PEKING TO PARIS
THE PEKING TO PARIS MOTOR CHALLENGE
THE RIGHT WAY
THE CLASSIC CAR RALLY SCENE IS THRIVING, GIVING CLASSIC CARS AND THEIR OWNERS A GENUINE TEST OF THEIR METTLE IN SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST SPECTACULAR LANDSCAPES — AND THE PEKING TO PARIS IS THE BIG ONE
Peking to Paris isn’t Garry Boyce’s first time around the block. He and co-driver Ken Williams have already knocked the 28-day 10,000km Rally of the Incas off their bucket list. Their carefully prepared Mercedes 220 SEC, which Garry has owned for 25 years, is also a veteran of the same rally from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Lima, Peru.
Garry is a died-in-the-wool Mercedes man, a stalwart of the Mercedes-benz Club Auckland, chairman of the Ellerslie Classic Car Show Organising Committee, and was a driving force behind the Mercedes club’s entry at the show’s concours d’élégance, when it racked up a record points score.
He’s a keen collector and restorer of Mercedes-benzes, although other special cars find space in his garage from time to time. So, almost before they were back home from the Incas, Garry and Ken were thinking about what they would do differently next time and what improvements they would make to the car.
Next time wasn’t long in coming. The big one. Peking to Paris. New Zealand Classic Car covered the changes Garry
and Ken made to their trusty 1964 coupe in Issue No. 340 but the list included fitting Mercedes’ standard ‘third-world’ suspension, fitting a safer and bigger fuel tank, fitting rear discs from a later model, replacing the auto gearbox with a manual, and fitting a stronger, lower ratio diff. Garry says that the best change was probably opting for the 2.8-litre engine, which replaced the 2.2-litre fuel-injected engine used in the Rally of the Incas. The carburetted 2.8 engine was completely rebuilt prior to Peking to Paris.
Nuts and bolts
“We know every nut and bolt on that car,” says Garry, who is was convinced that this made a big difference in their confidence in the car when hammering it over the corrugations in Mongolia, and in the fact they had very few mechanical issues. At almost every stop, other competitors were lined up seeking help from tour mechanics; in contrast, Garry and Ken did themselves what little needed to be done beyond cleaning the car. Entrants are, after all, supposed to be self-supporting, and there’s no doubt that that’s one of the reasons Garry and Ken achieved a singular honour: at the end of the rally in Paris, they were presented with the Fédération Internationale des Véhicules Anciens (FIVA) ‘spirit’ award for the team that best represented the values of the event throughout its participation. This encompassed everything from having the most original car among the 105 starters to their observance of the rules, and the way that they interacted with fellow rallyists throughout the 36-day trial.
Garry says he was deeply moved to be presented with the award, just for doing what he thought was right. Certainly, some other participants appeared to honour the rules more in spirit than to the letter and, on more than one occasion, Garry’s innate Kiwi sense of fair play was outraged. Some infractions Garry details in his event reports which follow, while others have had to stay on the tour. Suffice to say that some entrants cheerfully forgot the rule about having to carry two spare wheels straight after scrutineering. And wasn’t it curious that this self-supporting rally was shadowed by a heavily laden van that wasn’t part of the official support team from the Nomad tour company that set up the camps in Mongolia?
Swan of the desert
Apart from their meticulous preparation, Garry puts some of their success down to playing it straight. They had chosen to stick with the factory suspension, albeit in the third-world spec, on the basis that it had been designed to work with the car. “We wanted the suspension
to do the work and not restrict its travel,” he says. Others on the rally had beefed up their suspension only to see it punch up into their cars, while Garry notes that they “never had an ounce of suspension trouble”. They also stuck with 91-grade fuel throughout. Other teams had also opted for higher octanes that had been tickled up with additives that caused more trouble than they were worth.
Garry and Ken had one more Kiwi advantage: they knew how to drive on corrugated gravel roads, and knew that you could find the right speed that minimized the shuddering. As others slowed, they sped up to the 80–84kph range, which seemed to allow them to float from crest to crest, like a big white swan of the desert … One by one, they made up the places that they had lost on a disastrous first day.
So, what would he do differently next time? Garry says that a better belly pan would be top of the list: “It was completely inadequate. It was one of the only things we didn’t do ourselves. It was fine for New Zealand gravel roads …” He’d also add an oil cooler, saying the belly pan might also have contributed to the occasional high engine temperatures, especially when caked with mud. Otherwise, mechanical problems were limited to having to do a brake bleed and changing a set of points. His most compelling memories are of the Gobi Desert — “There’s no place on earth like it,” he says — and of the overall intensity of the event. “It is without a doubt the toughest rally or classic car event I’ve ever done.”
So what’s next? Garry still has a long list of car events, and other things to do in other walks of life but, as for endurance rallies, well, there is no way to top this. “This is the ultimate.”
Garry says that the best change was probably opting for the 2.8-litre engine, which replaced the 2.2-litre fuel-injected engine used in the Rally of the Incas