Bangers 4 Ben

It feels like only a few days since a knackered Batch and I were stuck in a lift at the end of the first day of Bangers4BEN 2011. But today we had to put that horrible memory behind us as we had our first meeting to plan for 2012’s event with BEN. This year, B4B [...]

AFTER four days on the road and 1,700 miles, the Bangers4BEN 2011 teams have returned home. More than 30 teams took part this year and each one blasted through France, through the Mont Blanc tunnel and into Italy to reach the home of Ferrari. Well, sort of… We saw teams entering a wide variety of [...]

HMS Ark Royal’s journey back to Blighty has been saved by some Bangers4BEN team spirit! Since we broke down on Saturday, countless numbers of people on Twitter, and in real life, have been trying to help us – and it seems they have just succeeded. Fortunately for us, parts company Klarius is along for the [...]

THERE’S good news and bad news on day two of Bangers4BEN. First the positive – we’ve made it to Maranello! Currently, I’m sat with the balcony doors open of our Maranello Palace room, which is just a stone’s throw away from the Ferrari factory, it’s 23 degrees and there are two plonkers lapping the roundabout [...]

WE’RE here finally in Maranello, the home of Ferrari, and it couldn’t have been easier. You’ll have already have seen in Baggott’s blog that we have experienced what Bangers4BEN is all about. Rob Brendon and Wags Firmin offered us the unblemished and brand-new looking rear seats of their surprisingly luxurious Hyundai XG30 so we could [...]

I’M sat at the side of a motorway, being battered by large lorries carrying bananas, and Baggott is pacing up and down. What has my life come to? This is day one of our four-day long excursion to the home of Ferrari all for the charity BEN in £500 bangers, and it hasn’t really begun [...]

BANGERS4BEN is now well under way – and we’ve got an incredible collection of cars. With 31 teams – including ourselves taking part – the trip from Dover to Maranello has already been an eventful one. For those not in the know, Bangers4BEN challenges teams to find a car for less than £500 and drive [...]

SO now you know – our Bangers4BEN car 2011 isn’t a car at all. It’s a boat. And a very big boat at that. This year we’ve carried on the military theme we started at last year’s Bangers4BEN rally and have created an homage to HMS Ark Royal. Being based in Gosport in a former [...]

BANGERS4BEN usually encourages some mad entries from people doing something special for charity. But we couldn’t have made up one team’s entry in Bangers4BEN 2011 – a newlywed couple! HPI’s operations director Andy Entwistle and his wife Toni Emmins-Entwistle are ditching the normal protocol of going somewhere sunny and hot for their honeymoon. Instead the [...]

THIS weekend sees 31 brave teams travelling more than 800 miles to the home of Ferrari to raise money for charity. We say brave because they will be getting to Maranello in cars that cost £500 or less – AND they have to get home again. Along the way there will be French motorways, Switzerland, [...]

THIS time next week 31 teams from various parts of the motor industry will be in the middle of a four day long trip to Italy. Everything from a Fiat Seicento to a Black Cab will be taking part in the marathon road-trip which sees competitors buying a car for £500 or less, driving to [...]

This years Bangers4BEN adventure will see us visit the home of Ferrari! Only thing is you’ll have to do it in a car costing no more than £500. You up for it? Fancy visiting Ferrari? THE home of Ferrari. Maranello. A mecca for fans of the prancing horse the world over. Birthplace of the some [...]

THIS week 11 of the cars that took part in Bangers4BEN 3 were sold at BCA Blackbushe – and here’s the video! The event in aid of motor industry charity BEN saw teams from all walks of the motor industry drive from Dover to Monaco and back. As well as raising sponsorship money the teams [...]

OUR Bangers4BEN auction has just taken place at BCA Blackbushe – and our cars made £5,350 for charity! The sale in the main Hall 1 of Blackbushe saw a throng of dealers battle it out for our cars. The only car that didn’t sell was Carlyle Finance’s Audi TT – it was bid up to [...]

PLACE your bids – because today is the day our Bangers4BEN cars go to auction! The sale takes place at around midday at BCA, Blackbushe, and is the grand finale of our epic trip to Monaco. The cars – all costing less than £500 – made the trip (some only just) and now they’ll be [...]

THIS week the Car Dealer team has been to Monaco and back in a £250 banger – and we made a Making Of video! You may have read about our plan to turn our car – kindly supplied by Auction4cars.com – into an SR71 Blackbird, but we thought it would be a good idea to [...]

THE long drive home from Monaco was never going to be the most exciting – but our Bangers4BEN teams still had a laugh. Days three and four of our run to the playground of the rich and famous saw our mad cars head back from Nice to Dijon on Tuesday, then Dijon back home on [...]

