cossack chase cars

[Andyc]

think there's some pictures in the back of the rally prep book.

photos please fellow hair man

[KL]

There were no chase cars then (other than in exceptional circumstances eg. Andrew Cowan's retired rally car following Roger Clark towards the end of the 72 RAC).
The term and the entire concept of a "chase car" is far, far more recent.

Even by those days service was far from "free" (as it used to be, ie. anywhere you liked) but was still relatively free.
Service cars (not vans then) could get to most places they needed to. The "works" (especially Ford) practice on something like the RAC was to service before the stage (for new tyres etc.) whereas private entries tended to service after the stage (to fettle the competing car immediately and keep it going if it suffered on a stage).

To suggest there were "chase cars" as they are now understood in the Cossack era is as strange as suggesting that most cars on major events at one time long before then had any service support (and the crews did not wear collar and tie...).
Citroen in the days of the DS19, under team manager Rene Cotton, are generally credited with "inventing" service. BMC closely followed. Ford were late (and crap) at it for years after that.

[KL]

they werent stickered up then

In the second Cossack year (76) the works Granadas carried large Shell stickers but nothing else. On the 74 RAC they had a brown Collibri stripe but were still mainly white.