KENYA, 1965 — On a lonely, rutted road, miles from anywhere, a battered Volvo lies dead.
Insects buzz in the silence, and there’s a rustling in the scrubby, thorny underbrush — perhaps a warthog rooting for its supper. In the distance, a hyena cackles like a maniac, and heat waves blur the acacia trees. There are two men standing by the car, casually eating sardines and bread. They are two days walk from any outpost, and no one else will be along this road for at least a week.
Both men are of Indian descent, the first of average height and wearing a pure-white turban that identifies him as a member of the Sikh religion.
His name is Joginder Singh, and in a few short months he will drive this way again, battling the heavy, muddy clay of the rainy season to take his place in the history books. They will call him Simba, the Flying Sikh, the Lion of Kenya; he will be possibly the greatest African rally driver of all time, a genius behind the wheel, and possessed of near-superhuman empathy with the machinery he pilots.
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The fully-restored rally-car in Kenya in the 1970s. Note that Kenyans drive on the left, but the car is left-hand-drive.
Submitted photo, Driving
The other man is taller, clean-shaven, with a rakish grin and a devilish look in his eye. Today, seated on the glassed-in balcony of his West Vancouver apartment as a pale, wintry Canadian sun sinks into the sea, he tells me how the sardine tin was cleaned, clipped, and shaped to repair the stricken Volvo’s cracked carburetor float.
His name is Chander Bali, and the Kenyan people will call him “Billy,” a corruption of his last name that means “to go far” in some dialects. He was, and is, a proper bush mechanic.
Chander Bali was born in Kenya on Christmas Day in 1937. His father came from the north of India, the part that would eventually become Pakistan after the Partition in 1947. Bali Sr. worked as a Marconi dealer, and befriended the tribes of Eastern Africa as he recorded their traditional songs.
His son was a born mechanic, and by 15 was fixing and selling old Citroëns as a side business. Bali attended Catholic school in Mombasa, where he mastered English early on, and this break from a traditional education would inform his early years. When the mothers of the community cast their eyes on Chander as a potential well-to-do son-in-law, his father warned them off. “My son,” he would say, “Is unreliable.”
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Chander Bali and an unknown man on a reconnaissance run with the race-winning PV544.
Submitted photo, Driving
For his part, Bali was simply having too much fun. His English was good enough to be able to mix with the tourists at the ritzy Mount Kenya Safari club, and he was always out on a date with someone new. He shows me a picture of an Italian beauty, and describes gunning his Matchless single-cylinder motorcycle past a marriage-plotter’s house, making the girl clutch on tightly and scandalizing the neighbours.
The turmoil following the Partition of India would throw Bali’s extended family into some confusion, but in the 1950s, a long-lost uncle would be discovered living in England. Chander travelled to London, where he received training as a Volvo and Mercedes-Benz mechanic.
Arriving in Germany, Bali found work at a Ford dealership in the service department, but it was not for him. Reaching for a crescent wrench to loosen a drain-plug, he was roundly berated by the shop foreman. “This is a German garage!” the man shouted, “We use only the correct tools!”
He moved further into Europe, finding employment at a Volvo dealership in Malmo, Sweden. Here, his skills at repairing things on a shoestring found favour among the rally-obsessed Swedes, and they encouraged him to travel to Gothenburg. A place was offered in Volvo’s main factory, and he worked there for a while until his feet started to itch for travel.
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Pictures of Chander Bali’s Land Rovers in Kenya, MGs in the Bahamas, a Volvo P1800 and a Karmann Ghia.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
Returning to Kenya, he worked for various garages before opening his own shop, repairing everything from Land Rovers to Humber Super Snipes. Just as female variety was the spice of his roving eye, Bali had no particular attachment to any marque and could fix pretty much anything; at one point, he owned perhaps the only Bogward Coupe in Africa.
When a young Joginder Singh moved in next door as the very first patrolman for the Royal East African Automobile Association, the pair found a kinship. Bali helped Singh establish his own repair business, and began joining the nascent rally champion on his reconnaissance runs.
As Singh began winning local rallies, Bali continued lending a hand as a mechanic, and eventually helped rebuild the history-making Volvo PV 544. Left over from a hard season of rallying, the car was battered and bruised, with nearly 44,000 miles (70,800 km) of abuse on the chassis already. It was a tired old horse, but in the hands of Singh and Bali, new life was breathed under the hood, and it would go on to beat the world’s best fully supported factory efforts.
