A bad day for the Beetle

Dakar 2021 | Stage 3 | Wadi Ad-Dawasir > Wadi Ad-Dawasir
January 5 ^th 2021 - 10:47 [GMT + 3]

Although it has been broadly revamped since it was first registered in 1968, the oldest car participating in the Dakar Classic, driven by Belgians Benoît Callewaert and Ghislain Morel, has encountered its first problems.

 This fifty-year old Beetle has seen a sudden increase in action over the last few months. Benoit Callewaert, a historic rally enthusiast who can usually be found competing behind the wheel of a Porsche 911, was challenged last summer to take part in the Dakar Classic by Yves Loubet. The idea immediately appealed to the Belgian businessman, but there was the stumbling block of the car to overcome: “I couldn’t take part with my car, which is prepared for rally tracks rather than rally-raids. So, with my friend Emmanuel Eggermont [participating in the VW Apal # 201], we sought out and found this VW-Baja Beetle in Los Angeles. We shipped it over, but it only arrived at the start of November, giving little more than a month to carry out all the necessary modifications”. They won the race against the clock to get the car on board the ship in Marseille and the cruise to Jeddah was comfortable for the oldest car in the field. “But our adventure took a complicated turn during the second stage,” explains Benoît: “After 5 kilometres of the special, a spark plug blew off the cylinder head and ripped off the thread, so it was impossible to repair it. We had to drive the rest of the special and the entire link route to the bivouac on only three cylinders, meaning we had a catastrophic loss of power. That’s why we had to climb that famous slope where we had to ask for a tow”. The road to reach Wadi Ad-Dawasir was therefore long, but fortunately Benoît Callewaert is farsighted: “It was out of the question that I was going to tackle the Dakar without a second engine. I wasn’t planning on using it, but in the end, we had to strip everything down to install it, bearing in mind that it’s not exactly the same type!” They thus experienced an active and rather long evening on the bivouac, but it was with genuine apprehension that the duo he forms with Ghislain Morel took starter’s orders on the day’s loop: “I’m rather worried because it will be very sandy and we’ve switched from a 1800 cc engine, which already wasn’t that powerful, to a 1600 cc engine which is very likely to struggle”. They will have to look after their venerable Beetle!