Cheap motorsport is one of those classic
oxymoronic phrases up there with friendly
fire and wise fool. But we have entered a
rally that, finally, might just live up to that
billing. There’s no licence needed, no
special safety equipment or clothing and no
scrutineering. But best of all, the first of
just three rules states that the car mustn’t
cost more than £100, and the second
enforces a £15 preparation limit. Oh, and it
lasts 4000 miles, takes place around the
same time as the Paris-Dakar and ends
just a bit further south in the Gambia.  
Like the multi-million pound rally it so
disrespectfully mocks, the Plymouth-Dakar
Challenge is a Saharan desert rally. Unlike
the Paris-Dakar there’s zero support, very
imprecise ‘stages’ (basically as far as you
can drive before it gets dark), plenty of rest
days and no time trials. Now in its third
year, the rally instead democratically opens
the field to 400 or so entrants whose only
qualification is three weeks to spare around
Christmas.
But before you picture some gentle amble
through France, Spain, Morocco and along
the Saharan Atlantic coast, let us bring you
back to the first rule: the £100 car. The
original rally, loosely organised by Devon
stockbroker Julian Nowill (see box), was
dominated by Ladas. Others that have
entered and made it (mostly) include an
Austin Allegro, Rover 216, Peugeot 405 and
Austin Princess, Hillman Hunter and a Fiat
Tipo. In other words, a sordid roll-call of
cars most of us have worked hard to avoid.
The challenge - just as taxing as any
professional rally preparation - is to keep
them running long enough to make the
victory parade in Banjul, capital of the
Gambia. The now legendary story from the
first rally tells of a heroic fix of a broken
clutch on a Mitsubishi van using a spare
Triumph Herald clutch, a rivet gun and
some epoxy. The bodged clutch plate is
now mounted on a plinth. The preparation
task is avoid the need for desert fixes like
that, while keeping to the spirit of the £15
rule. Shamelessly exploiting friends with
workshops or companies with charitable
hearts has become the standard Plymouth-
Dakar solution.
But first we have to get the car. After
hearing one Ford Granada-driving
competitor from last year’s rally describe
the drive from Erfoud to Fez in Morocco as
“probably the best I've ever had, eclipsing
even the best Scottish roads”, we decided
we needed something fun. But we also had
to fulfil an unwritten Plymouth-Dakar rule:
that your car should elicit the response,
“you’re driving to Gambia in a what?!”. This
year, our 50-car group (one of four leaving
at staggered intervals) includes two 1970s
Mercedes 450 SELs, a 1970s Bedford ice
cream van, a couple of 2CVs and a rotting
Jeep Renegade (probably the most
sensible considering the shortage of black
topped roads in Mauritania).
An advertised Lancia Delta for £199
seemed ideal, but turned out to be the
much lardier Thema, then we got outbid on
a rare four-wheel-drive version of the E30
BMW 325i. This year we were forced to buy
left-hand-drive cars – the third rule,
enforced by Gambia where right-hand-drive
cars are banned - but this search threw up
quite a few cheap lhd Porsche 924s on
eBay. Perfect: agile, fast (ish), reliable and
not too thirsty. Porsche also has a strong
Paris-Dakar heritage, entering a four-wheel-
drive 911 in 1984, then winning in the
awesome 959 the following two years.
Twenty years later, and we nixed an early
idea to persuade Rothmans to paint our car
in the Porsche’s sponsorship livery.
The car we eventually found – a 1981 924
Lux - was up for an optimistic £995 from
the Cardiff Trade Centre, but the big-
hearted owner liked the idea of the race
and the charity (the cars are given away at
the end for a charity auction) and dropped
it to £300. It’s not the sort of rally you get
turfed out of for overstretching the rules,
but we reckoned that the extra £200 was
only paying for the badge, not extra solidity.

