The Camel Trophy.

Copyright © 1996 T.F. Mills, tomills@du.edu

The Camel Trophy is loosely referred to as the Olympics of 4WD. The first one used jeeps in the Amazon in 1980. Ever since they have used Land Rover products. Over a million applicants vie for spots on the two-man national teams. About a dozen are selected to compete in national trials. Four finalists go to international trials which further narrow down the team to two, plus two alternates, plus two team journalists. Mundo Maya '95 was held May 17-June 8 in Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Twenty nations sent teams. Points are awarded for Special Tasks. Teams vote for the one with the best team spirit in the expedition which covers 1,000 miles of very challenging terrain. Overall winning team gets the trophy, which is three hands holding aloft a globe and vehicle.

Women first participated in the Camel Trophy in 1994, with Carine Duret on the French team and Christel Persson on the Swedish team.

Camel cigarettes (RJR Nabisco) sponsored the first event. Since then it has been taken over by Worldwide Brands Inc., a wholly-owned subsidary of RJR, organized in 1981, which owns the Camel Trophy trademark. WBI Germany had launched the "Camel Collection" of leisure wear in 1977, and in 1991 WBI diversified into "Camel Trophy Adventure Wear" (boots, clothing, watches), presently marketed only in Europe and the Far East. In 1992 Land Rover entered into a formal co-sponsorship agreement with WBI. Plans now call for North American LR dealers to market the "adventure wear".

Here is the history of the Camel Trophy in a nutshell:

Year	Place		Vehicle		#teams	Winners

1980	Transamazonica	Jeep		3 (Ger)	Ger (Klaus Karthna-
						Dircks, Uwe Machel)
1981	Sumatra		Range Rover	5 (Ger)	Ger (Christian
						Swoboda, Knuth Mentel)
1982	Papua NewGuinea Range Rover	8	Italy (Cesare Geraudo,
						Giuliano Giongo)
1983	Zaire		Ser III 88	7	Neth (Henk Bont,
						Franz Heij)
1984	Brazil		110		12	Italy (Maurizio Lavi,
						Alfredo Redaelli)
1985	Borneo		90		16	Ger (Heinz Kallin,
						Bernd Strodach)
1986	Australia	90		14	France (Jacques Mambre,
						Michel Courvallet)
1987	Madagascar	Range Rover	14	Italy (Mauro Miele,
						Vincenzo Tota)
1988	Sulawesi	110		12	Turkey (Galip Gurel,
						Ali Deveci)
1989	The Amazon	110		14	UK (Bob Ives,
						Joe Ives)
1990	Siberia-USSR	Discovery	16	Neth (Rob Kamps,
						Stijn Luyx)
1991	Tanzania-Burundi Discovery	17	Turkey (Menderes Utku,
						Bulent Ozler)
1992	Guyana		Discovery	16	Switz (Alwin Arnold,
						Urs Bruggisser)
1993	Sabah-Malaysia	Discovery	16	USA (Tim Hensley,
						Michael Hussey)
1994	Arg-Parag-Chile	Discovery	18	Spain (Jorge Corella,
						Carlos Martinez)
1995	Mundo Maya	Discovery	20	Czech (Zdenec Nemec,
						Marek Rocajdl)
1996    Indonesia       Discovery       20      Greece (Miltos Farmakis,
                                                Nikos Sotirchos)
And now:

Further Reading: