It’s not every day that you see a Porsche 924 built for overlanding but this is just that. Mods include a 40 mm lift, 500 watts of lights, roof rack, custom MaxTrax holders, and, the piece de resistance, a custom sleeping setup for two complete with a Webasto cabin heater. Amazing! What a build! And it looks the business to boot.
Archives for posts with tag: Rally
If you’re at home, and you have some time on your hands, check out this 1986 documentary about the Paris-Dakar Rally. You may remember that that was the year Porsche got their rally program dialed and pulled off a 1-2 finish with their newly-developed 959. There’s some great footage of the 959s in action across Africa.
Overland Expo West is in about seven weeks. It will be held this year from May 16–18 in Flagstaff, Arizona. You may know that Overland Expo is the big event on Overlanding calendar. Classes, exhibitors, and about 6000 people, are expected to converge on Mormon Lake Lodge this year.
Registration is $270 per person (including one vehicle) for the Overland Experience package. A day pass is $15 per day plus $10 to camp. The difference, for the most part, is the classes. With the Overland Experience package, you can register for classes. With the day pass, you can’t. Exhibitor and vendor booths are open to all.
For those of you on the East Coast, Overland Expo is branching out to Ashland, North Carolina, on October 3–5 of this year. Registration will open in April.
Fancy doing a 3,500 km (2,175 mi.) lap of India in a 7 hp Bajaj rickshaw? Well then, step right up young sir, young miss, The Adventurists are at it again. Correction. They’re always at it. They’re running three Rickshaw Runs a year, by the looks of it.
The idea is that you raise £500–£1000 ($816–$1632) for charity and pay The Adventurists £1395 ($2277) to sign up. They give you rickshaw, host the start and finish with some epic parties (according to their site), and send you off on a 16-day, shit-your-pants adventure through Indian traffic.
It actually looks like a lot of fun.
Photo: Josh Ashcroft
For some reason Portland still has dirt roads within its city limits. Some of them are actually drivable only by 4-wheel-drive vehicles. So someone had the brilliant idea to get a bunch of overlanders together and drive them. The resulting event is called the Portland Urban Safari. They have fun with it. People get dressed up in safari gear. They had Camel Trophy-style number plates made. One team put an inflatable tiger in the bed of their Syncro.
Portland is currently discussing what to do about its unpaved roads. How great to have an urban venue in which to showcase overlanding though. I hope they leave them as is.
There’s an image gallery after the jump. Or check out the Northwest Overland site. You can check out the route map at the Portland Urban Safari site.
Thanks to Josh in Portland for telling about this and providing most of the photos!
Links:
Portland Urban Safari
Northwest Overland Read the rest of this entry »
Last month, the excellent English car magazine, Octane, covered the 2013 Peking to Paris rally, a grueling 7,610-mile run across the better part of the Eurasian continent. One hundred participants spent about 30 days driving from Beijing, across Mongolia and the Russian steppes, down into eastern Europe, and through the Alps to finish in Paris.
The event is one of many put on by the Endurance Rally Association. According to their site, the route was first run in 1907. As far as we can surmise no one tackled it again for over 100 years until the ERA revived the event in 2010. And they’ve been doing it every year since then. It sounds like an amazing experience.
Here’s a link to a pdf of the Octane article where you can read all about it.
Additional Links:
The official Peking to Paris site
A gallery of images
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Porsche’s dynamic and durable 911. Despite being a tarmac legend, the 911 did venture off-road on occasion. Case in point, this Porsche 911 SC ‘Safari’, designed for the 1978 East Africa Rally with long-travel suspension, bull bar, classic Martini & Rossi livery, and a locking rear differential. Despite being two-wheel-drive, having the engine (and weight) out back over the drive wheels, made it potent off-road performer.
The ‘Safari’ was displayed at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed in conjunction with the 911’s 50th anniversary celebration. Here’s a press release from Porsche describing the car and the rally.
.
There’s a new rally car in town, a pint-sized, single-seat racer based on the engine and running gear of an ATV. Order the kit for $7500 and you can build one of these “Formula Cross” machines yourself. Kits will be available for Honda and Yamaha-based ATVs from 450 to 700 cc.
A racing series is planned for 2013. Think of it as a farm league for the big-time rally world, or just the rally equivalent of karting. If racing’s your thing, the Formula Cross site has templates for designing your own racing livery and an informative page on pitching sponsors.
See the rest of this post for another video.
It’s only a couple of months until the Dakar Rally starts up again in January. Until then you can watch the best of 2012 in this action packed video.
Do you have a VW Syncro (or other European 4×4)? If so, you can take it to Syncrofest, happening Thursday, April 19th to Sunday, April 22nd at Hollister Hills SVRA, about 40 miles southeast of San Jose. The site says they’ll have driver training and skills tests. Camping will be $40/vehicle or $10/vehicle day use.
Registration is now open.