Members of the public weren’t admitted, but had they ventured onto RMB Chivenor, a Royal Marines base on the Devon coast, one Sunday last April, they would have witnessed around 50 well-worn cars spanning a 1972 Ford Escort to a 2007 BMW 123d being driven hard around its runways, access roads and grassy outfields.
All day, the motors – among them rarities such as a 1987 Volkswagen Golf GTI and a 1990 Toyota Corolla GTI, plus oddballs including a 1997 Proton Satria and a 2003 Ford Fusion – tore one after the other around the camp, occasionally braking violently to a stop beside clusters of officials, who were timing them to the second. It was a rally, but not as we know it…