REAL Rally date set for 2017
Following the success in raising over £30,000 in its inaugural rally, the REAL Rally is set to return on 15-17 June 2017.
The REAL Rally 2016 (www.therealrally.co.uk), organised by REAL – The Ethan Rees Linwood Memorial Fund, has been hailed as a major success raising over £30,000 from the 31 teams entered.
‘It’s an amazing achievement,’ said Bob Linwood, founder and trustee of the charity set up in memory of his son Ethan. ‘We set a minimum target of £500 for each car but some teams were able to get thousands. It’s unbelievable, utterly unbelievable. I’ll never be able to thank everyone enough but I think they all had a great experience and hopefully it was a win-win for all concerned.’
The Martini Boys, headed up by Chris Brightmore from Chartwell (Derby) Ltd, along with Kevin Richardson (Lloyd Bodyshop) and Steve Wells, were the highest fundraiser with a massive £4,280.
Chris commented, ‘After seeing the call to be involved in the dark days of winter last year, the sun suddenly shone and we enjoyed months of planning, joking and the enthusiastic creation of the Martini beast. The event was great fun and we enjoyed the whole experience, more so thanks to the fantastic support we had from our sponsors for this very worthy cause.’
Other notable contributions were £3,120 raised by the Innovation/Veetec team (with drivers Chris Weeks and Karam Singh), £2,000 by The Three Amigo’s (three old school friends lead by Julian Morris of Elite Bodyshop in Northampton) and the Apollo Motor Group team, Pinky and Perky raised £2,325. The Enterprise Rent a Car team raised over £2,500, the Rainbow Bodyshops team £2,000 and The L8 People (Four Elms/Fix Auto Rochester) achieved nearly £1,700. The Vella Boys raised nearly £1,500, as did Fix Auto Stevenage. Other teams around the magical £1,000-plus mark included Rye Street Group, VRVE, Fix Auto Dagenham and Team Noble, followed by a whole host of others who raised between £500 and £1,000.
The Morelli Group, in partnership with De Beer Refinish, entered five super-hero themed cars and together raised over £5,000. Andrew Moring said, ‘We were delighted to support Bob, his family charity and also AutoRaise, who we know will also benefit from this fundraising.’
Next year’s event will once again be a three-day-event in northern Europe, with the cities of Bruges in Belgium and Rouen in France being the overnight venues. Contact Bob Linwood for details.
