Do Something Different

Designing the Ultimate Banger

Posted on by motoscape

One of our favourite things about running the Motoscape Banger Rally is seeing the variety of cars and wacky themes. The car designs get better and better each year so for 2011 we want to see the BEST THEMES YET! After the famous Moonraker James Bond car of 2010, the stakes have been raised for 2011. Don’t forget, there’s a £100 prize on offer for the best banger, plus the kudos of being voted the best banger by fellow “Motoscapers”!

So, how do you decide on a theme for your banger this year? Well here are a few ideas to get you going…

Cartoon Characters: Everybody has a favorite cartoon or character and this has been a popular choice in previous years. So whether it’s Scooby Doo, Mickey Mouse or Buzz Lightyear, your car will be memorable spectacle throughout Europe. Combining car design with fancy dress always works well, could it be our first year for a Simpson’s theme???

Animals: Cars based on animals are always eye catching and distinctive, particularly good if you are raising money for an animal based charity. There’s plenty out there to choose from so the sky’s the limit and the furrier the better!

Action Heroes: Cars based on action heroes are my personal favourite! Think of all those childhood and modern day heroes. From James Bond, Batman, Superman Spiderman or the Ghostbusters the choices are vast and cars can look really impressive as we saw last year. For any nostalgic entrants out there, we think an early 90’s WWF Wresting theme would look great!

Abstract: Trying to think out of the box for an idea to make your car the best for 2011? Just follow your instinct and the £100 best decorated car prize could be yours.

A memorable guy who did exactly this was in 2008 when John from South Yorkshire was having his house plastered he asked his plasterer, Bill, for ideas in decorating his banger. Bill came up with the idea of artexing the whole car, here’s the result, you couldn’t make it up!

We hope this gives all the teams something to think about, and it’s not too late to change your team name if you want to create a new theme. Just email us at [email protected] for any questions or advice!

We can wait to see the cars in September – good luck everyone and get your creative caps on!

The Motoscape Team

Do Something Different

Posted on by motoscape

One of our previous Motoscape entrants has been kind enough to write a quick blog for us on their take on the rally and doing something different, have a read below…

Bored, fed up and wanting to do something different? This was me in 2010!

I did the usual, surfing the net looking for ideas, but all I could find was the usual fun runs, coast to coast bike ride, hiking the Pen-y-ghent 3 peaks etc. or to the extreme of raising £5000 plus to go on a trip rafting the Zambezi (I know from previous fundraisers this takes an enormous amount of time)!

However, after a chance conversation with a work colleague I discovered the Motoscape Banger Rally. My colleague had already signed up for the 2010 rally to Prague and listening to his enthusiasm about the event, I did a bit more research, saw how amazing it looked, and decided this could be just the thing for me.

I managed to get a good mate to join me and 3 days later we had signed up for the Prague rally. Four weeks later we persuaded a local car dealer to donate a free car! He is a regular in our local pub, and it took a few pints to get him to agree to it, but it saved us buying a car!!

The car was, in our eyes anyway, a machine of beauty… L reg Vauxhall Cavalier 2.00 GL, petrol with a respectable 122,000 miles on the clock and in all round good condition, but with no MOT. Because we obtained the car for free, having no MOT wasn’t a big issue. So, we had the car checked and then MOT’d for a total cost of £216 and it was ready to roll.

We decided to raise money for our local cancer charity, so we did a ring round local businesses and pestered work colleagues and managed to get sponsorship of £1826.28 – a good effort I thought!!

That was it, car ready, sponsorship received and a few quid for petrol and beer money in our pockets and we ready for the rally!! Here’s hoping we will make it to the end…

The Result
The old cavalier became our best friend and (apart from a puncture) behaved impeccably, we even took in on the Nurburgring and it was AWESOME!!! Best experience ever!

We met some amazing people on the rally (and some even more amazing bangers!), and all in all I can say we had the best time ever, 7 countries in 7 days, highly recommended. I think I have now officially caught the banger rally bug, and next year I am thinking of doing it in an old Jag, can’t wait to see that perform on the Autobahn and the Nurburgring.

In my opinion, if you are looking for a real adventure at a reasonable cost, where you can have loads of fun while at the same time raising money for a great charity, then this is definitely the event for you. I will never do a fun run again!!

I also just want to say thanks to the organisers, Paul, Pete and Mark, we had a fantastic time, hope you can top this next year and I will be signing up for the improved route and might even bring the misses this time as she’s always wanted to visit Venice!

Cheers
David