10:12 am, September 16, 2010
We salute The AA for their help!
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 Wednesday.
All the cars – costing less than £500 each – made it to the ferry in time, but not without a few dramas.
The Carlyle Finance boys and their Audi TT limped into Dijon at 1am on Wednesday morning after 12 hours on the road. Their car kept putting itself into limp home mode allowing them to drive at only 30mph. Ouch!
There was a bit of bumper bashing too which saw the WinWin World boys give the Bayliss Astra a nudge. Surprisingly the Volvo came off a lot worse – with a cracked headlight – but some tape sorted the problems. And no one was hurt.
There was also a slight issue with the Gendarmes on the last day. Team Swearing at Rabbits was searched for contra band at a toll – apparently fluffy bunnies are known for stashing booze and fags under their tails.
And the second Nissan team had to talk their way out of a fine for stopping on the hard shoulder of the autoroute – apparently the call of nature really was shouting for one of the team’s members (who’ll remain nameless)…
Thankfully plod had a sense of humour and let them off when they realised it was for charity. It probably helped that the pair were dressed up as Mario and Luigi…
AWARDS
ERAC to the Future were handed the best dressed car award – quite rightly so – which was chosen by the BEN representatives on the trip and we managed to pick up the best fancy dress award. And before you say it, it was NOT a fix…
We did wear the flight suits for the whole 1900 miles though!
Project Stealth – our £250 banger from Auction4Cars.com – made it there and back with no issues whatsoever. In fact we’re very attached to it now.
On Monday it will be auctioned off in a special BCA sale along with the other competitors’ cars to raise a wedge of cash for BEN. Most of the teams have already been collecting sponsorship cash so we’re hoping to beat last year’s £15k total for the event.
We also owe a few people BIG thanks – to The AA for their fantastic support and for sending a patrol down to Monaco and back with us; to Auction4Cars.com for the good deal on the car; to CarWrapz.biz for wrapping Project Stealth; Pentagon London for tinting the windows and to Halfords for all the goodies.
Later this week we’ll be posting our Making of Project Stealth video online so keep an eye out for that, but for now here’s a gallery of pictures of all the teams that took part in the event and some other shots from our snapper Dean Smith. Who put up with our poor jokes for far too long…
James
More on Bangers4BEN3 can be found here
