The technology of the cars dates back more than 70 years, and the outfits of those driving them are almost as antique. Yet Europe’s wackiest race on a wide, sweeping beach on Denmark’s bracing North Sea coast is not a vintage gathering, part of a film set or even a carnival.
It is a born-again festival for hot rods on the island of Romo. The event was dreamt up by a group of enthusiasts who spent ages campaigning for the necessary approvals for the vintage race.
The race has quickly grown in popularity, drawing some 20,000 spectators in 2018. The need for speed aside, the idea is not to set records but to have fun.
“Our ambition is also to create a true time capsule, with pre-World War II cars and motorcycles,” say the organisers. They meet up once a year on the windswept sands, where more than 100 classic cars and motorcycles compete for honours.
Romo is Europe’s answer to races on the Bonneville salt flats in Utah or on the dry bed of El Mirage Lake in the north-western Mojave Desert. The Danish island north of Germany benefits from extremely wide and long beaches, with a hard and flat surface.
“These were the racetracks of our forefathers,” says Steffan Skov, who kicked off the festival three years ago as a tribute to a famous event held nigh on 100 years ago on the equally pancake-flat nearby island of Fano.
Back then, Opel racing driver Carl Joerns was one of the big names. He piloted a powerhouse of a car named the Green Monster in 1922, which could reach speeds of up to 228 kilometres per hour (km/h).
The restored car was tearing up and down the beaches of Romo once again on the race day in September 2018.
In the roaring twenties, setting land speed records caught on in Europe as magnificent men powered fast cars to new benchmarks in the United States. Most of those cars were driven by huge plane engines.
Ordinary roads were not empty or big enough for these daring competitors, who soon switched to the Bonneville salt flats and other stateside locations, says Jennifer Jordan, who helped film a documentary about the history of the racing, “Boys of Bonneville.”
That’s why, even during World War I, the racers were competing in places like El Mirage and Muroc in California, Black Rock in the state of Nevada and, of course, the legendary Bonneville in Utah.
The uncrowned king of the road in those days was a man called Ab Jenkins. In 1935 he wound up his Duesenberg Mormon Meteor to an average of 217 km/h over a run lasting 24 hours. He boosted the average to 260 km/h a few years later.
More than a dozen of his records still stand, says Ron Main, one of the organisers of the El Mirage race. Jenkins is held up as the hero of desert racing in the United States, though he can’t hold a candle to British military pilot Andy Green, who holds the current world land speed record.
In 1997, he streaked to 1,228 km/h in the jet-powered Thrust SSC, breaking another record: first car to break the sound barrier.
The Thrust SSC that flew through the desert of Nevada at the time actually doesn’t have much in common with the conventional idea of a car, but for the wheels. The single-seater is actually closer to an Earth-bound rocket: 16.5-metres long, as thin as a cigarette and powered by two jet turbines, which provide roughly 100,000 horses.
But while such runs impress men like Skov, they don’t have much in common with classic beach racing, he says. For him, the charm of festivals like Romo is that one can have a lot of fun for very little money – although, of course, there are many drivers who invest six-figure sums into their cars.
“But you can also get an adequate racing car for the price of a regular compact vehicle and take part in the race here,” he says.
The number of beaches and salt flats where such events are allowed can be counted on two hands. However, they continue to fascinate audiences, with the number of participants growing every year. – dpa
