McRae Gathering Photos

[b3lha]

Last weekend we attended the McRae Gathering, a one-off event organised to commemorate the life of rally legend Colin McRae and raise money for charity.

A convoy of about 300 Subarus set off from Colin's home town of Lanark in Scotland on Saturday Morning. Many hundreds more joined along the way. We joined the convoy at Birmingham there were approximately 1100 subarus and the convoy stretched back over 30 miles.

I have never seen so many Subarus. They were mostly Imprezas, but also quite a few Legacies and a couple of Foresters. We had the only SVX, and we got a fair bit of attention. I have no idea whether we were near the front, the back, or somewhere in the middle. All I know is that every car as far as I could see in front and behind was a Subaru.

After the convoy arrived at the Prodrive HQ in Banbury, everyone dispersed to their hotels etc. Fortunately we were only an hour or so from home, so we didn't need a hotel.

On the Sunday, Prodrive had an open day and we were able to go in and walk around the workshops where they build the Subaru World Rally cars. The rally team was competing in the New Zealand rally, but there was still plenty to see. I've never seen such a tidy workshop, there was not a single drop of oil on the floor.

Then we had a look around the Prodrive heritage centre where they keep some of their historic rally cars. The best exhibit for us was the Impreza WRC car that Richard Burns drove to win the Kenya Safari Rally in 2000. Ari Vatannen's Legacy was there too and the Prodrive P2 supercar concept.

Parked outside the building was N1WRC, Colin McRae's 1996 Impreza; Roger Clark's Gobstopper; and a police impreza. At 12 o'clock we departed in convoy, led by N1WRC, to the Prodrive test track in Warwick.

Normally it takes about half an hour drive from Banbury to Warwick, but when you have 1000+ Subaru's in convoy and no assistance from the highways agency then it takes 2 hours and brings the M40 motorway to a halt.

As we drove onto the test track, we were flagged down by a member of the organising committee. He said "I just wanted to shake your hand for bringing an SVX". That really made my day.

We were directed to park the cars on the back straight in such a way as to spell out "COLIN MCRAE" and a Saltire (scottish flag). This was later confirmed as a new guiness world record for the largest ever car mosaic with 1086 cars. The previous record being 200 or so.

It's hard to describe the scale of this event. Epic is the only word that comes close. There were so many Subarus that you couldn't possibly fit even a fraction of them into one photograph, unless you had a helicopter. The young lady from the organising committee said it best in her speech. "No other rally hero has ever had a send off like this. Period."

Anyway, have a look at our photos and then for more photos, videos
and news stories. Try to spot the SVX in the aerial photos.

http://www.vicorp.com/~skusep/MG/