Bring on home-made beast
Kelsey to unleash Mad Creation in Rally Coromandel
One car will stand out from the rest at this month’s Rally Coromandel. Alex Kelsey is entering his own car — not just in terms of ownership but in terms of design, too. The Coromandel local made the entire car from scratch a few years ago and will unleash the shackles of his MC2 (Mad Creation) in the fourth round of the New Zealand Rally Championship.
The entry list of the rally states the driver and co-driver’s names before the type of car they’ll be competing in. With Kelsey, the type of car is a little different to everyone else.
“It says Kelsey MC2 because that is what it is,” Kelsey told the Herald. “It is registered as my own car. It is a project I started a wee while ago. I started building it in 2012-2013 and we first ran it in 2014. It was such a massive job — around 8000 hours to build it. I got a bit burned out by it so I had a break for a couple of years.
“I didn’t run it long enough to know what wasn’t right — all the little niggly things that would take a little while to sort out — and I have done all that now so I’m pretty excited to see how it all goes.”
For Kelsey rallying is a hobby. Driving is a pastime but he enjoys the design and engineering challenge of such a project.
“It is completely scratch built, the chassis and space frames and homemade fibreglass body on the outside,” he said. “The engine is a Formula Renault 3.5L V6 and when we first brought it out it was extremely popular and went viral across the internet. That is what I set out to build — a car that was really exciting and fast, not just from a driving but from engineering and everything.”
This beast of a car has sat in a shed for the past couple of years but now the passion has returned and Kelsey entered his local event — Rally Coromandel at the end of the month.
Although confirmed for this one event there is no telling whether this is just the beginning or a one-off, and if Kelsey will enter other rounds of the championship or have a crack at other events in it.
“I definitely want to do more,” he said. “I don’t know what. At this stage it is just Coromandel. I don’t have any sponsors anymore. It is just me.”