OUR intrepid Bangers4BEN travellers have made it to Monaco – and driven the GP circuit legends have raced! At around 4pm today, 20 bangers – all costing less than £500 – rolled into the glitzy gold-leaf lined (probably) streets of the principality. Car Dealer’s Project Stealth led the convoy to the sound of the Top [...]

BANGERS4BEN3 is off – and this year has some of the best and wackiest cars ever taking part in the rally! Our trip from Dover to Monaco and back in cars costing less than £500 in aid of motor industry charity BEN has really brought the motor trade out of their shell. We thought our [...]

OUR Project Stealth team have been on the road since 5am Wednesday on their round-the-UK trip to get our car ready for Bangers4BEN. Commercial manager Dunc and worky James Batchelor arrived in Scotland Wednesday afternoon at Carwrapz.biz’s Edinburgh base. The wrapping wizards worked on our 1.4-litre Honda Civic late into the evening on Wednesday and [...]

Project Stealth has begun – it’s our operation to turn a boring Honda Civic into an SR71 Blackbird for Bangers4BEN 3. We’ve dispatched commercial manager Duncan Chappell and worky James Batchelor to Scotland to get our car sorted. Here’s James’ account of day one… SO far on Project Stealth, Duncan and I have been awake [...]

DO you fancy coming along on Bangers4BEN3? Well, you could be in luck. Due to some last minute drop outs we have got FOUR places to giveaway. That means all your accommodation, meals and ferry crossings will be paid for. You will need to find a car – up to the value of £500 which [...]

IN the words of a cigar-chomping A-teamer – don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? Well, I may of course be jumping the gun, but after two days of frantic phone calls and emails our plan to transform our hippy-coloured Honda Civic into something far cooler certainly does seem to be getting [...]

WE’VE found it. Not the answer to why buyers expect to pay £1k less than the sticker price – no one knows that! No, we’ve found the car that’ll get us to Monaco and back for our Bangers4BEN adventure in just over a week’s time. Well, at least we hope it will. It was sourced [...]

Oh dear. Oh very dear. What with our 911 for 2011 campaign and the Road Test of the Year, I seem to have overlooked the fact our Bangers4BEN MKIII event is looming. In under a month the Car Dealer Magazine crew – plus 30 other teams from across the motor trade – will be setting [...]

THIS year we’ve supercharged our Bangers4BEN adventure – and we’re heading all the way to Monaco! No, we’re not joking, we actually want you to come along and drive with us to the playground of the rich and famous in a bunch of old bangers. The 1,600-mile route is fraught with dangers – French drivers, [...]

We asked our Bangers4BEN competitors to tell us the story of their adventure. Some we managed to include in the next issue of the magazine, but some arrived a little too late, like this one. So here, in full, is Malcolm Greig’s story of nursing his Vauxhall Omega up and down the country on Bangers4BEN… [...]

THE first wave of cars to be sold as part of our Bangers4BEN challenge raised thousands of pounds. At an auction at BCA’s Blackbushe site, 17 of our bangers were sold for the grand total of £7190 – every penny of which goes to BEN! A few cars were missing from the sale – some [...]

TODAY at 1pm our Bangers4BEN cars are auctioned at BCA Blackbushe for the motor industry charity. After last week’s big event, where 25 teams from all walks of the motor trade made the epic journey from Ascot to John O’Groats and back, now is the time to get serious and raise some cash. We’re expecting [...]

THE Bangers4BEN road trip might be over – but now the important bit begins – cashing our cars in! The whole reason for our trip to John O’Groats and back again in our £250 cars was to sell them for a profit at the end. That’s why next Wednesday we’ll be holding a special auction [...]

BANGERS4BEN prize frontrunners for best-dressed crew are Team Honda, seems the general consensus of the rally. Sorry, make that Team Impossible Dream Honda. Seen the ad? If you haven’t we’ve included a video below. The actor in this has clearly roped in his brothers and sisters to compete in the Bangers4BEN rally this year. It’s [...]

SABOTAGE, a lost dog, an RTA and some pretty mad swimming – it could only be day two of Bangers4BEN. After a damp two hour slog from Inverness to John O’Groats, our 25 intrepid travellers pulled into the John O’Groats ‘picturesque’ viewing point to a chorus of air horns and, er, horns. It was all [...]

BANGERS4BEN 2009 is officially a success – all the teams have amazingly made it north to John O’Groats. We’ll be bringing you full professional pictures soon, as a taster for the big spread that will be in the magazine. But we’ve got this feed from the ground, showing that: •    Snapper Neill has his work [...]

BANGERS4BEN has suffered its first RTA, after a nasty-looking incident on challenging Scottish Highland roads. First things first, nobody was injured. Just badly shaken up. So, what happened? Well, the Tweets were flowing in triple time, as competitors came across the scene. There were already lots of people there, so many couldn’t actually stop and [...]

