As some of you may know, I own a 67S Rally car prepared for the Carrera Panamericana last year. Due to events beyone my control, my co-driver bailed at the eleventh hour last year. I purchased the car from him, and Hayden Burvill did an amazing job of sorting it out - Alan of the Stable in SF rebuilt the twin plugged original motor in September. This year, I decided to ship the car to Europe for the London Casablanca Rally organized by Enduro Rally out of London. Hayden agreed to be my co-driver (amazing good fortune!). The saga of the car is hugely frustrating and for reasons of karma (and because Schumacher Cargo Lines still had the car until day before yesterday) I have tried to not focus on the stupidity and mendacity of the shipper.
When we first considered entering the rally, I contacted Schumacher who had been recommended by several people who had used them. Before signing up for the rally (and paying my non-refundable $10k) I checked with Katherine Munoz of Schumacher's LA office and was reassurred repeatedly that she needed six weeks to get the car from CA to the UK - 2 weeks on the ground and 4 weeks at sea. She even put me in contact with Ian Jeffreys in their UK office to have him assure me. To be safe, Hayden delivered the car to Schumacher in LA 6 weeks + 5 days before we needed it in England.
Ian suggested I give him a call on the 23rd of October to just check in and to make sure the paperwork was all in order. When I called him on the 23rd, he checked and discovered that the car had missed it's connection in the Dominican Republic and would not arrive until the Tuesday AFTER the rally had begun the previous Friday night! Later, Hayden discovered that the Hapag Lloyd ship it was supposed to be transferred to was scheduled to depart the Dominican Republic BEFORE the ship from LA was scheduled to arrive. Total screw up on the part of Schumacher.
We tried to arrange to air-freight the car from the DR - it was on the ground for 10 days there - but were told it was not possible. We then found out that the next ship to the UK and the one they were putting it on was scheduled to stop in Rotterdam en route. It was scheduled to arrive Friday afternoon at 3:00. By agreeing to pay overtime ($5000.) to their customs receiving agent in Rotterdam to open on a Saturday, we were able to conjur a plan that would have us join the rally in Le
Mans on Sunday evening. (Plan B). Four days before the car was to have arrived, I was notified that due to weather, the ship was delayed and would not arrive until Sunday morning. After protracted calculations and many frantic calls, we were able to develop yet another strategy (Plan C) whereby the car would be off loaded in Rotterdam and the agent would arrange for our container to be removed first thing and we would be able to pick up the car Monday morning. This plan required driving 24 hours straight through from Rotterdam to Algeciras (2390km) to catch the rally at the ferry to Morocco Tuesday morning. (Schumacher came up with an additional $2500. in fees for rerouting my car and the other one in the container)
Meanwhile I happened to have access to the 72T I had bought from the car photographer Jamie Lipman for my friend in South Africa - it was in Oxfordshire being spiffed up at Autofarm before being shipped to SA. I flew to the UK Wednesday night, picked up the 72T, stopped by Tuthill's to check out Chris Harris's green ST tribute car, and drove back to Heathrow to await Hayden's arrival Friday morning. He and I spent Friday driving down to near Goodwood to drop in on some Formula One carbon fiber fabricators he knew and then drove to the scrutineering session at the start of the rally. We met many of the participants - a jovial and gregarious lot - and got all our material. We looked forward to catching them up at the Morocco ferry.
The next morning, we drove with the rally to the ferry. At Calais, we followed along to a closed road course section in Belgium and then drove onto Amsterdam where we met up with Leonard Stolk and Arjen Bosman, two R Gruppe pals - we had supper with them and then spent Sunday checking out their cars. The one piece of good news was that the ship had arrived early so we anticipated no problem. Arjen very kindly drove us to Rotterdam and we stayed the night in a hotel near the port in Roosendaal and after a fitful night's sleep, got to the agent's office at 7:30 Monday morning. We arrived to learn that there was some confusion on the Hapag Lloyd website. Some of the info suggested the container was in Roosendaal, other that had not been offloaded and was still on the ship. After five hours of waiting, we were told that it had not been taken off and was on the way to the UK.
At this point it was impossible to catch up with the rally before the ferry to Morocco - the bureaucratic complexities of importing a car into Morocco really require the expertise of the rally organizers. We were doomed and decided to give up on the rally. I flew back to the US Tuesday morning.
The car finally arrived in the UK and Hayden picked it up from Ian Wednesday afternoon. Schumacher had removed the custom roof rack that Hayden had fabricated, damaged the paint, and burnt out the clutch slipping it to hold the car on an incline while it was tied down. (901 with dogleg first) Hayden is now limping around the UK in the rain until he takes the car to Amsterdam to be stored with our Arjen there until another occasion for using comes along - maybe a rally the week before Classic
Le Mans using classic rally routes programed into TomTom GPS units. (check with Leonard)
There are many side stories - like the one about the owner of Schumacher blaming us for everything and the additional $800. ransom to get the car from Schumacher in the UK. But just now, I am trying to find the silver lining. Our sad tale of woe may help us jump the waiting list for Peking to Paris in September!
Bottom Line: Be VERY carteful about shippers and disbelieve EVERYTHING they tell you.
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