The Naked Rallye with Blue Steels

[Orta]

So 2018, the year of the OC 'On Tour'. It was a fantastic trip, in fantastic company, in what I've come to consider fantastic cars.

I'm hoping someone else *cough* Rowell *cough* will do a much better write up than I but I wanted to commit a few words to the old project thread to keep it up to date.

Me, Sam Bates (7075Sam), Sam Rowell (Eeyore) and Matt Frost (Frosty) met up at Ashford, Kent. Then we started, as you must, crossing the channel via the tunnel it was a 7 hour drive to Montbeliard and the Peugeot Museum. It was a bit of a slog with numerous stops, and whilst the French motorways are epicly smooth and the speeds limits are good they are sure expensive! One section cost us £38! Day 1 and I had an issue, my idle wouldn't level. So when slowing down or just after starting up the revs would die and the engine would stall. It was overcomeable and I just cracked on, and by the end of the week the issue seemed to have rectified itself.

We got some piccies outside before it opened (as in France nothing opens... ever, or if it does it opens for maybe a couple of hours in the morning, has a break for lunch and then opens again for maybe 1 or 2 hours in the afternoon) and then had a wander around. There was some great content from Peugeot's distant past but they seemed to stop acquiring new exhibits in 1993, baring a 106 Maxi and a Dakar Rally Car, there was nothing newer. So disappointing to say that's 25+ years ago now! And, even in the gift shop, there wasn't a single 306 related item apart from a cheap chain!

From here we hit Grand Ballon. It's a French mountain climb, very similar to the Swiss passes just on a smaller scale. This road was mainly empty, surprisingly, and was epic fun and really set a tone for the rest of the holiday. We got some great pics and made a lot of noise!

We then headed into Switzerland which, for me anyway, was the absolute highlight of the holiday. We travelled into Switzerland via Germany as we needed to stop at a Service Station to buy a Vignette and didn't trust asking a Frenchman anything in English, whereas all Germans speak fluent English (This is a massive generalization based on my 8 years of travelling to both countries).
We stayed in Lucerne (Luzern) and had originally planned to do the "Figure of 8" Gotthard, Furka and Grimsel Passes but as Switzerland has a particular bad winter they were all still shut for Winter!!! At a loss as to what to do we hit google and found a number of passes in the East of the Country still open. This ended up being a fantastic call, we did the San Bernardino Pass, which whilst VERY busy was great fun. The best bit of this was actually the old road 13 that lead to the beginning of the pass which was absolutely deserted!! Endless harpins meant endless fun!

After this we headed North to the Klausenpass, one of the longest and seldom used mountain passes. This was an absolutely fantastic experience. The road was 90% empty and had twisties galore! The summit was still heavily snow covered (See pics!) which lent itself to fantastic photo ops and rude word writing. The downward run from this was just as fun.

All the while the car had been performing fantastically. The engine temps were showing as quite high, but at the time I put this down to the hooning and thought nothing more of it. Yes I would've liked Air Conditioning and Cruise Control as it was hot and in between the hooning mountain passes there is a fair bit of motorway work to do, but other than that I genuinely can't fault the car. 20 years old and being driven spiritedly and still achieved 30mpg over the entire trip!

After the fantastic Klausenpass we headed back to the hotel again ready for an early start the next day...
Thursday came and we set off at 06:00 and headed in the general direction of the Nurburgring via the Black Forest.
Yes Switzerland was expensive, but it was fantastic. We had great weather, the roads were great, the tunnels were fun (Pops and Bangs lol) and the car scene was visibly alive.

After a worrying stop by customs at the German border where the customs agent seemingly wanted all my details, then gave up when she realized we were altogether and stopping me meant stopping all of us and causing traffic chaos, we were back in Germany. We travelled north on the B-500 (Google it) through the Black Forest. It's primarily a Bikers road, and the southern bit in particular was very touristy. Add to this we hit it at the wrong time and it meant it wasn't as much fun as it should've been. However after a few stops and some pics the final northern section of the road before we arrived at Baden Baden was actually nice and twisty and very fast.

We then hit the AutoBahn (And yes we did do a small portion of unrestricted) and made our ring Hotel about 19:30. It'd been a long day and the car was starting to get seriously hot...

We met up with Hannah and Josh with their 205, who'd crossed earlier in the week and been at the ring for a couple of days. We managed to get 6 of us into a 5 birth relatively comfortably and were disappointed to find out the Friday's Tourist Track session had been cancelled !! So we spent the Friday getting the obligatory pictures near the sign up at the complex near the GP stadium. We took the disappointing Museum tour and bought some over priced merchandize (Including a sticker soon to be gracing my car's rear windscreen). We then watched a little track action at Youtube corner. That evening Hannah managed to find us a really great restaurant with a mezzanine deck seating area that looked out over the Forest, we couldn't get sat out there but at least the place had it lol. We had fantastic Schnitzel, so I'd recommend it if I could remember the name of it.

Saturday comes and the track is open all day. We head up early to beat the crowds and... got stuck in the crowds. There really is not quiet time at the Nurburgring. The track is 20-whatever KMs long so it doesn't really make a huge difference to your experience. I'm grateful to the lads for the passengers rides, and thankful to Sam for accompanying me on my only track run throughout which I was worried about the car's heat, and the fade in my brakes! I posted about 13:30 lap! lol. TBH, I know it's a Mecca for some, but the reason I've left it 9 years between going back, is because unless you are a driver of a competitive (by that I mean 400bhp+) you spend 75% of your time pulled over to the right letting the endless stream of BMWs and Porsches through. There are definitely some fun bits and I recommend everyone who is really into their cars go and do it, because remember you only live once, BUT don't go expecting what you'd get from a track day back home.

After this we watched some action, including Frosty hero'ing his epic diesel round 5 times total, at Youtube corner again. The weather was beautiful and I was guilty of having a few beers in the sun.

And then... we headed home! The last day's drive started with me worrying about engine temps again. As we were driving very steadily and the temps were nudged red at this point. Worried we pulled over. And... Josh and Matt stuck their heads into the engine bay, unplugged and blew into a sensor and hey presto! Engine temp problem solved, faulty sensor

So over 2,000 miles covered in 7 days in a 20 year old car with zero real problems, achieved 30mpg, did a trackday, hooned up two mountain passes and got me home again. Yes I was hot and yes my right foot ached, but dammit show me another £1,500 20 year old car that'd do all that!!!