Skoda Rally Blog

So, despite a number of promising leads, no navigator was forthcoming for Rally GB 2012. This is double disappointing because as you will know, the Felicia will no longer be WRC-event eligible from the end of this year (unless the FIA extend it again, of course, but given that it should have finished in 2008, it’s unlikely). And at the moment in the drive I have not only the Felicia, but also the Ibiza, and this is not a state of affairs that can last too long – insuring both vehicles is expensive, and of course I can’t afford to keep both long term. The entries for Rally GB closed a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been away on holiday since then.

However, a decision needed to be made – which car to keep. Both cars have their upsides – the Skoda is a car I built myself, with a great cage installation, with a shell that is in excellent condition, with an engine that’s strong for an 8v 1300, and has a great gearbox and diff. And most importantly, it has a set of Proflex suspension on it which is very low mileage (as all the internals were replaced when I had it rebuilt in 2009), and transforms the car – it’s the same step forward as a close ratio box is. The Ibiza has upsides – it’s a really well built car, with a lot of neat features. It has plenty of power, and the expensive bespoke 2 turns steering rack. Both cars have downsides, however. While the Skoda is quicker than it ever has been before, it’s not as powerful as the Ibiza. The brakes are not in the same league as the Ibiza’s £2000+ AP racing setup, and it has been built to homologated spec which is now expiring for WRC events (but still valid for other internationals for another 4 years) and the chances of me doing another International event are vanishingly small. The Ibiza has limitations – it needs a fair bit of fettling (cooling issues, driveshaft breakages), and the gearbox, diff and suspension are not to the same standard as the Felicia. But it has real potential.

Clouding all this is the fact that I built the Felicia. I’m not prone to sentiment for the most part, but when I was younger and started meddling with cars, I always said I wanted to build a car that would be ‘good’ (yes, I was that vague). And I built the Felicia in 2007 with the aim of completing Rally GB, which of course it didn’t due to an air filter breakup. It returned in 2008 for a near trouble-free run, and in 2010 it had a few troubles, but managed to complete the event, so I feel that I’ve built a decent car that is tough and quick enough for what it is. And it would be hard to let that go – anyone who’s seen Eric Bana’s excellent “Love the Beast” will know what I’m talking about here. Further complicating the decision is that I’ve never finished an event in the Ibiza; the Sunseeker was close, but not a finish, and as a result I don’t feel that we’ve “bonded”.

But I think that all things considered, the decision needed is to keep the Ibiza and sell the Felicia, so to that end I have been thinking about what to do to improve the Ibiza. There are three main issues for me; I’m sure that with new, stronger driveshafts that bugbear will no longer be a problem, but suspension, gearbox and diff are definitely in need of attention. When selling the Felicia, I would definitely not sell it with the Proflex on it; it’s more valuable to sell on its own, and I have a perfectly good set of Bilstein suspension in the shed ready to fit to the Felicia to sell it. And a bit of quick measuring up showed something quite remarkable; the rears would fit onto the Ibiza with only minimal modification being needed; just a top mount spacer (from the Ibiza’s original setup) would need to be modified by drilling it out (it was threaded originally), and the rear just bolted up. The fronts would need more work, as they are a completely different fitting, but interestingly it looks possible to make a bolt-on adapter which the strut would sit in and then have lugs for the Ibiza front hub to bolt to. I am drawing this up this evening to take to get a price for them to be made up, and then I will see how it goes from there.

That left me with the task of getting the Felicia ready to sell. First up was a review of the spares that come with the car. And there are a lot. No, really, it’s amazing how many parts I’ve bought over the 6 years I’ve had a Felicia. I’ve got 28 Gravel tyres (good ones), 8 tarmac tyres, most of which are on wheels – enough to keep the next owner rallying for a couple of years (if not more). I think that’s about £1200-worth of wheels and tyres alone, let alone anything else. There are loads of bits to keep the car going, I reckon it would be possible to use it for a few years without spending much money at all, plus parts to build a 1.4 bottom end should the next owner want to go down that road.

Anyway, aside from that, I have done all the work needed to get the car ready to sell – that involved a damn good clean first, which took a few hours, but it’s looking nice and shiny. Next up was fixing a few things that should have been done a while ago, and also replacing parts which were past their sell-by dates. The car has a new set of Titon harnesses fitted, a new set of front brake discs, and the front brakes serviced as the sliders had become a bit sticky. Brake fluid was changed and re-bled, and a new sensor fitted for the Terratrip. The Peltor intercom is not going with the car, but pretty much everything else is, and it’s all nice and clean inside and out now; with new extinguisher pull fitted it’s ready to rally, give or take.

The car has been advertised for a while and I had some interest while I was on holiday, although the first serious purchaser wanted the spares freighted up to them in Scotland, which wouldn’t have been possible, but I have someone else seriously interested who has been asking the right kind of questions and seems to be serious about competing in the car and giving it the future that I wish I had the time and crew to do so – taking the car abroad to Ypres, for instance. Hopefully this will pan out and the car will be off to a new home in the next couple of weeks.