Mongol Rally 2021 · 2022 · 2024
Oxford to Almaty
23,000 km. Three rallies. One £300 Fiat Panda that very nearly didn't.
2008 · CK58 VLR
Pamir Highway, 26 Aug 24
Mongol Rally 2021 · 2022 · 2024
23,000 km. Three rallies. One £300 Fiat Panda that very nearly didn't.
2008 · CK58 VLR
Pamir Highway, 26 Aug 24
I'm Callum Morrison, a robotics engineer from Oxford. In July 2020 I paid £300 for a 1.2-litre Fiat Panda with the vague idea of driving it to Mongolia. Over the next four years my mates and I entered the Mongol Rally in it three times: a lap of Britain when COVID shut the borders, a 12,000 km run to Georgia when the war did, and finally, in the summer of 2024, the real thing.
Alberto Guerra Martinuzzi and I drove it 10,000 km from England to Almaty. We didn't reach the official finish. The Panda was limping, three spare wheels down, the wiring shredded, and Almaty was as far as it would go. We gave it to a museum. This page is what it did.
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A 2008 Fiat Panda 1.2 with a small engine, a high roof and no obvious reason to think it could cross a continent. The Mongol Rally rules ask for something unsuitable. This was.
COVID scuppered the full-fat rally in 2021, so the organisers ran a scaled-down version inside the United Kingdom instead: a list of awkward, out-of-the-way places, and a week to reach as many as you could. We went west into Wales, north through Cumbria, on to Edinburgh, and home in one long day.
Along the way we found out what the Panda was for. Not speed. Not hills. But it would go almost anywhere, and when it wouldn't, it was light enough to dig out.
Will it survive? The 2021 film.
The war in Ukraine closed the road to Mongolia, so the finish line moved to Georgia. We left Oxford on 11 July with a fresh set of stickers and a roof rack, and took the slow road east: Belgium, the Eifel, Jena, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and up into Romania for the Transfăgărășan, where the head gasket blew. We didn't know that yet. We just knew the engine kept overheating, and kept blowing its core plug, and we drove it another 6,000 km like that.
Bulgaria, then Istanbul on 29 July, then the Black Sea coast to Trabzon and over the mountains into Georgia. We reached Tbilisi on 5 August, had three days there, and then did the bit nobody plans for: driving it all the way home. Greece, Croatia, the Dolomites, a week's recovery at Chamonix, Luxembourg, and back on the drive on 29 August. Twelve thousand kilometres, round trip.
A 21st Century Expedition. The 2022 film.
The spring was spent making the car less likely to die: it came home on a tow rope in April, the head came off in May, and it was rebuilt on a driveway in time to leave on 8 July. Jack couldn't come this time, so it was Alberto and me.
Europe went quickly, Prague, the Alps, Croatia, Greece, then Istanbul on 19 July and the slow, hot crossing of Turkey: Cappadocia at 4am for the balloons, the D915 over the mountains, and Georgia. In Tbilisi we waited a week for paperwork, then flew to Baku while the cars went on without us, and waited again: first for the cars, then for the ferry, then four days on the ferry for the wind to drop. Kazakhstan finally came on 10 August.
Then Central Asia. The Mangystau desert, the Silk Road towns of Uzbekistan, Dushanbe, and the Pamir Highway along the Afghan border at 4,600 m, where the lower control arm gave up and a Tajik family welded it back together and put us up for the night. Into Kyrgyzstan on 28 August, Bishkek by 1 September, and on 4 September, with the last flat spare on the hub and every warning light lit, we rolled into Almaty at walking pace and turned it off.
10,000km from England to Kazakhstan. The 2024 film, 33 minutes.
A running tally, in order. The car did its best to stop us and very nearly managed it.
Sandscale Haws, August 2021. Buried to the axles in a sand dune. Dug out by hand.
The Transfăgărășan, July 2022. Blew it on the pass and drove another 6,000 km before we found out.
Romania to Georgia and back, 2022. The overheating engine kept popping it. Replaced three times on the rally, and it held us up every time.
Oxford, April 2024. Came home behind a van on a tow rope. Head off, block open, rebuilt on the driveway with ten weeks to go.
Istanbul, July 2024. Two rattling loose, wheel nearly off. Fixed by the same garage as 2022.
Everywhere, 2024. The oil leak that never stopped. Running rich. The camshaft sensor cable fraying.
Uzbekistan, 6am, August 2024. Smashed on an unfinished highway after an all-night drive.
Kazakhstan, August 2024. None anywhere in the country. A local mechanic made some work.
Pamir Highway, 24 August 2024. Failed on the track. Welded by a Tajik father who then put us up for the night.
Kyrgyzstan, August 2024. Smashed, oil pressure dropping, engine on borrowed time.
200 km from Almaty, September 2024. Third one blows. No spares left. The patched one won't hold air, then the wheel implodes.
18 km from Almaty. Leaves the hub at a highway junction, three lanes blocked. Final flat spare on, walking pace to 0 km.
It wasn't coming home. With no spare wheels, a shredded loom and an engine that had been on borrowed time since Kyrgyzstan, we donated the Panda in Almaty to a museum in Öskemen, the rally's official finish. They put it on the back of a lorry, supposedly, and drove it the last 1,000 km we couldn't. We have no real idea where it ended up. Hopefully on display, for the world (of East Kazakhstan) to witness.
Both pages are closed now. Thank you to everyone who chipped in.