However, Africa in the 1960s was not just a place where a pair of skilled hands could make history. Racial tensions were closer to the surface than ever — Bali speaks of hired mobs throwing stones at the little Volvo during shakedown runs — and a historic first victory for a Sikh driver was not without its aftershocks. Having moved to the Congo, Bali found himself arrested under suspicion of theft — the trumped-up charge that the rally-winning Volvo had been a stolen car. A coup by the Armeé Nationale Congolaise (ANC) overturned the judicial system and he quickly left Africa, seeking new adventures.
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Chander Bali with car-customize George Barris, as well as an early Citroën 2CV, a Mercedes-Benz 600 in the Bahamas, and his son.
Brendan McAleer, Driving
In 1967, Bali found himself in Montreal, celebrating Expo 67. He felt an immediate affinity for Canada, and dreaming of the Wild West movies he’d seen in Kenya, found an old Volvo 144, fixed it up and drove across the country to Vancouver.
On the West Coast, he would find a large population of East Indians experiencing their own time of tumult and growth. It was a vibrant community, one into which Bali both fit with ease and, as an East African Indian, stood apart. As ever, he was quick to wriggle out of the marriage attempts of potential mother-in-laws, and soon found himself ranging further up the province, heading for Alaska.
Alaska became a gateway to Seattle, as a result of the flooding in Fairbanks, and the subsequent evacuation, and Bali found himself heading south to California and Los Angeles. As a citizen of a British Colony, getting a U.S. work visa was extraordinarily difficult, but he would yet again fall on his feet.
He found a place to work on Volvos and Benzes, and charmed his way into the Polo Club. There, the tall, handsome Indian would enchant his well-heeled clientele with tales of the African jungle, the savannah, the wildness of the landscape.
He bought a Mercedes 300D, the first of many diesel Mercs he would own, and made friends with people like Tina Louise — best-known for playing Ginger on Gilligan’s Island. One day, a female friend drove him out to Encino to meet what she called “another real car guy.”
The man in question was George Barris, creator of the original Batmobile, KITT from Knight Rider, and the Monkeemobile. They became friends, Bali supplying George with a Zebra skin for one of his projects, and the two would be reunited years later at a car show in Abbotsford, of all places.
But Bali’s greatest adventure was still ahead. Already feeling the urge to travel again, he walked into a travel agent and, seemingly at random, chose the island nation of the Bahamas. Forty years later, he still spends a third of the year there.
He landed without friends, a place to stay, or work prospects. By the end of the year, he was fixing rich tourists’ cars in their garages, making house calls with a leather briefcase filled with tools. As the tiny island had no proper servicing centres, Bali’s ability to repair almost anything with hardly any spare parts was indispensable.
His charm, too, had its effects, and soon he was caring for mansions while the owners were away, and was well-known around town. He fixed Major Holt Renfrew’s limousines, took the squeaks and rattles out of millionaire financier Sir John Templeton’s old Lincolns.
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Joginder Singh in an early rally with a Volvo Amazon. Chander Bali is in the onlookers, second from right.
Submitted photo, Driving
Bali was also famous for his unique creations, cramming Chevy V-8s into Jaguars and swapping a Mustang V-6 into a long-wheelbase Land Rover 109, which in turn he sold to a school teacher who had it shipped to a neighbouring island, where it needed a jump-start to get off the barge. The taxi driver who came down to help give the truck a boost popped open the hood and immediately said, “This is one of Billy’s cars, isn’t it?”
Some less illustrious machinery led Bali, finally, to the altar. A beautiful French-Canadian girl was introduced to him as someone who could help fix her car, and he naturally asked what she was driving.
“A Triumph Spitfire?” he said, incredulously, “I wouldn’t take one if you paid me!” They were married at the end of the same year.
Today, Bali is involved with several bio-fuel projects, including small-scale refining of cooking oil, as well as the growing of Jatropha seeds in the Philippines. He has started and sold a transmission servicing shop on Pemberton Avenue in North Vancouver and travelled around California in a self-serviced bus converted to an RV. He has been married three times, the third being the charm.
Opening a cupboard, he shows me pictures of cars he has owned: a Ferrari 308 GTB, a stately Bentley Series III, a Lotus Esprit Turbo. There’s a photograph of him standing next to George Barris by a custom car, a picture of a line of MGAs in various states of disrepair.
Finally, there’s a picture of a gleaming white Volvo PV544 parked on the shoulder of an African road. After Joginder’s David-vs.-Goliath win, Volvo shipped an entirely new body to Kenya, and the rally car was fully restored. When Bali returned to Kenya in the 1970s, Singh handed him the keys.
For a whole month, he drove around the country, the car’s well-recognized KHT 184 license plate drawing waves and cheers. This time around, the Volvo behaved perfectly, never stranding him once.
If it had though, Chander Bali would have known exactly how to fix it.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
