MyTorque is a collection of articles about member experiences and comments on their cars. This article is from JCCT member Ron Leach, on his experience of the 2010 National Rally.

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The journey to a National Jaguar Rally starts the day after you decide to participate.

In our case that was in October 2009. Paying your rally fees, booking a berth on the Spirit of Tasmania, and the accommodation at the venue, for 2010 it was Royal Pines on The Gold Coast, considering which Route to travel and where your overnight stop will be, that's the easy part. The hard work then begins.

What seems like months of endless preparation of the car you have entered, is in fact month's of washing, stripping old wax, polishing and then polishing again and waxing, you start off with big sponges and piles of microfiber cloth's and end up using cotton buds and toothpicks, I call this faze nitpicking. I laid awake at night thinking how to get the car to Queensland without having to do it all again, I even woke Chris up at some wee hour to tell her of my latest idea, and at that time of night it seemed like a good one, GLAD WRAP! I cried out, Chris, I'll wrap it all over the dash, lay it over the seats, the carpets, put the stuff every where it will stick. The next day I bought my own roll, its still sitting on my workbench unopened, sadly in the cold light of day I knew that the washing and polishing would all have to be done again, when we got to Queensland.

The day of departure arrived everything was done the car looked beautiful. (And so did Chris) We decided to run with the air conditioning on all the way to Queensland in order to create a positive ventilation effect in the cabin of the car, in order to keep the dust out, I can't recall which wee hour I thought that one up but it seemed like a good idea, and remained one until we got to Royal Pines.

The ferry was doing double trips so that put us into Melbourne around 6.15 am and at about 6.45 am we were on our way, ''Madam Lash'' had plotted our course, we had decided on the freeway system to Sydney, turn left at Liverpool and up the Pacific Highway to Queensland, believe it or not, its 3 hours quicker than the Newell Highway, the way we would usually go to Queensland.

The main benefits of the Hume was setting the cruise at 115 kph, and being dual highway there were no problems overtaking, no one kicking up rocks coming the other way, and in eleven hours we had gone 1,100 kms, with only 600 to go the next day, which had us pulling up at Royal Pines at 1 pm. Thursday, unloaded the car, checked-in, then it all starts again, only this time its not practice, its for real, you can see the benefits of the months of rubbing and nitpicking as the car quickly starts to glow. The car park under the Royal starts to fill with other likeminded Jaguar lovers, all with a common goal whether in general display, Concours d'Etat or d'Elegance it didn't matter, we had all arrived at this place to celebrate Jaguar ownership, it all started to make sense, and we will do it again next year...

How could we not follow up Ron's article without the photos showing the results of all his hard work!   Congratulations Ron, well done; Concours d'Elegance Gold and the ACJC Best in Class d'Elegance - Grand Tourers

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