Leyland P76 Owners 2004

Publications

Evan Greens - World of Motorsport'

Review by Damien Haas

A few months ago, I acquired a copy of Evan Green’s P76 and rallying classic 'Bootful of Right Arms' from Mark Ellery.
It was an excellent read, and I decided to find other books by Evan Green.
A bit of Googling indicated that, as well as some fiction books, and motoring journalism for newspapers and magazines, Evan Green wrote a book called Evan Green’s - World of Motor Sport in 1977.
This book also had some more about the 1974 World Cup Rally in which the P76 performed so well, and also some info on the trip home in the rally car from Munich to Australia – by land to India, then by boat to Perth, then across Australia to Sydney – in two weeks!
Keeping a careful eye on eBay listings for P76 and/or Leyland, for several months, I never saw this book come up.
In one of those flashes of inspiration that occurs several months late, I decided to type ‘evan green’ into eBay. Bingo.
‘Evan Green’s world of motor sport’: no keywords, no listing that any search would really catch on. And ‘buy now for $7.50’. I hit ‘buy now’ and paid instantly.
The book arrived and I was captivated. The large colour photos and interesting story on the P76 and its trip back from Germany were worth the small price I’d paid.
As well as the return trip story, which is a nice appendix to Bootful of Right Arms, there is a chapter on how to prepare a rally car.
Evan Green selects a two-door Range Rover, and fits a 4.4 litre Leyland P76 V8.
He observes that this was the engine that was going to be fitted to all Australian delivered Range Rovers if P76 production had continued, and that development work had already commenced.
I’d not heard of this before.
Although only a few parts of the book are Leyland related, the colour photos are excellent, with some never appearing
anywhere else – and in nice A4 size.
The photos of the rally P76 in the red sand are worthy of being blown up to poster size.
The rest of the book is indeed about the world of motor sport with lots of Aussie touring car action from the 1970s and local F1, F2 and F5000 series covered.
The international F1 scene scores a mention and has a nice photo of the 6 wheeled Tyrell F1 car from the early ‘70s that actually won a race - the 1974 Swedish Grand Prix.
Green might have hoped that the book would become an annual, as CAMS results for local racing in 1976 are published in some detail.
To fellow P76 enthusiasts, I’d encourage you to search this book out. It’s a valuable item for a P76 collection.
Rolls with interesting extractor set-up P76 V8 for Range Rover preparation P76 in India Land Crab in Rally prep
Published in "Leylines" November 2006
Last updated
Jan, 2006
This web site may contain Copyright material
If you find any problems with the site, please email the Web Editor