Wonder why '73 was the last year for the Shell ralley cars to be based on production cars?
That someone finally entered one that didn't even require ANY fuel in the gas tank to compete might have had something to do with it?
I'm surprised it was even allowed to compete. To me, that casts a shadow of doubt about the validity of the previous contests going back to '37 (?).
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone, anywhere, at any time pointing the Opel fraud out.
Perhaps the Shell judges/organizers had to let the Opel run as the rule book of the time didn't prohibit what the Opel team did? And the judges/organizers were so embarrassed they decided a complete overhaul of the competition was needed ASAP? And they saw the competition cars moving completely away from anything that was even remotely streetable anyway, so then the ralley went to purpose-built competition cars, to heck with the facade of them being "real cars".