Another Banger Rally on Stelvio

Watched a smoking wreck come up from the Bormio direction and quickly realised that another banger rally is in town.

The European Banger Rally was largely borne out of our event. I didn't organise the very first European Banger Rally (Staples2Naples) but I took it over, and myself and my wife built the scene. Sounds presumptuous, but it's the truth at the end of the day. We were rolling with 300-400+ teams a year before most of these other companies got on the bandwagon. And our bastard competition spent years copying our events - hell why do your own research when you can look at ours and copy it! Until you get to a point where it's a race to the bottom, the number of teams for rallies are pitifully small, the money isn't there to do a proper recce or proper challenges (eg picture challenges), or you have to use 'this years' rally as a recce for next years event - talk about doing two jobs at once.

Oh, and the great one where people accuse you of earning an absolute fortune from them - like profit was a bad thing - like there's been any profit in it for the last few years.

All that to arrange a water pistol fight at the top of Stelvio with 200 men dressed as nuns, running around, getting soaking wet, giggling like 4 year olds, and some team says to you "this is shit, and I don't think anyone is having any fun". Well, the guy was probably right but was wide of the mark of the person not having fun.

This year is the 10th year of Staples2Naples, and my 9th year organising these events. And it could be my last as I'm thinking of a new lead organiser for next year.

I'm excited about the anniversary event coming up though - 100+ teams, lots of veterans (LOTS of VETERANS), but I'm kinda thinking that it's probably the right event to bow out. I want to do other things with the brand, and as much as I love banger rallies, I kinda feel it's played out. The bangers aren't bangers any more. The whole adventure was taking a crappy car on the event, but there are no crappy cars anymore. The MOT and bangers for cash scheme a few years ago killed so many grotty cars: it's difficult to get excited about someone taking a 5 Series on an event.

And then there is the competition. The cost of entry to the business - 20 minutes - look at my website and there's ya'route! One competitor thought the Swiss motorways were the mountain passes. One competitor copied our website and layout word for word. They even quoted me and put in their own name. There really isn't much substance to our competition - but we're all fighting for a smaller and smaller number of people for the events. The king of the events, isn't the one with the greatest history, the most number of teams, the biggest events, the marketing budget that took us to some great shows etc, no, it's the company who can work out Google's search ranking.

The economy is a big problem as well. People are different today, than they were 5-6 years ago. Money is spent differently. Can't put my finger on it. And the cars and the prep work are that much more expensive. We're in an economic depression right now, and banger rallies are not a good place to be.

I should be upset about seeing one of my competitors on Stelvio, but I'm not. In the past, I'd be spitting blood, fiercely competitive. I hated seeing our competitors. Today I couldn't care less though, which in itself isn't a great sign.

If there was a day that said reinforced my feeling that my priorities lie somewhere else, today it is. I've been at this point in my life twice before, and it's not a bad place to be.