BANGERS4BEN has today suffered its first mechanical problems, as the challenge of Scotland’s hills arrives. Most alarming is the loss of brakes by team Smart Repair. Their Renault Scenic really impressed us at the start line, but has developed a bit of a gremlin along the way. Nothing that team GRS and team Poole Audi [...]

BANGERS4BEN entrant ToyotaPR has set up a blog to trace his thoughts – live from the event itself. The latest update came, unsurprisingly, at 1am this morning, after dinner and a nightcap in the bar. Why so late? Well, Scott Brownlee and his stepson Christian had taken 12 hours to get there… Why so long? [...]

DRIVING 600 miles is, in a word, dull. Travelling four fifths of the country’s length in a day isn’t just painful for your buttocks, but your brain too. Duncan and I started this morning on our Bangers4Ben adventure at 5.15am. Which is an actual time in the MORNING. I never even realised it existed. But [...]

BANGERS4BEN is well underway, and all of the crews are reporting good news back to base. Indeed, most of our intrepid Bangers4BEN entrants are now at the hotel, it seems. And what a journey it’s been for some! TomHyundai has a car heater stuck on full. Good for Scotland? Not when you’ve a car full [...]

BANGERS4BEN has made it to another country, we’ve just seen – via the magic of in-car tracking! The white Audi Cima Racing’s Phil has hooked up has flashed up the good news. It confirms Bangers4BEN is, once again, international. This means the rest of the teams will be making great progress too – we’ve heard [...]

ALL the Bangers4BEN crews are now on the motorway, heading North… and immediately, the convoy has split! Some have chosen M6, others have chosen M1. Who will win? We’ll find out later in the day. Seems it’s lunchtime now though, and service stations all along the route are having the gasps of our teams. HOW [...]

BANGERS, frost, fog and a fair few fuggy heads broke the peace of icy Sunninghill this morning:  Bangers4BEN is go! Teams gathered for the air-horn start at the remarkable HQ BEN does its fine work from, for quick role-calls and photo-calls, before setting off for Up North. It really was a remarkable collection of cars [...]

IF we hadn’t left it all to the last minute then it wouldn’t be any fun would it? Well, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Our Bangers4BEN problems have stepped up a notch this week – not in any small part helped by the mag’s deadline falling today adding to my already heightened stress [...]

THE kindness of strangers in this game never ceases to amaze me – especially when it comes to Bangers4BEN. Earlier this year, when we made our trip around the country people fell over themselves to help us out of a spot of bother. And now, come Bangers4BEN MkII, it’s no different. Firstly there’s the 26 [...]

SO who’s taking part in our Bangers4BEN challenge and what are their plans for the great rally? Here you can read about the 26 teams that took up our challenge to buy a ‘banger’ for £250 and drive it to John O’Groats for automotive industry charity BEN. For the full details on Bangers4BEN, read this [...]

BANGERS4BEN is an event organised by Car Dealer Magazine and motor industry charity BEN to raise much needed funds. 26 teams of two will be driving up and down the country on November 9, 10 and 11 in cars they bought for no more than £250. Participants include main dealers from across the UK, independent [...]

OMG. Bangers4BEN is just over a week away. The fact I’ve got a magazine to produce in between now and then has kind of taken my eye off the ball a little. But I am starting to get a distinct feeling of panic tinged with some excitement as the clock clicks down to the big [...]

DRIVE a snotter of a scrapper, said Hyundai, and raise cash for WOMAC. Sounded pretty good to us, we reckoned. After all, isn’t Bangers4BEN all about driving old cars over zany distances, and raising cash for charity? This would thus be good practice. One Rover Maestro was thus duly delivered. Complete with exposed primer, smell [...]

IT’S BEEN a while since I wrote about Bangers4BEN MKII so thought it was about time for an update! Our challenge for the charity has been superbly supported – filling up in just 10 days – with an incredible 29 other teams set to join us for the event in November. If you follow me [...]

I HAVE to admit, we were taken a bit by surprise with Bangers4BEN MKII. We just didn’t realise how popular it was. Suffice to say filling the first 20 places in five days was not something we expected. The events team at BEN has been busy ringing around hotels to sort out more places and [...]

SAT in that pub back in January on a wet, gloomy winter’s evening, the Car Dealer team could never have imagined how big a beast Bangers4BEN would become. What started out as four blokes wanting to get away for the weekend and do something a bit different, turned into a charity challenge that rasied £1,600 [...]

BANGERS4BEN– our Top Gear-inspired motor trade challenge is back – but this time we want you to get involved! You may remember, back in February, four members of the Car Dealer team decided to raise money for automotive industry charity BEN in a unique way. Over a series of weeks we each hunted down a [...]

LIKE most 15 year olds, my Calibra is a bit sluggish, smells funny, makes strange groaning and grunting noises and has developed some unsightly acne (rust)… But today I’m grieving – as I’ve had to sell it. After covering over 1,500 miles in the coupe, over three days for our Bangers4BEN challenge I became rather attached [...]

