The Tale of an African Dart

In the heady, but risky, days of British specialist sports car manufacture in the late 1950s, the intrepid characters involved could have been forgiven for not believing that there was a thriving company in Cape Town, South Africa, building a sleek two-seater called the GSM Dart. Not only was it true, but the Dart was good looking, it was fast, had phenomenal roadholding and was selling well!

The saga began when one of the three eventual partners in the Dart project, Bob van Niekerk, enrolled at the Stellenbosch University, near Cape Town, in the late 1940s to study mechanical engineering. He met up with fellow student Willie Meissner and the two car enthusiasts became firm friends and developed a burning ambition to build a world-beating South African sports car. Meissner soon got bored with mechanical engineering and as he was keen to learn more about automotive engineering he found his way to England. Bob stayed on and after qualifying joined a company importing Magirus-Deutz trucks and building agricultural implements. His racing career started with a highly modified and indecently quick Peugeot 203.