Solved: -- PN #159: Captain Geoffrey Malins at the 1931 London-Cape Town run with two Rileys

[pnegyesi]

I show you two pictures. Identifying the car is really easy, but I am mostly interested in its driver. He's the tall guy with the hat. By the time he was leading this expedition, he was really famous - for something not automobile related. Who was he?

[barrett]

Looks like Robert Baden-Powell to me...?

[pnegyesi]

No, not him

[pnegyesi]

Number plate was British

[Wendax]

and the car is a Riley

[woodinsight]

This is a Riley about to depart on the 1931 London to Capetown run.
The tall man is one of the four Riley brothers. I would guess either Percy or Victor Riley.

[pnegyesi]

It is a Riley and the trip is related to South Africa. Everything else is incorrect

[Tom_I]

So the tall man is not Captain Geoffrey Malins then, who led a 1931 trip from London to Cape Town in two Rileys?

[woodinsight]

There is a resemblance to Jan Smuts......

[pnegyesi]

Tom_I: you identified the man and the event correctly! Congratulations

The tall man is Captain Geoffrey Malins, who led a 1931 trip from London to Cape Town in two Rileys. The picture was taken in Győr, Hungary where he stopped by.
And he became famous for the moving pictures taken during 1st World War.

[Tom_I]

Thanks for the point, Pal, but I hadn't really completed the puzzle. I wasn't sure from an earlier reply if this was the 1931 Cape Town expedition or not, and wanted to check if I had the right person first!

As you say, Captain Geoffrey H. Malins was an official cinematographer in WW1, and made two particularly well-known films, called "Battle of the Somme" (currently available on DVD) and "Battle of the Tanks".

Another claim to fame was that in 1926 he set off with a colleague to travel round the world by motorcycle. He wrote a book about this called "Going Further", published 1931.

And for another snippet about the London to Cape Town expedition, as the Rileys were expected to have to cross rivers, they were equipped with inflatable pontoons for buoyancy, so that they didn't have to rely on bridges. I don't think the design was fully thought through, though, as the fixing racks made it impossible to steer the cars with the pontoons fitted, so they couldn't be driven on land without removing them.