For the 20th time now, “Le Jog” will be held, an especially challenging British winter rally covering a distance of 2,400 kilometres. For the first time, a car from Volkswagen Classic is among the 66 racing vehicles: a courageous ladies team will tackle the three-day rough-and-tumble endurance rally in a Volkswagen Iltis.
The “Le Jog” winter rally has been staged in the United Kingdom since 1993. “The toughest in Europe,” as the organiser says himself. The challenge is to drive the distance from Land’s End in the farthest south-west corner of Cornwall clear to John O’Groats in the northernmost corner of Scotland within three days. The demanding route runs straight over very bumpy byroads and through streams, which means – given the extremely short passage times as well as a thoroughly strenuous nocturnal stage – that the drivers and their vehicles will be tested fully by the automotive ordeal they face. The whole route is garnished with more than 50 special regularity tests full of navigational dodges.
66 teams will be competing there from the 7th to 10th December. In 2013 for the first time, a ladies team with a vehicle from the collection of Volkswagen Classic is competing in the 2,400-kilometre tour – a “Paris-Dakar” Volkswagen Iltis, just like the one that Freddy Graf Kottulinsky/ Gerhard Löffelmann drove to victory in that legendary desert rally in 1980. Steffi Edelhoff and Sandra Wukovich, who have already toured the world in a VW Amarok, are racing in the “Le Jog” for a good cause: jointly with the “be your own hero e.V.”, a registered non-profit organization, they campaign for the autonomy and self-reliance of girls and young women.
The four-wheel drive Iltis (Type 183) is exactly the right vehicle for such a tough rally – just under 10,000 of them were produced by Volkswagen/Audi. The technology of the spartan vehicle formed the basis for the later Quattro models by Audi. Unlike the production version, the race car features a reinforced chassis, underbody protection, a front safety guard, auxiliary lamps, roll-over protection bar, only two sports bucket seats as well as a big 90-litre fuel tank. The power of the offroader is about 90 PS.
