The clue’s in the name.
Eifel – it’s based in Germany’s Eifel region.
Rallye – it’s, err, a rally.
Festival – the key word really.
Unlike most other events in the global rallying sphere, there is no stopwatch. There is no classification. Instead, Eifel Rallye Festival is a celebration of rallying’s past and an opportunity to see cars you once dreamed about driven on Germany’s closed public roads.
We have no sport without the World Rally Championship, but we have no culture without events like this. Think of it like a moving museum, where the cars don’t just sit. They sing.
First organized in 2011, replacing the competitive rally in the region, the Eifel Rallye Festival sits in the same category as events like Rallylegend, but truly puts the cars first.
Vehicles are only accepted to participate if they are period correct, including the livery they are adorned in. Attention-to-detail is everything.
World renowed photographer, and founder of the Slowly Sideways club for owners of historic rally cars, Reinhard Klein is a driving force behind pulling the event together each year, and this year invited DirtFish to come and experience it.
I’ll front up and say I had little idea what to expect, but I wanted to keep it that way. So I did little by the way of research or preparation, other than arranging a couple of interviews and opportunities for future content.
The first thing that struck me was the variety. The theme of this year’s edition of the event was 1960s and back – which doesn’t really float my boat to tell you the truth. It’s a little bit too before my time. But that’s OK.
To give you just one example, walking into the first section of the service park my eyes had Group B Metros, Peugeots, Lancia Delta Integrales and even a Citroën BX4-TC to view. What did I find myself pulled towards first? A Ford Fiesta Super 2000.
Please don’t hate me…
But if you love rallying, and particularly rally cars, Eifel Rallye Festival is for you. Throughout my three days in Daun I saw everything from a homemade replica of a Citroën DS, Renault 5s, a Trabant, Porsches (modern and classic), a 2003 Ford Focus WRC (resplendent in its rare ‘RS’ livery before the Castrol and BP colors were introduced), a couple of F2 Kit Cars (now you’re talking…) what felt like the most Audi quattros anywhere in the world and a Ford Falcon V8 once handled by Graham Hill.
I’m not sure we needed a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 there, though. Perhaps a bit too current for this style of event.
No matter, you’re spoilt for choice. And what’s more, so many of the attending cars are the real deal. Michèle Mouton’s Acropolis Rally-winning Quattro, the Peugeot 205 T16 E2 Juha Kankkunen was so controversially disqualified from Sanremo Rally 1986 from and Andreas Mikkelsen’s Fiesta S2000 from 2010 (sorry, I had to…) are just some examples of pukka machinery to admire – and experience.
While I never got to spectate the stages themselves, I was jammy and had a better seat in the house. From inside the car, I can tell you these stages offered good variety while reminding me of the old Rallye Deutschland – probably no surprise with Trier less than 100 miles south of where we were. And spectator attendace was strong, all enjoying themselves.
At the end of the day, that’s what Eifel Rallye Festival is all about: fun.
Take Yannick Neuville’s quick grin and response to my question over who was having more fun on Saturday: him in his Starlet or brother Thierry in a Hyundai Rally1 car in Finland?
It wasn’t the one landing in Jyväskylä this week. To further illustrate the point, Yannick was driving on winter tires… in 30C heat. Sideways was all he had on his mind.
And herein lies the real beauty to Eifel Rallye Festival’s participants: they’re presented with a blank canvas. The only instruction is paint. It doesn’t matter how well, or even how many times, it’s a completely free choice.
Time controls and time cards remain a part of the event, but there are no penalties – because of course there are no results – and no pressure. Stages can be missed and they can also be repeated in some cases. Fast, slow, straight, sideways, committed or cautious, drivers can express themselves and their machinery how they wish.
Eifel Rallye Festival is rallying without the ego. It takes all the great bits about the sport – the cars, the people, the stories, the spirit – and leaves the pressure and politics at the door.
Would we want all rallying to be like that? No. Tension is what drives interest in the sport, and without a strong sport we’d have no celebratory events like Eifel.
But every once in a while it’s nice to loosen the shackles, run free and indulge in why you fell in love with rallying in the first place.
