THE "EDDIE" FACTOR

Ask anyone to name a British Winter Olympic medallist and the majority will doubtless frown and pause for thought.  Say “Eddie the Eagle” though, and furrows of cluelessness will smooth to a smile of amusing recollection.  Eddie was spectacularly bad at skiing, yet to those who laughed and pointed, he’d retaliate with a cheery grin and happy wave, before using borrowed kit in last year’s colours to plummet to a predictable and inevitably early demise.  In a manner only the eccentric British feel genuinely at home with, he was the under-dog, the runner up, second-best but at least he was having a go. Way out of his depth in an ice-cold ocean of professionalism, Eddie was kept afloat by a securely worn lifejacket of puncture–proof enthusiasm.

With this in mind, in just over two weeks a six-year-old MGF showing over 100,000 miles on it’s clock will be converging with Ferrari, Porsche and TVR to join 74 other cars taking part in Cannonball Run Europe 2003.  I know this because I’m driving it.  Over the course of a week, this high spirited drive will see me and my co-driver Wes navigate, day by day, to the tip of North Africa and home again.

Welcome then, to Team Eddie Motorsport.

Why do it?  Well,  some might say I get more than my fair share of excitement and adrenaline working as I do in aviation, but Cannonball is on an alternate, possibly more widely understood and accessible level.  Long-distance travel by air isn’t travelling.  It’s simply reaching a destination.  To really know a journey you have to read every road sign, turn every corner, pass through every town instead of pass overhead and in doing so see your own highs and lows reflected as the smiles of curious children and the scowls of disapproving elders that you can’t help but meet along the way.  Add the background tick of a clock to this unfolding automotive adventure and things start to look infinitely more interesting than any in-flight magazine.  1400 miles in three days.  And back in another three.

The organisers are keen to point out Cannonball is not a race.  If you believe other Cannonballers, every one who turns up on the day, bags packed, is a winner simply by being willing to take part.  Consider it a just-for-the-heck-of-it tour, a rolling celebration of cars, driving and the English Abroad.  There’s only two aims. One is to enjoy it, and the other is to maintain as closely as possible an average speed, calculated such that no one need break any laws.  Anyway there’s a track day along the way for that and a rumoured “200mph challenge” set against the anonymity of the Sahara, an event at which I can safely say we’ll be professional spectators.

Alongside some of the more abundantly equipped automobiles, as well as the odd Skoda and an American police car we meet in a fortnight, the MG is uncomplicated.  We have no GPS, no air-con, no on-board multi-function trip computer.  The car develops less BHP in total than some are kicking out of just half of their eight cylinders arranged in a V.

We don’t even have a sponsor.  In what has been an increasingly steep uphill struggle to enter the event, my original co-driver started expressing doubts and eventually jumped ship. Then, as the waves settled from that particular splash, an initially very enthusiastic and potentially generous sponsor could be seen swimming away too, despite being at the centre of the MGF community and I feel, at the expense of reasonably high profile coverage.  Men and Motors are covering the event, no doubt hosted by a suitably chromed blonde with an eco-friendly LPG conversion between her ears instead of Castrol in her veins, but twin airbags none the less. No surprise then that Revs magazine is also doing a piece.

A month ago I had an outstanding entry fee and no co-driver.  Now, with two weeks left, virtually everything is in place.  We still have no sponsor, but I’m happy to have found the more critical part of the missing formula.

One car, two drivers, a tank full of enthusiasm.  What could possibly go wrong?