Plymouth-Banjul Challenge a car worth approximately £100. Participants in the challenge are on their own, meaning that no assistance is rendered to motorists in case of a car breakdown or even if they become stranded. Mechanical reliability is the main obstacle to completing the course given that such vehicles are ordinary road cars and are mostly at the end of their useful lifetimes. Many cars cope very well until they have to go through the desert and then almost all suffer a great deal due to high temperatures and dust. Once the cars make it to Banjul in Gambia they are auctioned
Plymouth-Banjul Challenge into a Welsh Ambulance and two Canadians who bought a manual car in France and spent the next few weeks learning to drive it. Since 2007, the rally also has a group of cars continuing on to Bamako, Mali. The 2009/2010 Banjul Challenge was called off by its organiser Julian Nowill due to Mauritanian security concerns (French tourist murders and Spanish aid workers kidnappings), but two teams from group 1 and three teams from group 3 pushed on regardless. Team midlifecrises (Paul James Gadsdon and Steph Copson) and team homesick (Chris Freestone) from group 1 made it all the way