As Colin McRae’s desert adventure ended,
ours had just begun. On January 6, unlike
the Barcelona-Dakar Nissan, the Motorsport
News Porsche entered Mauritania without
mishap and parked up for the night. But
our motor wasn’t swarmed over by a team
of mechanics. Instead, we covered the
luggage, locked the doors and went for a
Chinese. Welcome to the strange parallel
world of the Plymouth-Dakar Challenge.
The vast motorsport caravan that the PDC
mocks makes its presence on Boxing Day
while we queue for the Brittany ferry to
France. Three Bowler Wildcat teams rumble
into line, making a poignant contrast
between our borderline MoT failures and
their huge new MAN 4x4 support truck. It’s
also a sharp reminder that our 4000-mile
journey is completely unsupported.
Everything we need was in the back of our
£300 1981 Porsche 924 - we hope.
Over the next two days we thump down
1600 miles of A-roads and autoroutes in
France and Spain – stopping off for an
obligatory blast down the Mulsanne straight
at Le Mans – to join the 45 other
competitors for an en masse crossing into
Morocco. Very few are sensible 4x4s and
our pedigree sports car doesn’t look quite
so stupid next to a Bedford ice cream van,
a rotten Citroen Dyane van held together
with gaffer tape and a lumbering 1970s
Mercedes 450SEL V8. Three years on, and
everybody is obviously still obeying the
spirit of the £100-car rule.
A 40-minute ferry ride later we’re in Morocco
proper and guessing what form we need
from which customs window. Where did you
get that white one from? Him? No but he’ll
show you, for a fee. Three hours of this and
we’re out, and immediately playing urban
dodgems with optimistic pedestrians,
frighteningly nimble donkey carts,
policemen with whistles (hint: a continuous
white line means the same there as it does
here) and the sagging Mercedes taxis that
make up half the traffic.
But on the open road toward Marrakech, we’
re entwined in some of best driving roads I’
ve encountered. A team last year had said
the Atlas foothills knock Scotland sideways
for sheer fun, and they were right. It was
the chief reason we went for a sports car
and not a 4x4 and thank god we did.
After a strange New Year’s Eve hunting
down alcohol in Marrakech we head for the
hills proper over the breathtaking 2100m
Tizi N Test pass, followed by a tense wind
down into the package holiday town of
Agadir. We’re slightly guilty that our desert
adventure so far has been a very pleasant
driving holiday (our UK insurance is even
valid in Morocco).
That all changes the next day after first a
breakdown (traced to loose air duct while in
a Makro car park) and then a rear blow-out
at 95mph. Blame the desert for that,
because the vast brownness just doesn’t
shift along the now painfully straight roads.
Fast is the only way to go, and that didn’t
suit the old Colway retread.
Thankfully petrol prices in the Western
Sahara region halve to around 30p a litre.
Fuel is still a big cost, even at the decent
31mpg we averaged over the whole trip.
Day 11 and we’re poised to hit Mauritania
for the three days of pure desert driving.
But first, preparation, and we pay £25 to a
backstreet garage in the last town in
Morocco to raise the front suspension
enough to give our sump guard room to
breathe. A couple of rubber spacers go
under the springs and we’ve committed
Porsche treason: the beautiful handling is
wrecked.
Thank god we did though, because on the
first desert day we’re still thwacking the
underside on the rocks that alternate with
the soft sand. In the sand we’re actually
okay: lots of torque channelled through the
rear wheels (with two jerry cans of fuel
cementing them down) gives us almost the
best traction of the two-wheel-drives.
Our car is getting battered to pieces. The
last boot lock gives up join the list of
cosmetic disasters and a brake calliper bolt
falls out, never to be found, but
mechanically we survive, despite the sand
flowing into every component. The fan
stops after one failed dune jump that
comes millimetres from unseating the cam
belt, but it’s only the fuse.
We drive on the hard sand of a beach at
low tide the last 60 miles to the Mauritanian
capital. We get cocky now, even towing the
dead Suzuki Samurai, before ploughing
into the worst sand yet trying to get off. A
local expert is called in to drive our six-car
group up, which he does with almost flat
tyres and very low revs.
Desert over, we head toward Senegal – land
of grabbing border guards and
breathtakingly gorgeous women. But
Mauritania has one last hell’s highway for
us, and we break the clutch cable over what
feels like a 50-mile cattlegrid. It’s past
midnight so we have to stay in second for
an hour until hitting the border, where, at
daybreak, my teammate Simon dives
under the bonnet with our spare while the
guards debate how much to charge (100
euros per car, after four hours).
Just outside Dakar, a battered and retired
Nissan Dessoude Barcelona-Dakar team
stop to help us fix the broken Citroen
Dyane van, but even the best French
mechanics can’t save it. We’re now under
300 miles from our destination (Banjul in
the Gambia, not Dakar), so it gets towed in.
Finally, on day 20, after having travelled
the equivalent of John O Groats to Lands
End four and a half times, we arrive. Only
four cars of the original 45 didn’t reach
Banjul, but we’re still elated.  The fan
breaks for good in the victory parade and
we turn up to the charity auction with a
steaming radiator. But our Porsche still
makes £811, sold to a smooth hotel owner
called Papa J. Later that evening I spy our
car outside the Aquarius Night Club. Frosty
Gloucestershire via desert punishment to
tropical posing in just 20 days: that’s what I
call motorsport.


STAT BOX
Car cost: £300
Total spent per person: £1477
Total fuel bill: £343.60
Fuel used: 138 gallons
Average fuel economy: 31mpg
Total miles, Cirencester to Banjul: 4325
Miles in Europe: 1629
Miles in Africa: 2696
Days in Europe: three
Days in Africa: 17

Money spent on fuel
£176 in Europe
£131 in Morocco (jerries filled here)
£7.20 in Mauritania
£29.40 in Senegal
None in Gambia

Fuel prices:
UK: 85p a litre
France: 69p a litre
Spain: 58p a litre
Morocco: 59p a litre
Western Sahara (Morocco): 33p a litre
Mauritania: 43p a litre
Senegal: 52p a litre
Gambia: 42p a litre

Exchange rates to one pound
Euro: 1.44
Moroccan Dirham: 15.94
Mauritanian Ouguiya: 483.53
Senegalese CFA: 985.150
Gambian Dalasi: 52.46


Thanks to: Brittany Ferries, Magellan,
Chameleon Motorsport, www.9xx.co.uk,
Porsch-Apart, Cardiff Trade Centre, RSR
Engineering