The Banger Rally

by John Alkema

Vacations have become more formalized over the years.  They used to be camping in the summer, maybe a cruise in retirement, or a summer visit to Grandma’s house in Iowa.  Now we have:  staycations, ecotravel, service vacations, theme cruises, leaf peeper tours of New England in the fall; it goes on and on.

Suffice to say the great American road trip has taken many turns also.

As a child, a road trip meant myself and my two brothers crammed in the back seat of a ’55 Chevy station wagon.  During high school, it was surf trips to Doheny Beach or Santa Barbara.  As a parent, I drug my kids on endless ski trips through the west.  I’ve also made two non-stop forced marches across the US, once with a teenager from France who barely spoke English and who could not grasp Garrison Keillor’s sense of humor broadcast from books on tape.  Seems that Midwestern humor with a Lutheran bias didn’t translate into the vocabulary of a French college student.

Since the invention of the automobile car, rallies have been a favorite of the road trip set.  Get in the family sedan or a specially modified race vehicle and head off to some distant destination with a group of like-minded pals.  Many rallies are associated with some sort of internal competition event, or in the vernacular, “special tests”.  These may be speed tests, head-to-head racing, or other opportunities to add a challenging aspect to the drive and to test the driver’s and navigator’s skills.

UK resident Julian Nowill has always been a ‘car guy’.  In 2002, he thought it might be interesting to poke some fun at the excesses of the Paris Dakar Rally.  You need to know that serious competitors at Paris Dakar spend millions of dollars developing and building competition vehicles.  Julian figured that it would be fun to do the same event in a piece of machinery that had maybe seen its glory in earlier times.  He essentially invented the “Banger Rally”

Simply put, a banger is a British term for an old, preferably beat up, car.  A banger rally is therefore an assemblage of old beaters, getting together for a road trip.

The first “official” banger rally, in December 2002, was the Plymouth Dakar Challenge.  The course went from the UK to the west coast of Africa, sort of following the course of the Paris Dakar Rally.  The rules were simple.  The car could cost no more that $500 (250 pounds in the UK).  No modifications or preventive maintenance allowed.  Decorations were not exactly encouraged but appeared to have been a natural consequence of the lunacy of this proposition.   Only two people are allowed in the vehicle, as there is a significant chance of mechanical breakdown and rally courtesy requires assistance be provided to stranded participants, at least to the next center of population.  Having more than two occupants would place an undue strain on the rescuing party.

The popularity of banger rallies has since blossomed.  There are at least a dozen internet listing this year alone.  This phenomenon hasn’t caught on as well here in the states as the only advertised event is the BABE Rally, held in June.  BABE stands for Big Apple to Big Easy, a 1500 mile jaunt from New York to New Orleans through the Appalachians.  (This should not imply that there aren’t private events taking place.)

In May of this year, my co-driver Paul Dubinsky and I bought a 1996 Ford Mondeo, in England, and entered the Grecian 3000.  A Mondeo is essentially the UK version of the venerable Ford Taurus.  We paid 346      pounds for this beauty, although it was in truth a very good car.  It far exceeded banger status, as it had no dents, only 86,000 miles, and ran like a top as long as you kept the tach in the power range.  It really didn’t like to be lugged.  In addition to its obvious qualities, it had a zippy 2.5 liter engine, a 5-speed manual transmission, and right hand drive.    Although the price was over the “official” limit, the rules in this category, as in all banger categories, are very flexible.

Most rallies furnish some sort of ”road book”, a detailed description of the course including mileage to the next stop, course to follow, times to arrive, etc.  The instructions for a banger rally don’t exactly follow that scheme.  The road book for a banger rally is somewhat more like a collection of suggestions.  The course, mileage driven, and meeting place for each night are optional.  It is up to the individual teams how, or even if, they do what the road book suggests.  There was no official start or finish.  In fact, I only met some of the official participants on the final day of the rally.  The Grecian 3000 road book also did not have a lot of local knowledge.  One of the organizers later admitted, in private, that he had never been to any of the places mentioned and the entire course was designed, in his living room, using Google Maps.  It was also suggested that at the end of the rally, if any participants did not want to drive their cars home, they could donate the cars to a local charity.

The 3000 mile route started in the UK took the ferry or Chunnel across to France and finished in Burgas, Bulgaria.  Along the way, there were stops in Cologne, Davos, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Tirana, Athens and Thessaloniki.  Two days were planned in Athens to see the sights and take a rest.  If the Balkans didn’t appeal any team who so desired could split off at Davos and go through Italy, taking the ferry to Athens from Bari or Brindisi.  The event was planned in conjunction with the royal wedding and Turkish Gran Prix.  The wedding because it was a national holiday in the UK.  The gran prix because, after all, these are car guys.

A bow to technology was allowed for GPS aided directions and Twitter was suggested as the main means of communications, although neither mattered in Albania as there were no street signs directing one how to leave the country, the GPS was equally unhelpful and Twitter didn’t work absent cell coverage.

The entries were a modest collection of aged and infirm vehicles.  An old Mercedes station wagon that required $1800 in undercarriage work to assist it to go down the road in a relatively straight link.  An olive drab Peugeot 205 with tubular bumpers and a home built light bar.  A diesel powered Ford delivery van with prior rally experience in Africa, and who knows where else, complete with a roof full of collected bicycles.   And, so on.

The majority of drivers were from the UK with the exception of Paul and I, the two Yanks, and one Canadian.  This was also a mostly male group with only one representative of the distaff group.

The Mondeo was purchased at auction by the Grecian’s organizer Dave Clement.  Dave and I had been in contact and after the purchase had been completed, he posted a cryptic message on Facebook that “something special had happened to the Yank’s car”.  A closer look at the photos will show a display of decorations celebrating the royal wedding of William and Kate. In fact, the car had been christened the “Wheels & Kate”.

Most of the other cars were also purchased at auction or from private parties.  A couple were donated, possibly to get them out of the previous owner’s driveway.  One had been used as a farm vehicle and was secured for the princely sum of $160.  Twenty-five tuckered out road warriors.  All in all, a motley collection.