WE dropped the Calibra off at BCA yesterday ready to be auctioned off as part of our Bangers4Ben challenge. The chaps there offered to auction the car FOC – cheers guys – and the Calibra is due through the block on Monday at the Blackbushe site. The guys have got a lot of work to [...]

BANGERS4BEN was a trip from Portsmouth to John O’Groats and back again in £200 cars to raise cash for BEN, the automotive industry charity. This section features all the blogs from before and during our trip. If you’d like to add to our total please visit www.justgiving.com/bangers4BEN. 

RIGHT – time for a Bangers4BEN update. You’ll probably have recently read about our epic adventure to Scotland in the latest issue of Car Dealer. Just to recap – for those of you that are new to this Bangers malarkey – four of us at Car Dealer bought cars for £200 or less, drove them [...]

  THE whole reason we launched our Bangers4BEN challenge was to raise some cash for automotive industry charity Ben. OK, so it was a chance to get away for the weekend and have some fun too, but raising some serious cash was high on the agenda! So it’s superb that we’re starting to see the [...]

1,496 miles, three days, seven fill ups, one flat tyre and a leaking radiator – but our £200 chariots made it.  No, I can’t quite believe it either. But you know the really shocking bit? We didn’t get caught in traffic once. Not once did we have to stop and wait in a traffic queue [...]

PORTSMOUTH to John O’Groats in four £200 bangers… done. Inverness to Portsmouth… pending! What I honestly thought wouldn’t happen just has. We made it. And without any major problems too (so far)! We rolled into the viewing point car park at John O’Groats just after half five. And the only falling snow we’ve seen all [...]

OUR intrepid travellers have it to their overnight stop, defeating all the odds, and not a little weather hindrance. Today, they’re underway to John O’Groats as we speak – but there was just time to send a quick picture update of Saturday’s proceedings to Car Dealer HQ. Here in the office, we’re blown away at [...]

WE made it! Okay, so celebrations might be a bit premature but after this morning’s ‘deflating‘ start I feel like a little reward. We’ve just checked into Best Western’s Sea Hotel in South Shields. It’s a nice hotel – right on the coast and has free WiFi. Major bonus. Outside there’s about half inch of [...]

  IT couldn’t have started any worse – a puncture! As I rolled up early to grab a cup of tea before the meet with the lads, I spotted it. One flat rear. That’s a bad start by anyone’s standards – even ours. Before I tell you how we got round the problem let’s take [...]

THIS weekend we’re taking on our Bangers4BEN challenge to raise money for the automotive industry charity. You can follow all the action throughout the weekend – from what cars we bought for £200 to whether we’ve been buried in a snow drift – in our dedicated section. Simply CLICK HERE to be taken to the [...]

ANY hopes Bangers4BEN bid will go smoothly collapsed in spectacular style today – with a warning from the doc. I’ve been quite ill the last few weeks with stomach pain and I’m off my food in a major way. Without boring you with the details it turns out a serious complaint I had back in [...]

So I’m starting to get a bit worried now. Have you SEEN the weather? Been outdoors? Simply opened your curtains? Well, unless you’ve been in Fiji, you’ll have probably experienced a slight icy blast of some sort. While it might be a bit damp and cold down here on the south coast – well at [...]

WHY, oh why, did we choose to do this Bangers4BEN challenge in the same week the magazine goes to press? Don’t ask. It sounded like perfect timing when we made the plans, but now, in the midst of sending the March issue off to the printers, I’m struggling to find time to sort the trip [...]

AS the snow falls the panic begins to set it – are we really going to drive to John O’Groats? Our Bangers4BEN challenge looked decidedly more difficult the second I glanced out of the window this morning and saw the south coast had been dusted with the white stuff. I’ve spent a frantic day trying [...]

AND so it begins…  Bangers4BEN really has taken off. Look, we’ve got a logo and everything! There’s even been a few cars arriving and a change of personnel to report. Ok, let me explain. After deputy editor Rich was called up for work duties which clashed with part of the event we were down to [...]

RIGHT… I think it’s about time we worked out some rules for our upcoming Bangers for BEN challenge. I’ve been thinking about it for the last few weeks – in between desperate phone calls to contacts in search of a car – and have come up with the following. Firstly the budget – it’s £200 [...]

CAN you get addicted to eBay? I think you can. I am sure if I Googled it they’d be a name for it. Hang on I will… Okay, so it seems there’s not exactly a name for it, but rather a large number of people with the same problem as me. But the thing is [...]

Don’t worry lads I have a plan… Conversations that start that way often aren’t received with the enthusiasm I’d hope for in the Car Dealer office, but this one was different… It’s the plan of all plans! Just like all good ones it was hatched after a night on the sauce. RTotY helper Dan Harris [...]