Excel Rally - History

History

The Excel Rally Series was developed to be a replacement series to the aging Gemini Rally Series that has been around for two decades. Following a visit to the Bega Valley Rally in 2005 by Col Hardinge and John Carney from Victoria, both were very impressed with these cars and after some discussion decided to take the idea to Victoria. After an initial meeting with interested people toward the end of 2005 there appeared to be sufficient interest to create a Victorian Series, including the cars in the highest level of State Rallying in Victoria through the Victorian Rally Championship. With corporate support from several sources including Hyundai Motor Corporation Australia, several cars were built during the Summer of 2005/06.

The first appearance of the new cars was at a Gala function to launch the Series at Wights Motor Group Traralgon. This was attended by several high-ranking Hyundai officials as well as two cars from the NSW Series. The first rally in Victoria for the series being the David Nutter Ford rally. It was not until the second rally being a very wet Cerberus Stages, which at the time was a day and night rally that the full Excel field arrived. Two years on a the Excel Series in Victoria is now making up close to third of the field in any Victorian Rally Championship, Excel teams have also scooped the pool in many of the outright awards in the Championship and have demonstrated their ability as tough little competitors which in the right hands are now consistently getting into the top ten in many events.