I wonder how much the entry fee for the rallye was?

Here is a guide from 2020 I found + fuel etc, it's a big boys game at $70,000 two person single car entry..

Rich

thank you for the information.

It must be fantastic experience but perhaps also somewhat elitist..

Yes bm I'm sure you are right about the participants but the experience would be a once in a lifetime event.

I figure you would need to factor in the cost of a rebuild for your car after the event too.

Glad you found some interest in the vid guys.

Colin, correct, no surprises in your choice of chariot...(-:

The first car engine that truly impressed me was that of a Jag XK with it`s polished alloy head and black enamelled cast exhaust manifold. The second was the Lotus Twink as fitted in my first real sports car, a 1965 Elan with twin Webers, it was a real old t*rt of a car by the time I got my hands on it and it seemed everybody had a go at it before me, it had been raced too and showed next to no oil pressure at idle when hot but I was as infatuated as a 21 year old could be...(-:

I also remember the local Ford dealership bought up I think it was one of the original Broadspeed RS Escorts with either the BDA or BDB Twink, a thing of beauty indeed, it came with the whole support package of spares, I remember being overwhelmed by a few stacks of tyre choices in a corner of the workshop, all fitted on Minilite wheels....What a machine.

Was the OZ Mog bod one I might have known from our eMog days Colin ..? I remember Lorne saying he fancied taking part in some sort of rally, though I suspect he covered more miles in his Morgans than most and without back up crew...Button covered a few miles in his Mog too, and while on eMog there was an OZ bod who I`m sure did the P to P in his much modified +8...? Good to know the Mog finished the event, part way through the film I think there was discussion of the Mog having suffered chassis damage... No surprises there then given the likely flex in the whole assemblage driven over such a tortious journey on such limited suspension travel...Well done them.

I guess as one who ever needed his sleep, a three day rally would have been too much for me, at least you managed one such Colin, whereas the longest holiday adventure my good lady and I managed in the old Mog was circa 4K miles driving all the way down to down to Sorrento and driving the Amalfi Coast road around sunrise in mid June.... Old men and their memories.... Best to hang on to them for as long as we can and bore the youngsters with them for as long as we can till dementia has it`s way with us...(-:

Much as my old Mog has been the the car I have owned over the longest possible time, and that as a CARsonova I have enjoyed quite a few affairs with what at the time were mostly old ladies of the night by the time I got my hands on them, and whose makeup I made the best of, before enjoying the fling for as long as it might last,and learning along the way as much as those old "girls" could teach me in the process...I think I learned a few tricks...(-:

If you might enjoy old men telling their stories, you might like to beam up this vid of someone else who had a few cars through his hands, though his were in far better condition and considerably more interesting than the one`s I owned,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHokDM079wc

As for the car I would choose from any era for such a rally I guess there might be no surprise in my choice Colin...? :-

https://www.porsche.com/stories/innovation/how-a-porsche-911-won-the-1984-paris-dakar-rally

As for the P to P for sure the cost entry for that would have been well outside my capabilities when I was perhaps fit enough to imagine I might manage to get to the start, if not finish the event, let alone purchase any air cooled Porsche, and not "just" one such as the 953 P to D to do it in, but hey... we are allowed to dream are we not..? (-:

Seems I was very fortunately born without envy, thus even though the P to P would have ever been outside my budgetary constraints, I take my hat off to those guys and girls who did it, and wonder how the American lady entrant looking to contact her daughters Mongolian friend (met at college), in the hope of that daughters friend finding an engine for her 356 when apparently in need of one when she broke down in Mongolia...Phew....! And I thought I had a hard time trying to find a fix for loss of coolant through a corroded core plug on my 65 Elan at the roadside circa 30 miles from home...Fixed using a coin of the realm, but then that is just another old man`a story...(-:

Enough already... (-:

Great video - I hadn't seen that before. My chum Keith Weed featured too!

A friend of mine who did the 2019 PtoP (he and his brother were in the 'colonial specification' Bentley) told me that the budget if one wanted to win it (including backup crews on standby to fly in engines) was around $10m.

Richard you are right, sometimes there are experience you wouldn´t forget.

I, for example, would not want to miss any of my 13 winter rides through snowy Norway on my motorbike with sidecar.

But

I also don't want to replace the entire frame of the bike after 3-4 years because the rust was unavoidable.

Upps!

So as always for a lot people a game for rich boys?

However, I admire participants who work hard to participate and participate with a minimumbudget.

Especially with a very small budget, participating in such an event is a great achievement.

At such an event, there are many factors that you can only prepare for perfectly with great financial effort.

I remember the problems we had in Norway that we didn't expect during hundreds of thousands of kilometres in Germany (cables that became rock-hard and chafed and caused short circuits because they had lost their flexibility, rubber parts that broke like glass or simply frozen liquid soap and propane cookers that had almost no heating power...).

And last not least: We had to learn that that cool bags are important - to prevent the beer from freezing.

Yes George, you know the gentleman concerned. ;-)

He very generously said if I could get to Peking he would cover the rest! Closest I have ever come to being a 'paid' driver ROFL......

I think having a mechanic in the crew had more to do with it than my driving experience ;-)

A lovely dream, much better than hacking round the classic Welsh stages, then again........

BR
Colin