A blast from the past and a glimpse into the future, a Moscow vintage car rally has put both old vehicles and carbon-saving compact cars to the severe test.
A three-day event in honor of Russia’s Day of Ecologists started in Moscow and will end 1,200 kilometres later in Pskov – near the Estonian border.
Put on by the Rally Club of Classic Cars and the Ministry of Ecology, the rally brought together classic cars like a beautiful 1960 corvette and modern eco-friendly cars. The environmental impact and fuel usage of the latter will be compared to the vintage beauties.
Evidently, the muscle cars from years gone by can hardly compete with their younger counterparts when it comes to being green. Still, that has not stopped some classic car owners from giving their retro roadsters an eco-friendly facelift.
"I believe my car will take first place among the retro cars on ecological standards,” Dmitry Oktyabrsky, head of Moscow Retro Car Museum, told RT. “First of all, because it's a small capacity car. The volume of the engine is only 1.1 liters and it has 40 horsepower. We augmented the car so it consumes less petrol but runs faster. And since the distance is quite lengthy, we'll consume less petrol than the other cars."
The journey is certainly a long one. But drivers needn't worry about putting the pedal to the metal to get there quickly, because this rally is not a race. It requires discipline rather than speed.
Participants have a stringent list of directions to follow along the way, including making positive changes to the environment and taking pictures of areas impacted by forest fires along the way.
"Besides our driving, we're planning to plant an alley of trees in the Tver Region – in places of war battles and war-destroyed villages,” Stanislav Solovyov, president of Classic Cars Rally Club, told RT. “In one of them, only one resident survived. We'll plant trees in two different towns."
And as for who wins the rally, drivers are in no rush to find out, because they are more excited about the journey than the destination.
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