives a remarkably comfortable ride even relative to modern sports cars and it handles well through the corners. I hope to rebuild it within the next few years and get the original motor back in the car.”
 

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