But we did need to make sure it would get
us there. A recent if misguided red/white
paintjob gave it a quality glow and that
tough 2.0-litre engine (which famously
ended up in a VW van) ran well. But
starting was a headache, it overheated and
braking was hit and miss. Inside it was a
mess, with every age affliction known to old
924s, including a broken and taped-up
steering wheel, but we didn’t care about
that. What we needed was a (free)
consultation from someone who knew about
both Porsches and rallying: did we stand
any chance of making it?
Russell Lewis, of Surrey-based Porsche
specialist RSR Engineering, was the man.
He’d built the engine for the factory-backed
911 entered in the 1993 London-Sydney
25th anniversary rally and knew plenty of
about the rigours of the desert. “Sand is
the nastiest thing you can find,” he warned
us. “Anywhere something moves, it’ll go.
Wears belt to pieces, for example.” Any car
sent to him for rally preparation would get a
full rebuild, including packing the
driveshafts with special high-meltpoint
Kluber grease at £1000 a kilo, but he
reckoned we could be roadworthy with a new
earth cable (£3 from Halfords) that
miraculously cured our starting problem and
set the true temperature on the
temperature gauge. He also advised
stretching a pair of tights across the
alternator breather to prevent sand getting
in. Oh, and fitting a sump guard.
On the Yahoo group set up to vent some of
the rising anticipation and nervousness of
the 2005 entrants, plenty of advice was
knocking about on how to build sump
guards cheaply. Road signs seemed to be
most favoured.
But rally preparation expert Mark Thake,
boss of Chameleon Motorsport in Essex,
reckoned we’d still be vulnerable in our low-
riding Porsche, even with a judiciously
placed No Parking sign. He has acted as
support on classic rallies like the Peking to
Paris and has seen what a badly placed
rock can do.  
Responding to our plea for charity, he
installed a proper sump guard made from a
Kevlar-like substance, the only work we didn’
t do ourselves. He also fixed the bonnet
brackets so we could lift the rear edge up in
the desert heat and circulate fresh air
hampered by the guard. We were now
protected.
As for the brakes, we reckoned they’d be
easy to solve. A heavily pitted nearside disc
and a badly worn pad were obviously the
problem. We fitted a secondhand disc and
new pads pretty easily, but the seals on the
nearside slave cylinder proved knackered. A
lot of phoning and a budget-busting £22
later we got the seals, but the pedal still
pushed to the floor. Was it the servo, the
master cylinder, or just age? By his point
there were less than a week to go before
the Boxing Day departure day and we didn’t
have time to find out.
Meanwhile in the Yahoo group the gung-ho
old hands of previous rallies were losing
patience with us increasingly nervous
newbies. One detailed question elicited a
semi-tirade: “Oh and, by the way, do the
service stations in Mauritania have hand
wipes and glove dispensers or will I need to
take my own?” it ended, dripping with
sarcasm.
One 2004 veteran summed it up like this:
“If you’re in the organised camp you can
expect to have the piss taken for being just
sooo organised, and if you’re in the
unorganised camp you can expect to find
that 32mm socket you really need has
been forgotten by the unorganised and the
organised aren't lending theirs out of
principle.”
We also took on board the localised advice,
such as “all the Mauritanians run on
completely bald tyres at low pressure.
Aggressively pattened off-road tyres just
break up the surface crust and dig you in”.
There were also warnings of a locust swarm
of biblical proportions in Mauritania. The
advice? To do as the locals and attach wire
mesh to the grille and make sure the wash
wipe works. Another thing to add to the
ever lengthening list. With no room for a
roofrack for spare wheels or jerry cans, we
have to cram everything into the absurdly
shallow boot, including a roll of foot-high
garden edging fencing that apparently
makes a great sand ladder.
After the entry fee (£200) jabs, visas,
stereo speakers (to prolong the peace
between driver and co-driver), a tent,
sleeping bag and the cost of New Year’s Eve
in Marrakech, once again the cheap
motorsport tagline starts to fray. But as
Colin McRae will confirm, winter in the
Sahara looks better than any sodden Welsh
forest, right until you get stranded on the
set of Lawrence of Arabia with a broken
gearbox.

BOX
The schedule
The Plymouth-Dakar is no time trial –
winning is arriving – so the schedule is
loose. So loose we haven’t booked a flight
back for fear of missing it. But everyone
follows roughly the same route, except not
always via Plymouth. So we head off on
Boxing Day on a Brittany Ferries crossing
from Portsmouth, aiming to get to Spain by
December 29. Another ferry takes us into
Morocco and on to Marrakech for New Year’s
Eve. Followed by a rest day. Routes are
optional through Morocco, but the tortuous
Atlas mountains are essential driving. Then
we leave civilisation behind to head into the
sparsely populated (and strenuously
disputed) territory of the Western Sahara.
Sticking to the Atlantic coastline, it’s on to
the vast desert country of Mauritania and
the end of the road on January 6. Head to
the beach, but to drive not relax. Staying
on beach is the best way to ensure the
sand is hard. January 10 is the worst border
crossing: hours of dispute and “cadeaux”
for mostly corrupt Senegalese customs
men. A couple of rest days at an isolated
resort in Senegal follows, then into The
Gambia and capital Banjul for a finishing
parade around January 15, 4000 miles
after we start. If we arrive with the car, it’s
then handed over to a auction and sold with
the proceeds going to local charities. We’ll
let you know how much it makes.


Bernie of the Bangers
Applications for the 2006 Plymouth-Dakar
are now running at 100 a week and rivals
are springing up with ferocity. Staples to
Naples, the Hoggar Convoy (extreme
version of the Plymouth-Dakar to Niger via
Algeria), the Undy 500 – all can be traced
back to the skewed vision of one man, 44-
year-old Devon stockbroker Julian Nowill. It
was Nowill who, in 2001, first had the idea
of driving something less than pristine to
the Sahara: “Being a sad git, I approached
the local paper so I could get someone to
drive with,” he says. “The national press
got hold it and it ballooned to 50 cars within
a blink of an eye.”
Now the 200-car Plymouth-Dakar he still
organises pays him “a small crust” and he
intends to keep it going at its current size,
even though that will mean turning down a
large number of applicants. Nowill himself
doesn’t go any more, instead he’s turned
his attention to Eastern Europe with a rally
of just 10 cars aiming for Tashkent this
March. He says they’re “the usual assorted
wrecks”, with Nowill heading it in a Lada. His
plan is to leave the car there, then return
next year to keep going to the Pacific and
eventually round the world.
So why does he think these anti-rallies
have taken off? “There’s none of health
and safety bollocks. Too many times you’re
told you can’t do it because you haven’t got
the money or the experience. The main
aim is for people to have a good time. It’s
a very decent holiday, the charities make
something, and the spirit of good
Samaritanism will see people stop and help
if you break down. It’s quite a British thing.”