Castle Combe Rally Day Main Attractions
Article by Christopher Hibberd
Of course the whole reason why I went was because of the insane collection of cars all meeting, It really is a unique event, I spoke to people from South Wales and the Peak District, There was also a group of RB5 Scoobies from Brighton or Bournemouth. This much dedication and variety of people is something very unique.
In fact I’m pretty confident that every car from rally history was there, from the Big and famous all conquering Quattro’s and Group B machines to a couple of WRC cars, There was a range of high power 500bhp and 600bhp+ rally cross cars, I only heard them unfortunately. There was even some machines I’d never heard of old Volvo’s and Ladas. There was a fascinating little hatchback machine called a Talbot, Some had Lotus Badges on them, which looked exactly like the old-school Rear wheel drive Toyota Starlets. I saw the seemingly common but incredibly elusive Lotus Cortina’s.
No matter what generation you’re from, whether your 10, 18, or 81+, I’m sure you’d recognise many of the rally cars there, right from the beginning of the whole rally scene. The all time conquering Mini Monte Carlo was there, I’m not sure if it was the genuine one from back in the 60′s or not, but it was still kitted out with all the rally gear. The Original one is reportedly worth somewhere in the region of £60, 000+, For a Mini!?. It is a very Special machine indeed, it’s got a charm and charisma about it all of it’s own. I’d never seen a real Renault Alpine A110 till then, there was a couple there, and one of them was out on the track when they were doing the time trials on the course they’d setup. The first thing that got me was how incredibly small they are, I would of missed them altogether had someone not pulled up next to me in one, this jolly chap pointed one more out to me, and it was well hidden behind the Talbots. It did look superb though.
I had a sudden rush of childhood memories when I saw the Camel Trophy 406, until I saw it at the rally day; I thought it was purely a toy. I used to always play with this little yellow 406 for hours on end, I just really liked it for some reason. It’s actually huge though, it looked like one of the cars you’d see on the Dakar rally, big wheels, big engine, big lofty body, It was pretty quick and manoeuvrable considering it’s colossal size.
One of, if not the biggest crowd drawers had to be the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, or rather Prodrive V8 Vantage. It just seemed illogical and unique. The Public idea of Aston Martin is prestige, performance, excellence and class. The racing side of Aston Martin isn’t much different, you always see the DBR9 with the likes of Jaguar, TVR and Lotus to name a few. It’s a gentleman’s car. So to see it amongst the rally scene is a bit—odd, seeing as rally cars are heavily based on common family cars you see everywhere. Even weirder is the fact it’s built and developed by Prodrive, who is internationally renowned for developing the Subaru World Rally cars. None the less this was an impressive machine, sight and sound. There was something very fresh about seeing such a thoroughbred car alongside Ford Anglia’s, MGs, Peugeots and Subaru’s-Quite literally.
I Spent ages searching for the Lancia Delta’s, there were a couple out on track but I thought that was it, I was very disappointed considering I’d seen just about every other conceivable rally car. Eventually after much persistence and walking around I found a whole bunch of them hidden away near the pit entrance. I was expecting to see all these parked alongside the Lancia Stratos’ and Celica GT-Fours. I was pretty sure I’d see the famous Martini Racing Liveried one that has to be one of the definitive Rally cars for me, unfortunately it wasn’t there. I also thought there could of been more than there was, I could probably count the number of Delta’s there on my two hands. They are alot rarer than I thought.
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