Rally of classic cars is not like the regular rally when you see a vehicle speeding across the road, taking turns on a dirt road at 200 km/h and flying over a particularly cruel road bump. So… no. In classic cars rallies it is not allowed to pass 50 km/h (in a city 30 km/h) while your speed is measured throughout the way and you may find yourself disqualified at excessive speed.
The principle in rallying is to arrive right on time at every point. Every second (delay or arriving early) is penalized by a point and the car that has fewest points wins. As mentioned, the car is monitored all the way so there is no possibility for detours.
It sounds like we understand what we are talking about, but the truth is that we really don’t! At any given moment we are learning another topic and hope that by the end of the track we will understand a little bit more what rally really is.
What we do know:
- The goal: to reach the end of the track with two operational cars.
- The cars: we are a team with two cars – Rolls Royce, greenish color, 1950 in fair condition (Lady Sylvia); Suzuki Samurai, 1984, a small jeep in excellent condition.
- The team includes: CV – Indian from Switzerland; Omri – Israeli from Barcelona; Ira and Yoav – Israelis from … Rally driving experience (cumulative of the whole team) – 0 hours!
- The route: starts from Santander in northeastern Spain to Seville in the southwest, a total of 2,300 km in eight days. If you add to that 1,800 km to get to the starting point and come back from the end point, it is going to be an interesting journey.
- Road condition: this is an off-road route and, since it’s raining in the north, it’s expected to be challenging (not sure it fits our lady – but we’ll learn that at the end of the route).
- Total competing vehicles: 140 cars, at least 25 years old (age 50 and over qualifies for preferential treatment).
We took care of the cars – changed tires, filled up with fuel oil and water, packed equipment and we were ready.
Leaving in two days, we will report from the road – Good Luck to us! 😊
THE START
Do you know the feeling when you are entering a party with a top model on your arm and everything stops …? All eyes are on you, the music is silenced, the dancers stop and everyone eyes follow you until you sit down… Well, I’ve never felt that way … until yesterday 😊.
We arrived at the exit plaza for the rally (the night before the start, for a calibration and verification) and the world around us seemed to be silent. This is a tough bunch of people who have seen a thing or two in car matters, but they have not seen a Rolls-Royce in such a rally. Most of the cars are the size of a Fiat Panda or Renault 4, featherweight, some with 4X4 drive, and the clearance of a Command car at the age of 30, while we are a 70-year-old luxury vehicle designed to drive princes and queens on their exclusive journeys.
Although everyone thinks that we are very brave (or stupid 😉), fear not! – lady Silvia (number 38) with the soft and indulged look; under the hood she has the character of a warrior and we are ready to kick-off.
DAY 1
It has been a challenging day, but Silvia faced it with bravery and honor 😊. One picture worth thousand words…
DAY 3
Rally. For classic cars. Speed limit 50km/h. Regularities (competition for accuracy in navigation, speed and distance) … Sounds easy… Well, it’s not. You drive every day for 10 hours, and when I say drive, I mean almost non-stop! On the other hand, regularities are around 5% of the time, the rest of the time you fly as fast as you can to get to the next point. Because if you are late you will not be able to participate in the next timed segment, however if you early, you will have a few minutes rest. In short, this is a real and not very simple competition. Our decision was not to compete, but to try to finish together with everyone and that too is not really simple. The one who finishes gets a point (out of 100) so after 3 days of competition we are with 2 points (out of 300) because we did not finish the third day – half an hour before the end we had brakes problem on one wheel and stumbled to the garage, while the future is vague…
SUMMARY
One hundred and forty cars, of which forty Fiat (and Seat) Panda, ten Renault 4, about a third 4×4 vehicles and one Rolls-Royce; 280 participants most of whom speak Spanish (only) 3 speak Hebrew and one Indian speaker; 2,200 km of mud, water and dust and we managed 900 of them 😊 .
Initially, for the newbies, the rally may seem like an organized trip – telling you where to go, when to get up, where to shop / sleep / breathe. As we are ‘lonely wolves’, we do not really like being told what to do. At the beginning of the journey you get a road book detailed to the level of a few tens of meters, for example: drive 200 meters and at the junction continue straight after 300 meters turn sharp right, in 100 meters there is a house, pass it on the right, and so on km after km. If you miss even one step, the sequence goes and you have no idea how to continue – GPS does not help because there is no correlation between the manual roadbook and the GPS location – so as one famous cat once said “…if you do not know where you want to get to, it doesn’t matter which way you go” 😊. Hint – go back to the last certain point and continue from there. More than that, you must reach the next point (in a few tens of km) at a pre-determined time. Water streams, mud, potholes and boulders. There are also regularities (driving at a constant speed, meeting deadlines, etc. – and since we decided that our goal is only to finish the race (a goal that was not achieved) we did not really take the competition seriously.
Eventually, it appears that the rally is really not an organized trip – you to yourself, from time to time you bypass or are bypassed, from time to time you get updated on road obstacles or repairs, but throughout the route you are alone, navigating alone, getting lost alone, stopping alone and fixing problems alone (we were a team of two vehicles that drove together along the entire route so it was a bit simpler) and for those who are in doubt – ‘alone’ is good!
Well, how about lady Silvia from the honorable house of Rolls-Royce? We have often been told “you take the statue of David to the seashore and play with it in the sand”, “Rolls-Royce is a work of art, you cannot destroy it on rough roads”. Indeed we were afraid… we were afraid that we would not reach the starting point – we arrived; we were afraid that the car would not withstand the first day – she did! and also on the second and the third; we were afraid that the engine would not withstand the effort – it did! and also the suspension system, the manual gear and other parts. And then, at the end of day 3, she just had enough, the breaks failing on one wheel. Even though a battalion of mechanics examined / dismantled / tried to fix, we had to quit after 3 days.
Silvia was built in the 40s, when most of the roads were unpaved, so she is not really worried about such roads. The ride is smooth and quiet, the car weighs almost two tons (while most of its competitors are less than a ton), but the feeling is that you are driving a 4X4 vehicle. There was no obstacle that she did not pass with her classic elegance (for the sake of fairness, we will note that couple of times along the route we bypassed particularly difficult sections – particularly because she is not high enough).
In conclusion – we have been left with the taste of ‘more’, there is another rally in about half a year and we are definitely considering participating in it!!!
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