Bakery worker from Shrewsbury conquers 7,450-mile Mongol Rally in battered £500 Clio
A baker from Shrewsbury is part of a small team that has successfully completed one of the toughest motoring challenges on the planet.
27-year-old George Loftus, a former Harper Adams University student now living in Shrewsbury, is one of four friends who teamed to up take on the 7,450-mile Mongol Rally in a beaten up Renault Clio.
George, along with friends Tom Suter, Jon Fowell and Hua Ying Baker, overcame a catalogue of breakdowns including two broken axles and were even banned from entering Tajikistan because their car’s steering wheel was on the “wrong side”.
The gruelling adventure took the team from Prague in the Czech Republic to Oskemen in Kazakhstan, crossing 15 countries in 43 days.
The rules were simple – cars must have engines no larger than 1.3 litres and each team had to raise at least £500 for the environmental charity, Cool Earth.
But the journey was anything but simple for the group who called themselves No Half Sends – a slang term for no half measures.
Their £500 Renault Clio 2009 Sport Tourer – already boasting 138,000 miles on the clock before it even left home – took a battering.
Its rear axle snapped on the Turkish-Georgian border and the team was forced to strip out the back seats to lighten the load and give the struggling motor a fighting chance of reaching the finish line.
The lads had to wave goodbye to the trusty Clio at the end of the rally because repairs had drained their budget, leaving them unable to ship the car back to the UK.
George, a senior development technologist at the Jones Village Bakery in Wrexham said: “It was sad to leave the car behind but it’s gone to a good place.
“At the finish line there was a local businessman who was accepting cars from people who said he was building a museum out of all the rally cars that took part.
“Hopefully in a few years when the museum is finished we’ll be able to go back and see it again.”
As well as raising money for the Cool Earth charity, George’s team supported five other charities in their sponsored drive, Lupus UK, the Stroke Association, Grinshill Animal Rescue, mental health charity BEN support for life, and the farming charity RABI.
They launched a fundraising page for those five charities and have so far raised £1,750.
Village Bakery CEO Simon Thorpe was full of praise for George and his three motoring mates. He said: “George is a hugely capable and resourceful young man whose problem-solving skills were subjected to the severest of tests.
“It’s no surprise at all that they managed to reach the finish line in style and they have raised a lot of money for good causes in the process.”
