Sp.A.M, Pug, Mystery Team
- Dec 21, 2019
- 3 min read

The Mongol Rally: What is it?

Updated: Jan 1, 2020

So What’s This Mongol Rally Thing?

To quote the organisers:

“Motoring stupidity on a global scale”

"But, what does that mean?!", you might be thinking? The answer is simple. Our team, along with 200+ others, will be taking some of the smallest, most terrible, generally inappropriate cars and driving them from home (Leamington Spa) all the way to Mongolia, covering roughly ⅓ of the circumference of the globe in the process. If choice of destination wasn’t ambitious enough already, there’s also no route and no support. It’s just us, our wits, and the kindness of strangers.

Why would you want to do that?!

Mostly because life is too easy. With cheap flights and social media everywhere it feels like the world is smaller and more accessible than ever. We want to fix that. We want to struggle. This isn’t about the exotic destination, this is about the exotic diseases we pick up getting there. But, we also want to make a difference.

So, what difference will you actually make?

When taking part in the rally, teams are expected to raise a minimum of £1,000 for charity per car they take, which means we will be raising at least £3,000 for charity. £1,500 of that has to go to CoolEarth who are dedicated to stopping deforestation which is awesome because we need forests to get lost in! They’re also handy for avoiding us all burning to a crisp thanks to climate change. But, besides helping us, this will also give these forests back to the suffering communities who need these areas to thrive, as well as attempting to slow the rapid onset of climate change.

The rest of the charity money can go to charities of our choice, we have decided on three:

ShelterBox

Engineers Without Borders

Mind

More on these in future blog posts but in short they all do great work both in the UK and across the world.

But, what makes these cars so shit?

The rules are simple(-ish). The cars should have an engine no larger than 1,000cc. Cars up to 1,200cc are also allowed but ridicule is to be expected. Fearsome engines with capacities greater than that may be allowed in if you are able to convince The Adventurists that it’s a terrible idea to take the car. There’s also the threat that special conditions may be imposed upon such lavish machines, for example the team who took a Porsche 944 had to complete a round of golf in every country they passed through…

We are taking three cars:

Special Agent Micra or SpAM - a 2002 Nissan Micra Twister 1.0l
The Pug - a 1991 Peugeot 205 Trio SX 1.1l (such performance)
The Mystery Machine - it’s a mystery! (i.e we haven't decided yet)

The cars will get a blog post of their own soon to properly introduce them and why they’re all simply the best piles of garbage to spend 6 weeks sweating in. Yes, 6 weeks. This is going to get smelly…

So anyway, please have a look around our humble website and if you’re feeling really flush today then head over the Charities page and help us hit our fundraising goals. It’ll mean the world to us, but more importantly it’ll mean the world to all the people the charities work with. We will be posting a new blog post every Monday to keep you in the loop with our Mongol Rally plans as well as hosting a weekly podcast on Thursdays called "Not A Mechanic" where we sit down with our most inexperienced road tripper and teach them everything we can about cars and how they work (we promise to make it fun an entertaining)! This can be found on our YouTube channel linked below and (if Kristiana our social guru can work it out) on spotify and other hosting channels.

That’s all for now folks! See you in the next post...