One of the requirements for competing on an event such as Home2Rome is that, despite the £150 spending limit on a car, that car must be roadworthy and legal. That means it has to have an MOT certificate, and the Lexus’ runs out in a few days.
Fortunately, our great friends at ASAP in Huntingdon managed to squeeze us in for an emergency MOT.
Unfortunately they didn’t pass it.
I have to be honest, I wasn’t expecting a pass. The left front suspension is shot and the handbrake doesn’t work, but at least we’d get an idea of what else is wrong with the car.
Emissions. That’s the only other fail point.
At natural idle, it failed the engine speed test (880rpm against a max of 850), while the fast idle tests saw the Lambda readings go too high – 1.046 and 1.061, a little way off the maximum of 1.030.
Cutting holes in the bonnet of an otherwise pristine Renault Safrane isn’t easy. Neither is attaching a radiator to an Audi using nothing but cable ties. Nor is sanding the paintwork on a Lexus LS400 when there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it.
But that’s what we’ve started doing. Preparations for the General Leexus are now officially under way, with the first bits of sanding completed – if only to get past the mental block about removing the paintwork on our luxury barge.
Sadly time constraints meant we could only just start the task, so we’ve left it with a massive smiley face on the bonnet.
Every Lexus needs one. Really.
Once we’ve finished sanding the car down, we’ll be taking a trip to our good friends in Swadlincote, where we’ll have plenty to eat and drink on a beautiful sunny day. And we might paint a car.
The Lexus has never been known for its frugality, what with it being as big as a barge, having a ‘relaxed’ 4.0 V8 engine, and weighing as much as Worcestershire. We’re not expecting 40mpg levels of economy.
We’ve just completed 95 miles since picking up the car. It was full to the brim when we started, and has just swallowed £28.50 of Tesco’s unleaded petrol. By my calculations, that’s an average of around 19.5mpg or, to make it seem slightly scarier, means we’ll need something like 700 litres of the stuff to get to Rome and back via the unnecessarily complicated route we’ll be taking.
Expectations were, quite frankly, pretty low – we know its been driven by Jeremy Clarkson, so we had assumed there would be no rear tyres, probably a broken gearbox and a shed load of other bits either missing or damaged.
Imagine our surprise when, as we walked through the Top Gear garage, we spotted a gleaming LS400, radiating artificial lighting off every panel, illuminating the surrounding area with the soft glow of dull Japanese luxury saloon car. It looked a cracking car.
Getting nearer showed it really wasn’t bad at all. Problems known about include some dodgy suspension at the front and a lack of working fuel gauge, but that’s about it.
Richard Porter, and then headed off in the car. Before stopping a few feet round the corner and wandering around the garage to see what interesting cars we could find.
We’re sworn to secrecy, but see that red Lotus Excel on the right of the top photograph? Thanks to James May, that will look a whole lot different come the new series.
Within minutes of Neo Brothers agreeing to coax our SAAB in to MOT beating life, we’ve been offered another car. And this one’s a monster!
Lurking deep within the BBC Top Gear garage is an ancient Japanese boulevard cruiser, dull enough to put ditchwater out of a job, and it’s been offered to us, with only a handful of known problems, within budget.
So we’re going for it. We’ll now be doing all 3,000 miles of Home2Rome in a Lexus LS400, complete with a 4.0 V8 engine that can best be described as both lazy and thirsty.
It’s not the end of the road for our trusty SAAB though, as that will serve its time in the hands of another Home2Rome rally team.
No sooner have we made a plea for help, but the generous guys at Neo Brothers get in touch and offer us everything we want.
Europe’s largest news and used SAAB spare parts specialists (that’s Neo Brothers, obviously) were keen to get involved in our rally effort, supplying the parts we require and also agreeing to promote the cause via their Twitter page and on UKSaabs.
So the SAAB 900 will soon be up and running and, once painted, sporting some rather swish Neo Brothers stickers.
