Inaugurated in 1953, the rally's notoriously tough conditions required cars to be adapted to cope; despite this, it made it popular with factory teams.

[2] Eventually various ideas began to gel together forming the basis of the rally that was to be run over roads in the three African Great Lakes nations of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

[2] Factory teams and drivers soon began to arrive, and the likes of the future husband and wife Pat Moss and Erik Carlsson competed in the event.

[4] With a course of 3,100 miles of bush road varying in elevation from sea level to 7,000 feet over a short period of days, that tested the limits of drivers and co-drivers and their machines with very little chance of a rest in between stages.

[2] Flooding also made the rally far more difficult with normally treacherous roads becoming booby traps with unseen and terrifying hazards.

[8] Eighty-four cars of ninety-one registered entrants started the rally[2] that ran on a 3,100 mile route through Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika over three days and four nights.

[5][7] With dry parts of the road earlier in the rally, Erik Carlsson comfortably led the rally earlier, leading the local Nick Nowicki in a Peugeot 404 by three minutes at Kampala and extending it over another local, Beau Younghusband, by half an hour at Nairobi until he ran into an ant bear at Mbulu, requiring repairs but retaining a fifteen-minute lead over Younghusband at Dar es Salaam.

The Ford Anglia of Peter Hughes was to take the lead, but got stuck in the mud for 50 minutes and had to be helped out by eventual winner Nowicki, leaving himself to finish second.

Only seven of the 84 starters who struggled back to the finish line lasted until the end and were awarded the nickname "Unsinkable Seven";[2][8] only 8% of those who started completed the rally, making it the record lowest rate ever.

[10] Meanwhile, Joginder Singh in a factory Datsun Cedric led the twenty-one survivors but fell to fifth after engine problems slowed him down.

[10] Howard Lawrence-Brown in his Triumph 2000 regained the lead at Mombasa but by the time he reached Dar es Salaam, German born local Peter Huth in his Cortina overtook him.

Lucille Cardwell and Geraldine Davies' seventh and last place finish in this edition made them both the only women and the only all-female team to earn the Unsinkable Seven nickname.

Following the 1968 rally, no other editions could match the record of attrition rate of finishers with the fewest being ten cars (17%) in 1990, amongst fifty-nine starters.