Ramshackle Rally - Calais to Split

[Luke MK2]

Should really have posted something about this long ago, but I've only had a chance to but a thread up now. If you havent heard about it, its basically a poormans Gumball Rally.

Rules are simple - The car needs to be worth less than £150, there can be a maximum of 4 team members, the car must have a theme and team members must be in fancy dress (relative to the theme of course!)

We ended up with three team members , myself my mates Barry and Joe and set upon finding an old banger to pimp out! Found this bad boy on Gumtree, a 1.0 litre VW Polo mk2 breadvan 4 speed and was £150 bang on.

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Next job was getting Pamela road going (the name will make sense soon enough) with headlight aligning, rear brake cylinders replaced, leaking fuel tank sealed up and a bit of TLC.

 

[Luke MK2]

Once the mot was sorted, we needed to choose a theme, after looking on the website and seeing some themes we though we'd use a Halloween costume as inspiration.. Baywatch of course!

Car was going for a coat of JCB yellow and (?) Red, greatfully supplied by Ballynahinch Motor Factors and some graphics supplied by... . Handy enough Barry had access to a paintbooth and proper equipment, but my experience covering driveway painting with halfords aerisol cans i was a little out of my depth.. i had a crack none the less though

With the car prepped and ready the next task was to ge tthe paint on, Now I don't know if any of you have used a paintgun before, but it makes aerisol look like **** all squared! The first coat looked rough, but after gettin my technique down i think it came out alright..

 

[Luke MK2]

Once fully painted, it looked not too bad for a first go and i was told by a few people its a better job than some of the cowboy painter's out there.. which i guess gives you nd idea of how dodgy some people can be, rather than my (lack of) skill

Barry got a few great find on eBay, i nthe shape of a retro roofrack for our luggage and some original Baywatch accessories.

Next up were the graphics, as we needed to show off our baywatching etc! Going with a tasteful, yet eyecatching design.. no seriously!

Add some retro Stickers

Soon enough Andy Mc Alpin (Alpine Signs) had the decals were on and all with a great finish, sexy huh?

It looked well, but i reckoned it was worth putting the left over paint to good use and gave the wheels a lick of paint

And the car so far...

We had a safe left over from our last trip round europe, so Barry managed to wedge it into the boot quite well, for our important guff... not that i dont trust VW's locks...

Thats it for now.. we leave on Wednesday for Stranraer, travelling all day through to England andEventually to Calais. The journey starts on Thursday morning at around 8am, with the first checkpoint in Bern in Switzerland. Next say is Bern to Bormio, with the famous Stelvio Pass along the way (Featured in Top Gears best driving roads episode)

Then from Bormio in Itlay to Lljubana (sp) in Slovenia for some cheap beer action And the last leg is from That place in Slovenia to Split on the West coast of Croatia, which is supposed to be very sunny!

We stay there for a few days and finally travel to Munich for another bender! Which leads us back to the car. As we have spent so much already we couldnt justify driving back.. we calculated it at about £160 per person x3 or a £30 flight home..

So unfortunately Pamela and ourselves must part ways, and we're gonna have to sell it in Munich, which will break my heart, but must be done! So any perspective buyers - 1990 VOLKSWAGEN POLO BAYWATCH RETRO ONE OFF RARE on eBay (end time 07-Sep-09 12:11:41 BST)

Hope appreciate the car as much as we do and let me know what you think, more updates soon!

 

[Rocko]

The car is brilliant. Why is it not travelling to Edition38?

 

[Luke MK2]

i think we'll be knee deep in europe by that point

 

[anto6n]

legend,joe showed me the pics in work earlier.you should sell it in split.

 

[Lil Red]

Class Sounds like ye'll have a brill time too!

 

[bashem & bambers]

1990 VOLKSWAGEN POLO BAYWATCH RETRO ONE OFF RARE on eBay (end time 01-Sep-09 09:35:49 BST)

made a mistake on the original auction set it as fixed price instead of a bidding auction, so now relisted above

 

[Graham2]

That looks like hella fun, wish I had of known about it, could have got a few to do it no probs. Good luck and take plenty of pics!

