I LOVE CARS like the Sabat Skyline: they’re just so authentic. Replicas are fine, and sometimes there’s no choice but to go the repliracer route, but there nothing like the real McCoy. It’s the little things: like knowing I’m pressing the same start button as the original driver did 30 years ago, that he guided the gearlever through the gate of the same gearbox, and heard the engine roar out of the same exhaust pipe.

And boy, does this baby’s engine make a noise. She’s the proverbial screamer, and more than capable of waking the neighbours at an ungodly hour.

The Skyline I’m belted into is a real racing car, and one with an unbelievable pedigree. In fact, it has without question secured more wins than any saloon ever campaigned in this country (see separate story). The name on the driver’s door is the same as when it was originally retired in 1990: Sorensen. Except nowadays it is Richard rather than dad [filtered word] who invariably drives it, the Aussie duo having owned the car since 1987. [filtered word] campaigned it in Wesbank modifieds from ’87 to ’89, Richard then cutting his teeth on it the following year before going front-drive with a modified Golf.

But what’s this? On the other side of the car is a surname even more significant (with due respect to the Sorensens) in local motorsport lore: Van der Linde. In fact, it is almost an eponym for the ability to drive anything with four wheels on tarmac – and that seems set to continue with the news that 14-year-old Kelvin van der Linde will be campaigning a Polo in a national championship this year. At 14!

Kelvin’s dad is Shaun van der Linde and his grandfather is Hennie, the nucleus of an immensely rich motorsport gene pool. Hennie also built this car and continues to play a pivotal role in keeping it fighting fit. No one touches the engine, or the gearbox, or the diff … except Hennie.

The nuggety tuner, already a dyed-in-the-wool Datsun man, was given the go-ahead by Nissan to compete in class B of the Wesbank series for 1983, and Hennie recalls building this car with some haste at the end of the 1982 season. It was very much a case of form following function, and it’s a workmanlike machine – and that’s putting it politely.

Datsun, at that stage in the early stages of a name change to Nissan, gave him a budget and supplied a complete road car (not an unpainted shell and a box with all the mechanicals) so for starters a strip-down was required. A home-made cage – an unusual mix of large diameter tubular and a massive rectangular section girder which runs from the top of the left-hand C-pillar to the base of the A-pillar – was welded in, a bank of VDO gauges set into a simple, folded aluminium facia, and various holes roughly hewn through the firewall to route piping for the dry sump tank in the boot. Other holes have been riveted shut with sheets of metal, others left open. The inner skins of the doors have been cut out and all the gubbins removed and the passenger glass is wedged in the closed position with shaped sections of timber. Fibreglass wheelarch extensions have been added and the car has on occasion run with big rear wing bolted to the steel bootlid.

While he clearly wasn’t the world’s greatest carpenter or welder, Hennie was able to extract plenty of horses from the 2.8-litre straight six, which – then and now – makes just over 300 horses (+224kW) and will rev to 8 000 all day.

That’s the banshee howl I’m hearing as I barrel around Zwartkops Raceway, the mix of fast and slow corners perfectly suiting the first three ratios of the Nismo five-speed ’box, with first ideal for the hairpin and also just long enough for the two right-handers at the top of the hill. With substantial rubber on the back axle there’s more than enough grip, though Richard still manages some impressive  powerslides for lensman Till’s benefit, before the tyres become really hot and sticky.

There’s plenty of heat in them by the time he hands over to me, and I’m probably far too tentative at first, especially in the fast stuff where I’m way off his apex speeds. But I sense that it’s a car you can really get your teeth into, and while it ducks and dives a bit, tramlining under braking and crabbing a little to the right in a straight line if you let it, there’s no cause for concern.

It’s a car which is full of hairy-chested attitude, but not malevolent in any way, it seems. But you sense it reacts best when muscled around as Richard advised, without worrying too much about finesse. You can get on the throttle hard and fast, stand on the brakes with determination without any undue concerns of premature lock-up, and push and pull the gearlever  from ratio to ratio without worrying that something will break or you’ll wrong-slot. Of course, with first on a dogleg and second and third sharing a vertical plane, there would be no excuse for getting it wrong.

The steering is meaty yet not too heavy, and it is a box rather than rack and pinion. It has a bit of play in it after all these years, and this contributes to a tendency to dart around under braking. So a firm grip on the fat-rimmed Formuling steering-wheel is required.

Hennie preferred the oversized standard unit, and also fought bare-knuckled. But maybe he had a point. You do drive it like you’re in a bar-brawl: anything goes to get the desired result, and you need to knock it around a bit, show it who’s boss. Of course, you ideally need to be a Sorensen or Van der Linde to do that properly, and as I regain my composure on a slow-down lap the thought occurs to me, that, in nearly 30 years, I’m one of very few individuals with another surname to drive the car. Heady company indeed …