The Road to Mandalay
Back on the trail to high adventure in a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 219 Ponton
Article Dirk de Groen
Images Dirk de Groen, Gerard Brown, and Agneta Lansing.
After our successful run in the 2013 Peking to Paris Rally in our 1958 Mercedes-Benz 219 Ponton (see The Star, May-June 2013 and Nov.-Dec., 2013) – we earned a gold medal for competing in every time trial and for arriving on time at every time control, by the way – preliminary negotiations between driver (husband) and navigator (wife) were underway to find the next adventure. Arrival of a brochure in the mail, “The Road to Mandalay,” made that decision easier.
Peking to Paris is a historically important rally dating back to 1907 that, for 2013 competitors, involved a 10-day route crossing rugged terrains in the Gobi Desert and Mongolia, with overnight stops in makeshift camps. We were warned about the hardship, the pounding our vehicles and bodies would take, and the less-than-comfortable facilities. The Road to Mandalay in February 2015 would be different: We’d have to travel 5,000 miles of roads through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Burma in 25 days. It was the first time Philip Young and his Endurance Rally Association – organizer of both events – had put together a rally that included Burma (now known as Myanmar), a country under military rule that was virtually closed to tourists and foreign influence for nearly 50 years.
The rally would start from the famous colonial Raffles Hotel in Singapore, with ensuing overnight stays and rest days at beach resorts: A rally stage with a rest day in George Town, a UNESCO (United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture) World Heritage Site on the island of Penang, and another day in the Northern Thailand cultural capital of Chiang Mai; we would drink tea at tea plantations in Cameron Highlands, a well-known hill station dating from the British occupation of Malaysia, and today known as the city with the highest concentration of Land Rovers in the world.
On the program were visits to historical locations such as the bridge over the Khwae Noi (the site associated with the novel, Bridge on the River Kwai) and the infamous Hellfire Pass, where during World War II, many allied prisoners of war and local laborers died while cutting a passage for the Thai-Burma railroad. How about a boat trip on Inle Lake with its floating garden beds held together by bamboo sticks, where fishermen still row standing up with one leg wrapped around the oar?
To top it all off, we would soar in a balloon over the ancient city of Bagan and watch the sun rise over the thousands of temples, pagodas and monasteries dating from the 11th and 12th centuries. Between all those wonderful things to do and see, we would test ourselves and our vehicles on challenging speed trials through palm and rubber plantations and along dirt roads and over mountain passes, all carefully selected by former Prodrive Rally Director John Spiller as elements of the rally’s nerve-wrecking regularity trials. This sounded like it could be the most fantastic road-trip vacation ever in a classic car, surrounded by a whole bunch of like-minded enthusiasts. It could be the trip of a lifetime.
And as things turned out, it really was – and it wasn’t. Now, back home with the rally behind us, as we sort through the pictures and rekindle memories of our great driving adventure, several vivid vignettes stand out.
Arrival and setback
The fun began for us the day we went down to the wharf to pick up our trusted car No. 69, two days before the rally’s flagged start. I was in contact with the local classic-car club in Singapore and these guys were so excited to have 65 vintage and classic cars in town, they organized a late-night driving cruise through the city. During the drive, I noticed an ever-increasing loud noise that sounded like a leaking exhaust pipe or manifold.
Because I had installed a custom-made side-pipe exhaust after removing the original Mercedes-Benz mufflers to increase ground clearance, I figured something must have rattled loose and could be easily fixed in the morning. Suddenly, there was a small explosion under the hood; now the engine was really noisy and unhappy.
Time to pull over and open the hood to see what was going on: One of the spark plugs had literally blown out of its cylinder head and was dangling on the plug wire. The thread in the cylinder head was stripped. Our good friend, Christoph Ley from Austria, driving a 1959 Mercedes-Benz 220S (No. 41) was right behind us and pulled over. With him was Kim Widrick, one of the Canadian cowboys and another veteran of our Peking to Paris adventure. Kim took charge, grabbed a piece of electrical wire from my tool box, removed the insulation and wound the copper wire around the spark plug thread so it would have some grip in the cylinder head. It worked: We made it back to the hotel.
The next morning in the car park where everyone was getting their cars ready and performing some inevitable final maintenance and repairs, I explained my problem to Andrew “Skippy” Inskip, the lead mechanic on the rally and all-around world class mechanical magician. Looking at our wounded Ponton, he noticed that a Heli-Coil that had been used to repair a previously damaged spark plug hole had collapsed. Skippy didn’t have the proper inserts and the local machine shops were closed for the weekend; instead he looked through his trusty bucket full of junk and fished out an old spark plug with a bigger thread than the plug in the Ponton’s cylinder head.