It’s reached the time where we need to start preparing our SAAB 900 for the forthcoming Home2Rome rally, so we’ve got a new power steering pipe on the way and we’re hunting for the other parts required to get it through its MOT.
So far that seems to be just an exhaust and a passenger wing mirror – everything else we can cope with, including the massive dents on both sides of the car.
So how are we going about getting that? We’re begging! You’re never meant to spend a great deal on these things, the idea being to bodge as much as you can get away with, so if there’s anyone out there with a second hand wing mirror and exhaust, as unlikely as that sounds, then please get in touch.
It’s all been a bit quiet on the rally front, as investigations in to the SAAB’s fitness drag on thanks to some nesting birds.
While we’re all about burning fuel, making noise and tearing around in knackered motors, we’re also a bunch of softies. Once we found the nest in the engine bay, work had to stop.
No wonder the car was going cheep…
So far it seems we need just an exhaust, a power steering pipe and a wing mirror. With those in place, it should pass an MOT.
Just two months after the end of the Bangers4BEN adventure, we’ve started preparations for the next rally event, and this time we’re heading back in to Europe.
We’re tackling Home2Rome in 2010, more than doubling the mileage of the last event, and swapping the dubious delights of Berwick-upon-Tweed in winter for the splendour of Monaco and Rome in summer.
We’ll be facing 4,000 miles of road, a couple of rally stages around Monte-Carlo, a stay at the top of Stelvio, and the natural banger environment of Rome city centre amongst many other challenges, so we need something sturdy and reliable to tackle that, although staying within a strict £150 purchase price limit.
Something like a SAAB 900…
Taking the budget right to the limit, our ton and a half has bought us a reasonably sturdy model, with only some minor issues to resolve. A power steering failure is the number one priority to fix, as the co-driver apparently can’t cope with roundabouts with the steering as it is now!
Aside from that, there’s a ’sporty’ exhaust note that probably won’t pass an MOT, a useless mirror and some artistic remodelling of various body panels.
It’s been a very long time coming, thank to some auction ‘issues’ (not with our car, I hasten to add!) and some tardy timekeeping (which is my fault), but the final scores on the Bangers4BEN rally have finally come out.
First of all, my huge thanks to each and every one of our partners for their support…
This has been the first banger rally we’ve been involved in where everything, even the proceeds from the sale of the car, ends up in the hands of the charity we’re raising money for, so the support in kind offered has been invaluable in keeping costs low and offering maximum exposure for the effort.
If you were following the rally on the website, you’ll have seen that it was a pretty uneventful affair, with the Audi 90 running near faultlessly throughout the entire event, surviving with fewer issues than the Audi 100 entered by the Poole Audi dealership! However, the motorway sections meant I missed the cruise control, auto box and sofa-style seats that the legendary Renault Safrane from previous events had.
At the finish line at Mercedes-Benz World in historic Brooklands, a brief prize-giving ceremony took place, and we came away with a trophy for our efforts. We’re happy with how we performed, especially when we were up against Honda’s two cars, Toyota’s entry and a great entry fom Hyundai, as well as a large number of dealer teams.
All told, the whole rally raised a stunning £15,268 for BEN, and only required around 70 people, 25 bangers, two support staff and one support vehicle to get there!
It may have been quicker and easier to dash a cheque off to BEN, but we wouldn’t have had half as much fun doing that…
We’ll be back on another rally in July, this time taking an ancient SAAB 900* to Rome and back via a very tortuous route (Stelvio, anyone?), and we’d love you to join us for that one.
Thanks once again for your support, and have a very happy and prosperous new year.
* Assuming the car works out ok. These things are never guaranteed…
One of the requirements for competing on an event such as Home2Rome is that, despite the £150 spending limit on a car, that car must be roadworthy and legal. That means it has to have an MOT certificate, and the Lexus’ runs out in a few days.
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Something like a SAAB 900…
