Welcome
Welcome to Rally Preparation Services - International Rally Winners!
Congratulations go to Margo O'Brien on a brilliant drive to finish first in the Classics Division of the 2011 Classic Safari in her black Volvo Amazon Co-driven by her husband George Coelho; The car, prepared in our workshop for the rally car had a trouble free run helping to keep the car up at the front of the pack on the event, 5,000 miles across southern Africa from Dar Es Salam to Cape Town. Seen here crossing the river that featured on the film set of the film Zulu....where clearly the crew found less opposition. The Mercedes Fintail of Keith Ashworth also prepared for the event by RPS was a reglar Medal winner on the Medal Sections, on his first event, and went on to finish third overall. Other winners on the same event from the RPS workshops but this time in the modern 4x4 class were Roger Allen & Maggie Grey in their Land Rover Discovery, congratulations to them too.
Rally Preparation Services was founded in 2006 by Simon Ayris who has 25 years experience in the preparation and running of Classic, Modern and Vintage Rally Cars.
When the company was originally founded Simon was adamant that the facility he was to offer would be first class, and provide a tailored and personal service to suit individual client’s requirements, for any given event.Now the business is in its 5th Year and Simon is still excited that it has grown from strength to strength. The company has had some very exciting projects along the way and now has some very loyal clients.
Rally Preparation Services provides everything you might require for your vehicle, whether you are looking for a Long Term Build Project, Servicing and maintainence, Storage, Paint work or the complete running and support of your Rally car.
Rally Preparation Services has a fully equipped workshop with a dedicated team each with a specialist unique background and a passion for what we do. We will also source, and impartially inspect any vehicle you may be interested in purchasing.
Some of the many things we offer are that we can also provide full logistics and transportation both on the UK mainland and internationally, in fully insured and enclosed trucks.
Rally Preparation Services specialise in event service and support.
For all your vehicle requirements from general maintainence to full on-event bespoke rally service and support.
For all your vehicle requirements from general maintainence to full on-event bespoke rally service and support.
If you're looking for a way to contact us we are just a call away on +44(0)1993 358009
Please use the link below to see more of what we do.
More about us, and some of what we have recentley done:
Rally Preparation Services started just about as the recession was getting under way in the UK...yet in the past 30 months we have been flat-out, with the phone ringing constantly. Here we have been quietly beavering away on some hefty rebuilds for the 2010 Peking to Paris rally, in between though, there have been some interesting projects and fascinating vehicles which have come through our workshop doors.
Projects for the 2010 Peking to Paris included the following cars: 1927 Bentley Tourer, 1928 Bentley VDP , 1938 Alvis 4.3, 1935 Rolls Royce Phantom II, 1940 Cadillac Lasalle, 1938 Chevrolet Fangio Coupe, 1930 Chevrolet 6 Tourer, 1925 Buick Phaeton, 1930 Delage and a 1962 Volvo PV
Amongst all the Peking preparations we were approached to build a replica of the Andrew Cowan London to Sydney winning Hillman Hunter. We found the best car in captivity, an ultra low-mileage Hunter with around 24,000 on the clock, a one owner car and actually hesitated for all of ten minutes on whether a car so good should become a rally car. This car when finished by us drove from London to Sydney on a charity raising drive starting from the Ace Cafe in London in March 2010, suffering just one puncture along the way!
The 2009 Nile Rally was next up and we found ourselves building a replica of Roger Clarks London to Sydney Lotus Cortina in a very short time. Other projects for this rally included a 1967 E-Type Jaguar, a 1960 Jaguar MK 2 and a modern Nissan Pathfinder 4x4.
The 2009 Casablanca challenge saw us preparing one of the more different cars, a 1968 Corvette Stingray, the strangest rally car choice to date. Also for this rally we prepared two of our favourite cars, the beautiful 1973 Datsun 240Z of David Ring and the 1963 Volvo Amazon of George Coehlo.
Another really exciting project was the 2010 Monte Carlo Historic, preparing the Morris Minor of Alan Smith, and the Ford Escort road-rally car of Heidi Winterbourne. Heidi bought the car that she thought was ready to go which realistically needed much work to prepare it properly including softer front springs to make it turn in better and provide more front end traction, this involved quite a lot of work as we needed to dial out a lot of vibration and harshness at the same time given the car would be driven for 24 hours non stop on just the first leg alone in a week long event.
2011 Saw us again out on the Monte Carlo Historic. This time Simon was asked to run a team of five cars on the event which included all thye Servicing and Logistics. The team included two Porsche 911's, one 956, an MG Midget an an Autobianchi.
How about this for variety: First up, two lads, and a sister, who all wanted to cram into a 1300cc car bought for £250 and drive it to the far size of the globe to raise money for charity on the Mongol Rally...we were astonished at their choice, a rusty old Austin Allegro. We transformed the car, it got there, the biggest problem on the event was a jammed door lock, the engine never missed a beat, the suspension held together and the car is now a local taxi. We have helped young pioneers every year now on this rally with their quest to get to Mongolia before anybody else! For 2011 the crew at RPS are readying a Toyota Yaris for the event.
Our priority here is to make a car reliable. To finish first, first you must finish. Attention to detail matters as the devil is always in the small things. Any car can suddenly stop working and become stranded by the roadside as a result of over 5,000 moving parts that at any time could let go. Most of these are penny to fix items before they fail. It’s how they are screwed together that often makes the critical difference to success or failure.
Simon Ayris and the RPS team have to date appeared in a film, a book, and have recentley featured in articles relating to both rally car builds and preparation, in Motorsport News and many other leading magazines such as Octane, Classic & Sports Car and Classic Car.
November 2010.
