What a hectic weekend of rallying. I flew down to Cape Town at 6am on Friday morning, and I managed to make it to the first stage just minutes before it started. The driving was impressive to say the least. I covered a rally last year, but I had forgotten the kind of speeds that these guys hit. It's a rush just watching the cars speed past.

The track was dry and exceptionally dusty. It was actually incredibly easy to see the progress of the rally, I just had to follow the dust clouds on the horizon. This did cause a problem for a lot of the drivers though. Reduced visibility meant that caution had to be exercised and valuable seconds were lost.  read more »

The morning started out very wet. That changed dramatically. The sun came out and temperatures soard to 34 degrees. This made the track incredibly dusty.

The battle for top spot raged on for most of the day. Gemmel entered stage 5 as the leader, but that soon chenged. Fekken put on an incredible display of rally prowess, and he lead stage 5 by 15 seconds. Very impressive. This performance ensured that Fekken would walk away with the lead.

These results are provisional :

1. Hergen Fekken, Pierre Arries (VW Polo)
2. Jan Habig, Douglas Judd (VW Polo)
3. Johnny Gemmel, Peter Marsh (Toyota Auris)
4. Mark Cronje, Robert Paisley (Toyota Auris)
5. Enzo Kuun, Guy Hodgson (VW Polo)
6. Wilken/van Niekerk (Subaru Impreza, Toyota RunX)  read more »

What a great day of rallying it was. The sun was out, conditions were a little dry (and very dusty), but perfect for a brilliant rally. This one was close.

The rally took place near the quaint town of Caledon. Although it is quite some distance from Cape Town (around two and a half hours), it is quite a spectacular setting for this rally.  read more »

Unitrans Motors made a clean sweep at Toyota South Africa’s annual Dealer of the Year Awards held in Durban recently, with two of the group’s outlets taking top honours – East Rand Toyota scooped the Toyota Dealer of theYear, and Limpopo Truck Centre’s Hannes Pretorius walked off with the inaugural Hino Dealer of the Year Award.

This is the second time in just five years that East Rand Toyota has walked away with the top dealer award. The dealership opened its doors in April 2004 and since then has consistently achieved top ratings in Customer Satisfaction studies and was also one of the first dealerships in the network to achieve environmental ECO III status.  read more »

As we were hoping it would happen, The Toyota Auris S2000 (under the direction of Johnny Gemmell and co-driver, Peter Marsh) won first-prize at the Total Tour Natal Rally this past weekend. We at the Auris Blog are ecstatic about this news as you can imagine.

Here's a detailed account of what went down:

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Johnny Gemmell and Peter Marsh got their 2009 rally championship challenge off to a flying start by winning the Total Tour Natal Rally in style, taking their S2000 Castrol Toyota Auris to a clear 2 minute win over the chasing pack in the opening event of the 2009 Sasol SA Rally Championship.  read more »

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The Toyota Auris S2000 in first place in the first rally event of the season? Could this be a sign of things to come?

Below are the provisional results of the Total Tour Natal Rally which took place over the last two days. We'll make the official announcements tomorrow here on the Blog along with detailed happenings of the event.  read more »

1. Johnny Gemmell S2000 Toyota Auris 1:50:23
2. Charl Wilken N4 Subaru Impreza + 129
3. Hergen Fekken S2000 Volkswagen Polo + 140
4. Jannie Habig S2000 Volkswagen Polo + 212
5. Hein Laegan N4 Subaru Impreza + 243
6. Fernando Rueda S2000 Toyota Run X + 306
7. Theuns Joubert S2000 Volkswagen Polo + 406