Team AOL Cars gets rallying wrong

The know the old saying; 'you learn from your mistakes'? Well, based on Team AOL's performance on last weekend's Brands Hatch Rally, we've probably hit genius status. As anyone who has dabbled in amateur sports will know, there are days when the gods of bad luck and lousy planning conspire to kick you right in the soft parts.

For those unfamiliar with Team AOL Cars, allow me to give you a brief recap. We're two motoring scribes who have essentially taken full advantage of friends and cheap credit card rates to achieve a lifetime's dream to go rally driving. Having cruised through our first three events, our serene progress up the ladder of success hit the buffers last March when the gearbox fell out of our overworked and under-funded Peugeot 206 XSi. Like most clubman competitors (that's the rallying word for blokes who build their cars in sheds), we didn't have the budget to buy a replacement, so the rest of last season was spent on eBay trying to cobble together enough parts to build a new one.