1970 VOLVO P1800E
RICHARD STANIER AND ROB SMITH
After dreaming of doing the Peking to Paris rally together, Richard Stanier and Rob Smith settled on their Volvo P1800E after putting their heads together to find the perfect car.
Richard said: ‘Rob and I are work colleagues but have known each other for 25 years. After deciding that I wanted to do the Peking to Paris rally I spoke to a couple of car-orientated mates and Rob said he fancied doing something.
‘I had a Jaguar XKR and decided that I was fedup with tinkering with it – it’s a beast to work on – and after doing a lot to it in lockdown I decided it was time to get rid of it. So Rob and I made a list of cars that we thought would work for us on a spreadsheet, noting things like desirability, parts availability and so on.
‘We’ve ended-up with a lovely-looking car. When we found our Volvo, the guy selling it said that he’d had so many phone calls that he was fed up and had a dealer coming for it. I told him that if it was priced at what he said it was I’d pay him above the asking price, but the seller said that the dealer was coming at three o’clock that day and after that it was gone, so I had to make sure I beat him to it. That was a year ago and we’ve since spent more than £15,000 sorting things out and we’ve done a few rallies together.
‘We killed the suspension on the Hughes Rally (organised by the Blackpalfrey Motor Club of Kent) but we try to keep things as original as possible when we fix them because there are restrictions on the classic rallies. We’ve done a lot of work but the most obvious change is that it has Audi TT seats because the Volvo ones were no good.
‘We love co-ownership and find it works for us. We spend Thursday evenings on the car together though when we rally we haven’t yet worked out who is best at what, when it comes to driving and navigating. Our next plan is to set off for the London to Lisbon with 43 other cars.
‘We never hesitate to buy the right parts because everything is essentially half price and we’re both working so it is affordable for us. Even though there’s an age gap – Rob is 50 and I am 60 – we get on very well; there’s a yin and yang to our relationship.
‘We also have an ownership agreement in place that basically says if one of us dies, the other gets the car. We have a joint bank account and we each put in £200 a month for the car, so there’s a float and when things happen we’ll stuff the account with a little bit more. That’s how we manage the costs.’
’There’s an age gap but we get on very well – there’s a yin and yang to our relationship.’