Rallye Med – 2010

One of our clients has just completed this Rallye Med in a Jaguar MK2 Saloon supplied and prepared by us here at CMC.

The Rallye Med covered some 18,000 kilometres and took nine weeks to complete starting in England travelling to Spain, down through Morocco and then back up through Spain, France and Italy. Across the Mediterranean Sea and into Tunisia, through Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Back into Europe through Greece, Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany and finally back through France and onto England. Please click here for the Rallye Med map.

Apart from servicing along the way the only problems encountered were a broken return spring on the handbrake, a Dunlop brake cylinder exploded and one head light main beam failed. Photograph showing the car as it returned to us here in Bridgnorth on Friday 12th November.

The underside of the car has stood up to some very rough roads extremely well, the exhaust has taken some pounding from grounding and or hitting rocks, but has remained in place as we had fitted peg mounts instead of the normal rubber block mounts. The aluminium skid pan had done its job in protecting the engine sump. The engine bay is extremely dusty having retained a lot of desert, apparently getting caught in a sand storm is to be avoided at all costs.

Travelling through some very hot climates where the temperatures were up at 47 degrees there was no sign of overheating and the overall fuel consumption was 23/24mpg. The car is fitted with our high torque engine at 4.3 litres with the HIF SU carburettors and coupled to a five speed transmission. Oil consumption over the 18,000 KM was just 4.5 litres which equates to a pint of oil every 1500 miles.

The fuel economy is particularly pleasing as the car was fully loaded with two occupants a boot full of luggage including two additional fuel cans and the rear seat had been removed in order to take a special aluminium trunk load of spares (see photograph).

Some of the participants of this rally had also been on the London to Sydney and Panama to Alaska and they reckon that the Rallye Med was by far the most arduous. Please go to www.globalrally.org.uk for full details of the rally.

The whole team here at CMC are very pleased that the MK2 performed well but most of all that our client really enjoyed the rally and driving a great classic Jaguar, after all all we want from our classic cars is fun and enjoyment.