Day Four: Bangers4BEN

The old Fiat factory was finally upon us, or was it?

The day started off in Lake Como, Italy with one of the fantastic AA team members warning the Bangers4BEN participants that there were flash floods all over Italy that day. As you can see by this picture, the rain was pretty horrendous. For team HPI Check, this meant that they had to put the roof up on their Saab 93 for the first time, nightmare!

Despite the flash floods, Team InAutomotive were in high spirits. We set off in convoy before shortly pulling off for refuelling, bad idea! The rest of the convoy left us behind and that’s where the day turned for the better/ worse.

Around 30 mins into the trip we were due to pull off for Turin which would then be another 2 and a half hours in the other direction, however, the junction was closed and our sat nav couldn’t find another route for us. A quick decision was made and we were on our way to Milan!

Being big football fans, the San Siro was slightly more appealing than the old Fiat factory (mainly because the Fiat factory is no longer a factory, but a shopping centre). Another factor that swayed our decision to go to Milan was that we were only 45 minutes away, result!

Unfortunately, the weather didn’t improve and the San Siro looked pretty gloomy in a very wet Milan. Fortunately for us, the banana car continued to put a smile on our faces when we parked in front of the stadium:

A stadium tour was a no-brainer and we were soon walking around the dressing rooms of Inter & AC Milan. Quite a reasonable price too at €17 each.

Inside the AC dressing room:

Touchy subject seeing as I was at this game in Athens watching my team lose to Milan 🙁

Team Automotive at pitch level:

All in all, despite not finishing up at the final destination we still had a great day (arguably more enjoyable than heading to Turin). Plus, we halved our journey time back to the final hotel of the trip seeing as we hadn’t traveled all the way over to Turin.

On route back to Mulhouse, France we stopped off at a Ferrari garage and toyed with the idea of buying a new 458 (not really), we did get a picture though which was good enough for us as we hadn’t seen ANY Ferrari’s in our whole time in Italy which was a bit of a dissapointment:

Because of the flash floods all the way back to Mulhouse the mountain roads were graced with waterfalls gushing down on either side, one of which was rather intense:

After a long day on the road, we hit the spa (obviously) and then waited for dinner/ the awards ceremony.

Car Dealer Mag were handing out 3 awards, Best Fancy Dress, Best Dressed Car and then Best Tweet… the bananas were in the running for a couple of them.

First award that was announced was the ‘Best Dressed Car’, without any real competition the Blackshaws cleaned up with their ‘Dog Car’. This car had caused such a stir on the roads that they were sure they were the cause of a few minor traffic problems, mainly because so many cars were slowing down alongside to take photographs. you can see why:

Next up was the ‘Best Fancy Dress’ award, we were in the running with our Bananas in Pyjamas outfits, Car Dealer Mag event went as far as saying that we were the ‘celebs of the trip’, we’ll take that one! We were presented with this cracking trophy and piece of memorabilia:

The final award went to ‘Best Tweet’ of the trip, again, we were in the running for the award with our recreation of that famous titanic scene, take a look for yourselves:

Our hearts will go on. #B4B14 pic.twitter.com/e1fLwKreKw

— InAutomotive (@inautomotive) October 11, 2014

Second place went to the Blackshaws with this belter of a tweet:

Well we lasted 1400 miles but was going to happen #b4b14 pic.twitter.com/eSxGSTi110

— Will Blackshaw (@willyblackshaw) October 13, 2014

And finally, the winner of the ‘Best Tweet’ went to this team who had pre-planned a breakdown:

I brought a #haynes #manual with me but looks like the wrong one #b4b14 @SunmotorsUK @The_Marques_Man @JimChaudry pic.twitter.com/hOwofixzji

— Captain Caralot (@CaptainCaralot) October 12, 2014

So, to round up the day, we didn’t make the final destination but we did have a great day driving through Italy, Switzerland and France as well as visiting the San Siro in Milan. Here’s a few more pictures that we took along the way:

Super mario: