Bakery worker and pals conquer 7,450-mile rally in battered Clio

A WELSH bakery worker and his friends have completed one of the toughest motoring challenges on the planet.

- STAFF REPORTER

The team and their £500 car at the Mongol Rally start line

George Loftus, 27, a senior development technologist at the Jones Village Bakery in Wrexham, teamed up with pals Tom Suter, Jon Fowell and Hua Ying Baker to take on the mammoth 7,450-mile Mongol Rally.

Along the way they 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, Top Gear-style adventure has been described as “motoring stupidity on a grand scale”, taking them from Prague in the Czech Republic all the way 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.

At one point its rear axle snapped on the Turkey-Georgia border. At another, the team were forced to strip out the back seats to lighten the load and give the struggling motor a fighting chance of reaching the finish line.