He removed the ceramic element from the plug and used the remaining base as a bushing, then tapped the cylinder head and inside of the “bushing” so that his spark plug would fit. Within about two hours, Skippy had repaired the problem. Without his ingenuity and dedication, we wouldn’t have been able to start the rally. The husband-wife’s previously negotiated decision to take it easy and enjoy the lay of the land and its people was reinforced: A day or evening in the workshop would not deter a day at the beach, a visit to one of many magnificent Buddhist temples or an authentic dining experience. Luckily for us, there weren’t any days or evenings spent in parking-lot-turned workshops. As the following days were to show, some fellow competitors weren’t as fortunate.
Rough and tumble rally days
On day 17 of the rally, we left the luxurious Shangri-La Hotel in Chiang Mai where we spent the previous day R&Ring. After a morning time trial and a short break at Tiger Kingdom, we drove in a small convoy with three or four other cars on a provincial road in the direction of Mae Hong Son. About 20 minutes after leaving the tiger park, we got into an accident with a driver from Malaysia who made a right turn while I was overtaking the truck behind him in the right lane (people drive on the wrong side of the road).
There was no way to get back in the left lane and I had to slam on the brakes. It was too late; I hit that Honda Civic pretty hard in the right-rear door, causing him to end up in a ditch. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. My car’s big aluminum bumper did exactly what it was supposed to do: absorb the shock and protect the car.
Aided by the local rally support staff as interpreters, I unsuccessfully tried to settle with the other driver. After a long wait for a police officer, we all traveled to the police station where we spent another three hours for the insurance adjuster and formalities to be completed. By now it was nearly 7 p.m. and we still had another five hours to drive on the “road of a thousand bends” through the hills of Northwest Thailand.
All fuel stations along the road were closed and we arrived with less than a quarter gallon of fuel in the tank. Because we missed the afternoon regularity test and passage controls, we took a huge tumble in rankings. We started out that morning in 14th position overall – out of 40 postwar cars – and fourth in our class made up of 14 1950s cars, ending the day 19th overall and eighth in class. But that’s just for the records.
On day 20, we finally crossed the Thai-Burma border. This was supposed to be a personal highlight for rally organizer Philip Young, who had worked tirelessly for three years to obtain permits from the Burmese government to enter the reclusive country with 65 rally cars. Just minutes after crossing the Burmese border accompanying the oldest car in the rally, a 1907 Itala – similar to the car with which Prince Scipione Borghese won the first Peking to Paris rally in 1907 – Philip fell from a motorcycle and sustained a head injury.
Closing activities were subdued as entrants learned that he was flown to a hospital in Bangkok. Tools and paraphernalia were packed and cars prepared and loaded for transport to Rangoon and shipment back home. Awaiting word on Philip’s condition, we were all reminded of the underlying dangers that are always present when competing in challenging endurance events such as these.
After arriving home in Florida, we learned that Philip Young had died in Thailand, a sad ending to this great adventure. The tragic news tinged our bright memories with sad tones, but didn’t diminish the pride we felt in our accomplishments on the tour or diminish our desire to undertake similar challenges in the future.
Illustrations
Above: Our second endurance rally with trusty 1958 219 Ponton No. 69 took us back to Asia. This time there was no Gobi Desert to endure and no faint Mongolian tracks suddenly fading off into nothingness. On the other hand, some of the primitive back-country roads we traveled were so rough and dusty – as here in the heart of Thailand – we could well have been crossing the Gobi in a dust storm, except for the lush vegetation everywhere.
Mercedes-Benz was well-represented on The Road to Mandalay Rally with a total of eight cars built in Stuttgart taking part – Pontons, Pagodas and Fintails. Underway here are the two Fintails entered by the Pohl family from Germany; mom, dad and their two teenage daughters teamed up together.
At the start of the rally, a friendly crowd waved goodbye as we pull away from the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore. On the map: The rally took us 5,000 challenging miles from Singapore, through Malaysia and Thailand into Burma, now known as Myanmar.
Everywhere we saw smiling faces and colorfully dressed, happy people.
A team from Belgium driving a very souped-up VW Karmann Ghia ran into mechanical issues and had their mechanic flown to Malaysia with a new transmission.
Our Day 1 lunch stop was in Johor Lama, a small fishing village in Malaysia where the villagers received us dressed in their beautiful traditional costumes and served us local food. Three Pontons participated in the rally – two 219s and a 220S.
A young Burmese woman wearing thanaka, a paste made from ground bark used to protect against the sun. A common sight: The ox cart is still the main form of transportation in rural Myanmar.
Typical transportation even today in most of Burma.
Arrival in Bagan, Myanmar, the finish of the timed portion of The Road to Mandalay Rally. Before dawn the last morning, rally participants ascended in hot-air balloons high over the ancient city of Bagan and watched the sun rise over the thousands of temples, pagodas and monasteries dating from the 11th and 12th centuries, a spectacular coda to a memorable journey.