 

[Coog]

Awesome... would be good fun to fly to Munich and drive it home too.

If it doesn't sell what do you do? lol

Looking forward to the scallyrally in October. Modifications to the ZX begin this weekend

 

[Luke MK2]

Worst case scenario , we get our german dictionary out and make a for sale sign by the side of the road!

 

[Gman]

Saw the wee car sitting in your drive today Luke...very nice lol

Can't think of a worse car to drive the Stelvio pass on but I'm sure it will be great craic anyway! Good luck!

 

[Luke MK2]

Latest update - Left on the 3rd morning to Stranraer and car was going well, not a problem even though we were doing 90 in our 4 speed 1.0 polo in awful rain!

Hit London that night and the backbox decided to drop off in rush hour traffic in the rain.. cable tied it for it to come off by the centre box.. paid 40quid for a quick fix in a random garage the next day. Got to Calias to meet up with the teams.. some hilarious cars.. including an old 5 series Beemer covered entirely in bottle caps (pictures to follow)

Then got stuck on a kerb and lost the exhaust again! Gypsy engineering sorted that out.

France - ****ing boring motorways

Switzerland - Amazing scenery, the Alps have the best driving roads ive ever seen.. tough mountains to climb though.. some overheating issues, took front grill off and turned heaters up full!

Italy - Stelvio pass at night flat out in 1st and 2nd!! incredible! but the rest of it is full of theiving scum who cant drive

Slovenia - Suprised how nice it was, cheap, clean, no scumbags, very highly recommend visiting Ljubljana!

Croatia - tough police, very warm, great driving roads and Split has the most amazing looking women ive ever seen.. last night party tonight!



Staying here until wednesday, to recover from the last days then onto Zagreb, through Austria and finally the mecca... Munich!! beer halls are my motivation right now..

As i said before pictures are coming, theres some hilarious photos..

Cheers, Luke!

 

[Luke MK2]

Right, completely forgot i posted a thread up on here, so i'd thought i should throw up some photos to show you what happened!

Heres us in stranraer.. we werent really aware of what would unfold in the next few days...

This was taken in a multi-story car park in London where we lost the use of our exhaust (temporarily) we got it back on soon enough after some welding

Waiting on the boat at Dover behind an MGB

Finally arrived in Calais on the friday morning at 8am.. rough night before... dressed in baywatch attire in what seemed like arctic weather.

France.. onion-town, bagette road?

our irish mates Road-o-cop

army spec nova

a common sight...

Convoy in the alps!!

at the top

Got to the top of the stelvio pass late, so we gunned it up the 48 hairpins absolutely flatout! blind corners et etc. was incredible.. then the brakes somewhat failed goin down the other side but worth it!

So the next morning a few teams decided to go back up the Stelvio from the other side.. slightly hungover..

the irish lads.. they're brakes failed completely on the way down the stelvio ... eejits

see if you can spot the baywatch sticker..

the obligitory baywatch shots in the alps

lost in croatia

epic chest carpet

got to split in one piece!

and finally the last known sighting of Pamela the Polo in Munich...

Oh and theres a video diary thingy too, made for a competition, where the team with the most views get an HD camcorder... so watch and watch again please!!!!

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhP1WJw4V2A&feature=related]YouTube - Mitch's Buchanons - Split 2009 - Ramshackle Rally[/ame]

 

[paulmicmac]

That must have been class, some great memories i'm sure.

So what happened to Pamela in the end?

 

[mcmurray]

Looks like brilliant craic.

Wouldn't fancy that journey in a £150 polo for fear of ending up stranded in the a$$hole of nowhere.

 

[Luke MK2]

well to cut a long story short, she was last seen in munich and thats all i can say right now...

 

[BBSBOY]

Awesome, that looked like great craic.

 

[Dan.86]

that looks epic fun! great video too

 

[Kaner.eB]

looks real fun ! fair play for going and doing it

 

[Maxwell]

lmfao looks like good oul banter...and mate the french motorways are probably the best motorways in the world

 

[Luke MK2]

To be honest the french motorways were probably the worst! so bloody boring! Swiss alps were breathtaking and the croatian coast was up there too