Newport metallurgist Chris “Cannonball” Knoop made headlines two years ago when he became the only Australian entrant in the Cannonball Run, an American coast-to-coast race of pre-1930s motorcycles.
Now he’s in a race against time to prepare a 101-year-old car for the Veteran Car Club of Australia’s winter rally from Adelaide to Darwin, from August 3 to 24.
“It’s basically mind over matter and man over machine,” Mr Knoop said of the coming ride in his rare French 1913 Chenard et Walcker.
It has an interesting history, which Mr Knoop has pieced together much the same way he eventually pieced the vehicle together.
“The car was purchased brand new in 1913 by a Doctor Binns,” he said.
“He was in Sydney and he put the car on a ship to Tasmania, followed his sweetheart and became a doctor in Hobart. Then he was called up to the First World War.
“He couldn’t get a boat back to Sydney because all the boats were gone so he could only get it from Hobart to Melbourne … he thought, ‘I’ll drive the rest of the way’.
“The car got as far as Seymour and the Goulburn River was in flood … he couldn’t get across.”
He left it with friends at the rhododendron garden in Mansfield. The doctor continued on to Sydney intending to return later for the car, but he never made it home from the war.
Mr Knoop said the doctor’s brother went to collect the car in 1919 but by then it had been pulled apart.
“He took one look at the car and said, ‘Ah, look, it’s too much effort, just leave it’,” he said.
“In 1956, a guy in Victoria chased it up … his name was Ian Irwin. He had the radiator and the engine of the car and proceeded to start collecting bits for it. So the car was saved … then it went through about three different hands and every person found a few more bits.”
About 20 years ago, the car came into the possession of Mr Knoop, who chased up its history.
“I went back to find out where the farm was and found out that it had since been subdivided and they knew nothing about it,” he said.
“I knocked on the neighbour’s door and in there were all the bits I was missing – the clutch, brake. It’s been a 20-year process to actually get this car back on the road.”
