1999 Nordkapp Rally

The Finnish Microcar Club excel with the best rally I've ever attended

(A personal view, with photos by Ian Frankland )

Last updated 23rd Dec. 1999

8 days to go before we leave for this great adventure and we finally have an engine in this sorry looking donor car!
	Would you have put a sad engine like this in your car and expect it to haul two people and a rig weighing more than a ton 5,000 miles over some truly dodgy roads?
It's about 07:00 am and we are just packing Ian's mountain of luggage, that's why my Birdy folding bike is on the road. Due to a lot of luggage and a big box of tinned foods we had to leave the Birdy behind (to add insult to injury, we never opened one can and ended up giving them all away!!!! Grrrrrr!!!)

	In the queue to board the Finnish Silja line ferry for the 23 hour trip from Stockholm to Helsinki.
The Friday 'rush-hour' on the main North-South highway through Finland!!!!!!!! For once, I managed to wake Ian up, and he dug his camera out before the local widlife legged it !!
	Heading towards the 'start' of the rally, we've already done about 2,000 miles, here we cross the Arctic Circle, so we've only got three more days driving to get to Nordkapp!!!
Ian 'Ace' Frankland, of Taffspeed fame turned out to be a great travelling companion (except his craving for junk food and the fact that he represented Wales in the Olympics, Long Distance Snoring!!!!)
	Having the Travelette micro-caravan meant that when we missed a ferry (due to a duff timetable), we camped on Stockholm's dockside, and a reasonable walk away from the old town. Here I'm making a t-shirt which says "I am not English, I'm a Welshman" (in Finnish!)
A lot of participants stayed with Veikko at his house in the country, just outside Olou. L-R Matti's Oldsmobile, Matti, Ian, me, Veikko and my rig. Strange machinery lurked everywhere, saunas, mosquitos and ground-shaking snoring made it an interesting halt.
	The Auto Museum in Olou kindly agreed to keep their restaurant open for 24 hours to feed the weary micro-travellers. Hearty breakfasts and heaps of traditional Finnish food helped to prepare us for the next stage, which would finally get us to the start of the actual rally.
Looking at the world through crazy glasses! While driving on a long section of unmade road, we were peppered by stones thrown up by people speeding in the other direction. I asked Ian to phone to the others behind us to warn that they could damage their paintwork or windscreens and at that moment a big crack and it was suddenly very difficult to see where we were going!!!! It happened in the last few metres of the unmade road and only a handful of kilometres from the Rally start at Enontekio. I was not a happy Micronaut at this point!!
	At Enontekiö there were already quite a few other microcars, I removed the dead windscreen and waited for the replacement that Janne had promised would be taken out of an unrestored 600 that we'd seen the day before in Olou. There was a wonderful 'frontier' type spirit about the place, with microcars arriving from all over Europe, and everyone helping everybody else to prepare their cars. What a buzz!!!
We were having trouble keeping the normal 'tin-can' type cars seperate from the micros and that was spoiling the photos so I knocked up this sign!
	Part of the very impressive lineout at Hetta school in Enontekiö. Mostly Messerschmitts with a nice sprinkling of Heinkel / Trojans, Goggo's, Steyr Puch, Vespa, BMW, Fiat, Trabant, King, Nobel and Felber
A Goggo Transporter from Germany, Trabants and Fiats add variety to the heavy sprinkling from FMR (Kr200s, Tg500s & a Kr175)
	Another view from the top of the school, now you can see the amazingly reliable Steyr-Puchs from Austria.
An aerial view of some of the International entries.
	What do you do while you wait for a windscreen? Pass the time by replacing a blown exhaust gasket of course! The red Isetta was the most unreliable entrant, poor Vicki, maybe she should have brought her other car (an Electric 3-wheeler called a Twike)
It's an old Swiss custom, you have to take your engine out of your 'Schmitt every day!! Here, Ralph and our other good Swiss friend, Oliver (300 Isetta), show people how to do it! Parked beside is Mike and Helen Ayriss' very reliable Nobel.
	Frede Larson, the Chairman of the 367 Club of Denmark, came with his wife,Ruth, in his nice BMW 700 coupé.
Straight roads and good speed meant a nice coating of mosquitos on the 600's nose (the badge of courage!) there was something very satisfying about getting some revenge on these pesky little critters that tried so hard to make our lives a misery!
	The first day we overnighted at Alta, Ian and I had stayed back in a small Norwegian town so that we could pick up Sonja, Janne and Helena's daughter (well, she was on her way up after seeing the Welsh band 'The Manic Street Preachers'. Here the micros all parked on the local sports field.
Mike and Helen Ayriss look suitably pleased with themselves, their Nobel 200 performed brilliantly when the many Kr200s with the same Sachs engines, and a lot less weight, dropped like flies through engine failure.
	The 367 Klub convoy Frede and Ruth followed by Peter and Anne Kjærgaard-Peterson in the other BMW 600 Isetta.(they had driven their 600 to Nordkapp once before, 27 years ago!!!!!
Lovely winding roads, fish drying and smoking racks by the side of the road, and microcars coming out of every nook and cranny. The two old guys in the King Fulda kept stopping and ended up behind all of the breakdown trailers, so we stayed back to keep an eye on them.
	This tunnel had only opened one week earlier, before that, you had to take a ferry. It was one of those tunnels with rough-hewn walls and ceiling, poor lighting and ventilation. But worst of all we entered into the dark and suddenly we started to speed up at an alarming rate ( I was concerned that we'd start to 'snake'), managed to slow it enough to change down a gear. This tunnel is a serious accident waiting to happen!!
Those efficient Finns arranged for the closure of the central street in Honningsvåg ( a shortish hop, skip and a jump across craggy, snow-capped mountains from Nordkapp).
	The sight of so many microcars parked together in this cold, wet arctic town was enough to warm the cockles of any Micronaut's heart!!!!
A chilly evening drive over this inhospitable wilderness brought us to Nordkapp I was one very elated person.
	The obelisk at Nordkapp. We had made it. Happy smiling faces were everywhere. And far too many camper vans and coach loads of tourists.
I was supposed to pay thirty pounds to photograph my car near the globe sculpture. But a little car can sneak through barriers that would defeat a normal vehicle!
	Poor 'Schweizer' Ralph Bollag, took his engine out again and couldn't get it back in in time! So he accepted a white knuckle ride with us (the only section where we left the caravan, so it was 'pedal to the metal' time) up to Nordkapp!
This globe stands at the most Northern point. Some crazy Welshman stuck a Nordkapp sticker on to mark the occasion. Click on the photo to see the proof!
	Vicki from Denmark was a disaster on wheels in her ill prepared Isetta, here she receives the hard luck award from Janne Peterson.
The local animal population couldn't resist a peek at our cute little cars! They even resorted to using a pedestrian crossing to get a closer look!
	Nice to find a gas-station! But my poor overworked rig looks decidedly dusty after battling for about 50 miles over rough dirt roads. These roads also resulted in my poor 600 braking it's windscreen.
Check out these other photos from this great adventure !!!	Tiger 1Well loaded Tg500 Tiger 2A brave German piloted this Tg sport with no foul weather gear. Felber 1Check this scene out and tell me you don't wish you could have joined us!!!

But don't take my word for it.........

.........check out the Kaapioautoyhdistys (Finnish Microcar Club) site.