I’d like to ‘drive a banger across Europe’

[Brinyan]

I’ve heard of people who participate in this activity & keen to have a go. The buy a car for max of £500/£1k (whatever’s required these days) & take part in an organised trek across Europe, or part of it.
Anyone done it & have recommendations of a decent one to join? If it’s charitable, all the better. Cheers

[Bennet]

A quick google image search suggests that most people still doing "banger rallies" seem to have just bought an old Hyundai or a Rover and painted stripes and glued tassels onto it. As the owner of an old rover, I can tell you that, whilst I like it well enough, it probably isn't interesting enough to make an event out of driving it around Europe for its own sake. Even with tassels.

[LimaDelta]

Scumball/Scumrun have been going a while. No affiliation to them and have never done one, but that's the one which pops into my mind when these things are mentioned.

https://www.scumrun.com/

[MrVert]

Definitely recommended, if you've got a few mates who fancy doing the trip you will have an absolute blast!

We did the Bust Rallies one in 2016 https://www.bustrallies.com

Reims --> Dijon --> Turin --> Monaco

Had a brilliant time, really well organised, met some great people. Lots of fantastic memories.

Some pics of our chosen vehicle half way down here:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Bought the car for £400, did a service on it, 2k miles around Europe, sold it when we got back for £200, raised £7k in total for two charities.

We're doing it again sometime soon, probably the Black Forest Run for something different.

Go for it

[anonymous-user]

The mongol Rally, my nephew did this and had a great experience.


https://www.theadventurists.com/guides/mongol-rall...

[Tankrizzo]

The mongol is the one that's always seemed very disorganised according to their site - it seems like there's no route or anything, or any checks, or help, or much of anything apart from a start and finish line party. There's probably more than they make out I guess as it's popular.

[durbster]

Bennet said:

A quick google image search suggests that most people still doing "banger rallies" seem to have just bought an old Hyundai or a Rover and painted stripes and glued tassels onto it. As the owner of an old rover, I can tell you that, whilst I like it well enough, it probably isn't interesting enough to make an event out of driving it around Europe for its own sake. Even with tassels.

Yeah I agree with that. If you're going to do it, definitely do it in the spirit of the event.

Back in 2005 these banger rallies were really taking off and some mates and I did Staples 2 Naples. The budget was £100 and I remember one team was a car dealer, and they'd essentially sold themselves a car for £100 (a Rover, funnily enough) that was clearly worth a lot more.

When chatting to them I did get the sense that they kind of regretted that they had basically removed the vehicle jeopardy aspect. Despite the smoke machine spoiler, they basically had a pleasant and comfortable drive to southern Italy and back.

In contrast, we spent £62 on an 1980s Mazda 929 and thanks to multiple breakdowns in the weeks preceding the event, every mile of our journey was filled with the sense that we were not going to make it. Every time we stopped we had to tighten or adjust something, we had three punctures including one tyre exploding at 70mph, and bits were falling off and new noises arriving constantly.

Despite all that, we made and it was totally worth the stress. I think doing it in that car really made it special. I didn't even realise these events were still on but if you can, I'd say do it. It's one of the most fun weekends I've ever had.

Here's a video from the trip:

Edited by durbster on Sunday 1st October 12:12

[mwstewart]

A friend took an old Fiat Uno to mongolia. It looked like a fun trip. Ag one point they were shot at .