Partnership of 33 years ends
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Veteran Multiple South African Off-Road and rally Champion, Hannes Grobler, will bid Nissan Motorsport farewell at the end of the season bringing to an end a partnership that started in 1977. Grobler, the only South African motorsport competitor to have won both the South African National Rally Driver’s Championship and the South African Off-Road Racing Championship, will be joining the RFS Group of companies from January.
Grobler will launch the RFS Group's 4x4 Mega world Shop in Zambezi Road, Montana, Pretoria soon. He will also become a full time member of the RFS Motorsport team in the SA Off-Road Racing championship as from next year competing in the SP Class in the Production Vehicle Class of the Off-Road Championship. Grobler won both the National Rally Driver’s Championship and the SA Off-Road Championship in the same year in 1986. A feat that nobody else has been able to repeat to date.
The very popular and affable Grobler said that the offer the RFS Group has made him is a once in a lifetime opportunity. “I will be Manager/ director of the 4x4 Mega world Zambezi shop and as such I will be able to apply the knowledge that I have gained over the past 33 years in the development of the new business venture. I am really looking forward to the new challenge as it comes at a time when I have had to start planning my future.
“I have known Chris du Plooy, the Managing Director of RFS for many years and the fact that he has shown that he has confidence in my abilities will make it so much easier for me to make a success of the new venture.
“I will not be fully involved in the Motorsport side of the business except in an advisory capacity, while I will also be mentoring Christiaan du Plooy, the son of Chris and one of the up and coming youngsters in South African Off-Road Racing.
“To cut my ties with Nissan motorsport after all these years was not an easy decision, and I want to thank the management of Nissan for having the faith in me for all those years, but it was a necessary one taking me and my family’s future into consideration”, Grobler said.
“I am the only competitor who has stayed with one manufacturer for such a long period of time, but the time has come to make a change”, he added.
The RFS Group of companies specialise in retirement fund solutions and is well known as a sponsor in off-road racing, while the group also sponsored the recently held RFS Motorcycle Economy Run.
RFS Motorsport builds and prepares two class SP Production cars the company run in the off-road championship. RFS also sponsors the last round of the SA Off-Road Racing Championship, the Magalies Off-Road Race.
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