Rally Quest

Every hero knows, you need a noble steed to carry you on your quest. And at the risk of stating the obvious, you can't rally without a car. I'll be shedding a lot of blood, sweat and tears on this quest, so finding a trusty and loyal 4-wheeled companion is crucial. I learned from Motorkhana that you can take pretty much any car to a rally event, if you have enough – what I like to euphemistically call – ' imagination ’ (time + money + passion + stupidity). Cars of all shapes and sizes were being thrown around the track with gay abandon. Think of any make and model of car. Now add the word 'rally’ and type it into Google. With near certainty I can say that some lunatic, somewhere has turned that car into a rally car. You want an Aston Martin Vantage rally car? Sure: A Volvo 240? No problem: A Toyota Prius? Yeah, here you go you, weirdo: So what car am I going to get? My first instinct was that – obviously – I was going to buy a fire-breathing 1998 S...

I set out this morning with my pal Dan for a little roady. The first objective was for me to get reacquainted with driving a manual car to prepare myself for Rally School, so I was the designated driver in Dan’s Ford Focus. The second was to check out Hibiscus Coast Motorsport Club’s Motorkhana event. After two dozen wrong turns around Ranui we finally found the event tucked away behind a BMX park, in a field. Camping out by the entrance was Gavin and his Mitsubishi. He clocked me straight away and introduced himself. In classic kiwi-bloke style he was humble and quietly spoken. I pestered him with a few more questions about the specifics of the event and he gladly filled me in. There are two sets of coned tracks throughout the day, and each competitor gets two runs at each set. You can hit a cone, but knock it over, or move it off its starting point and you get a five second penalty. Go the wrong way and it’s basically a void run. Simple. We looked over to the other side of...