June 8th is an important date for all the entrants and fans of the ADAC Eifel Rallye Festival since on this day the full entry list will be published.

A total of one hundred and fifty Slowly Sideways cars plus fifteen course-opening cars will take part in this unique event where there is no kind of competition and the whole three days is simply a rally festival for fans and drivers alike.

While every Slowly Sideways car has to represent a part of rallying’s rich history, the fifteen course-opening cars do not have to comply with these regulations and simply act as a spectacular and sideways warm-up programme.

Variety is once again the key word for the Slowly Sideways group with more than thirty different makes and seventy-five different types of rally cars. These represent more than fifty years of rallying starting with a raucous Wartburg 311 two-stroke and ending with a superfast Subaru Impreza WRC.
A special highlight for the fans will once again be the Group B supercars of which more than twenty-five examples will be finding their way to the country roads of the Vulkaneifel in late July. The most powerful of all these will be the Peugeot 205 T16 E2 driven by Enda Garvey which is powered by a special ex-Pikes Peak engine with around 600 bhp.

 

Nevertheless, Slowly Sideways founder Reinhard Klein is especially proud of the championship winning cars that will make up the “Champions Parade” this year: “The Slowly Sideways community has contributed to our theme of ‘Forty Years of the WRC’ exceptionally well. We are happy to announce that examples of all the World Championship winning cars right up to end of the Group B era in 1986 will be present in Daun. This even includes the European Makes Championship from 1968 and 1969 and the International Rally Championship for Makes from 1970 to 1972. Thus we have all those cars taking part that shaped the face of rallying like the Alpine A110, Lancia Stratos, Fiat 131 Abarth, Audi Quattro and the Peugeot 205 T16.”

Although the entry list with details of the cars and drivers will be published on June 8th, there might yet be a few additions to the list of star drivers attending. Peter Schlömer, the chief organizer and Chairman of the MSC Daun says: “We are very proud that the interest in our event is not only growing among the owners of historic rally cars but also among former drivers of those cars. There are more and more WRC drivers from the past that want to take part in the Eifel Rallye Festival. So there might be a few surprises in store.”

Apart from World Champions Walter Röhrl, Björn Waldegård and German Champion Harald Demuth (who will be driving the Sport Quattro driven by Walter Röhrl on the 1985 Monte Carlo and Swedish rallies and not the 1984 1000 Lakes car driven Mikkola as was stated in our last release), the following star drivers are confirmed already:
Simo Lampinen, winner of the 1000 Lakes Rally in 1963, 1964 and 1972 and ex-works driver for Saab, BMC, Peugeot, Fiat, Triumph and Lancia. Lampinen will be reunited with his original car from the 1975 Acropolis Rally, a Lancia Beta Montecarlo in Alitalia colours, and also with his former navigator Piero Sodano in the co-driver’s seat.
Another reunification is taking place inside a Wartburg 353. Egon Culmbacher and Werner Ernst finished second overall in the legendary 1973 Polish Rally where only three cars made it to the finish. Now they will drive the same model in the Eifel Rallye Festival.

Yves Loubet from Corsica who has finished his home event, the WRC Tour de Corse, on the podium three times (1986, 1987, 1988) and was European Rally Champion in 1989, will be at the wheel of a Lancia 037 Rally.

A great start for the Eifel Rallye Festival on Thursday.

The new venue for the shakedown will be centred on the small village of Brück and it will be run on the famous “Mantaloch” stage. With the stage running so close to Brück, it will be easy for fans to see both the action on the stage as well as the crews preparing for the start. There will be two large parking areas from which the spectators can walk to the service area, the start of the shakedown or to two different spectator areas allowing spectacular views. Shakedown will be from 16.00 to 20.00 hrs.
Once the shakedown is over, the action will move into the centre of Daun for the welcome evening. From 20.00 hr, Austrian filmmaker Helmut Deimel will show films from his immense archive interspersed with interviews.

Fans of the legendary Audi Quattro should not miss the display of fifteen Audi Sport Quattro models right in front of the Forum Daun that is just down the road from the Rally Mile. Among these will also be an ex-works Audi Quattro that was driven by Hannu Mikkola during the 1983 WRC season and has been recently restored.

For further information, contact either of the gentlemen listed on the panel at the foot of the page. If photographs of the 2012 event are needed, a wide range of these can be downloaded for free from the McKlein Photography web site. The link you will need is :-

McKleinImagedatabase

 

On the same site, there are also images from previous years of Slowly Sideways activity in the Eifel going back to 2006.