Kim Bannister – Rally Explorer and Navigator dubbed the ‘Amerigo Vespucci’ of the rally world

Kim Bannister has been immersed in rallying for over half a century. His experience covers engineering, mechanical crew support, winning rallies as a top navigator and latterly as a major organiser, after he was thrown a scrawled route on a map and told to turn it into a major leg of the Peking to Paris in 2007!

He is well known and highly respected in the rally world by many for his skills as an organiser and route finder, particularly over the last few decades where his South American voyages of discovery have resulted in many exciting rally experiences for four-wheel adventurers. In his own small way, Kim has become the ‘Amerigo Vespucci’ of the rally world, discovering routes just as the Florentine Vespucci discovered the ‘New World’ of the Americas in 1501, the continent subsequently named after Amerigo.

Now 67 years of age, and despite his extensive voyaging in that time, the man born in Reading, UK, still lives in the same area he has done all his life, the international rally man is a local guy. He went to school in Reading and then straight into an apprenticeship in the motor industry, as a mechanic.

Kim explained how he became hooked on motorsport; “I got my love of the sport because the dealership where I worked at the time sponsored a rally car, the driver was a guy called Gordon Jarvis who I got to know and ended up joining the local motor club with him. I went servicing for him on the RAC Rally, the first time back in 1973 which I remember well, and it sort of took me on from there, it was the launch pad.

“I started competing by navigating in local road rallies, which were very big in the UK at the time. I was working in the dealership, part of the Penta Group, which was originally the Reading Garage. Gordon is sadly no longer with us, but he was one of those very quick amateurs with more talent than money. He originally ran a Chrysler Avenger Tiger and later on used such diverse machines as a Sunbeam Rapier H120 in stage rallying! We competed in a couple of local stage rallies and then gravitated to a sunbeam 1600 Ti, actually winning our class in the British Open Rally Championship in the early 80s. He was very talented, but with just absolutely no money, so unfortunately he had to content himself with the odd event every now and then.”

Meanwhile Kim carried on with his own rally career, competing in road rallying, Kim recounted; “I did some Motoring News events, my highlight was, I think, the best result I had. Fifth overall on the Servais Rally which was a forerunner to the Preston Rally. It was run in East Anglia and just an amazing event, full of whites, lots of very narrow tracks and running all night long, it was very tough.

“I rallied in Wales a little bit, but not that often because the locals were just too good. And then I moved into the Southwest Championship, where I won a couple of rounds of the championship in the late 70’s. The rules changed in road rallies in the late 80’s and really road rallying in the south of England died off, just becoming some sort of navigational events.”

Kim was in the navigator’s seat far less by now, but did recently compete in the HERO Challenge Championship with Simon Ayris in his MGB, coming close to the title a couple of times. Happily, Simon finally won the 2024 championship with Alistair Leckie. Currently Kim is working on organizing a Targa event for this November but was chuffed for his driver and friend Simon. “He finally did it with Alistair alongside, a great effort and quite a relief after all their work. I haven’t been able to do much co-driving as I work for other organisations as a freelance, I like the idea of being available for hire and then being a bit of immersive. I am happy to work and give my experience.”

Kim’s hot seat opportunities dried up with the UK branch of road rallying in the late 80’s anyway. In his words: “I then took on more of the organisational side of things, working on more and more events, my first foray into organisation would have been in the late 70’s, with local road rallies. My career in the motor trade still crossed over with rallying from time to time, but I then ended up working with Network Q for Vauxhall.”

By this time Kim’s family was growing up and he needed to take a bit of a break from the sport, but he inevitably got reeled back in!

Kim continued; “I took a break through the 80’s as the family was growing up and I needed to earn some money, but then I drifted back into it, really through the Network Q connection. My involvement was on the sponsorship side, but with my understanding of the sport and having known the Clerk of the Course, Malcolm Neil in earlier days, I was able to work with him. We organised customer events within the rally, Malcolm knew that I wouldn't tread on his toes and get in the way of the event, so we just got on with it.”

Connections usually work well for many of us, but Kim’s path into Historic Rallying came through a great friend and supporter of HERO-ERA, Bob Rutherford, who sadly lost his life on a recce in 2021. Subsequently the Bob Rutherford Historic Rally Scholarship for Young Navigators has been inaugurated to help encourage young talent into the sport.

Kim: “It’s great that his memory lives on in such a great scholarship to help develop young talent, but strangely enough, another connection via the Network Q Rally was with Bob, which gave me another change of direction in motor sport. I had known Bob from rallying in the southwest back in the 70’s and ran into him again on the Network Q. He asked me if I would help marshal on one of the early Monte Carlo Challenges Philip Young had organised at ERA.

“That was around the back end of 1999 and it took off from there! I got involved with Philip in his organisation, the ERA. Also, through rally connections with Dave Whittock there was more work as he was organising a couple of events for which I provided a lot of Secretariat work. I did a couple of events with him, and it really snowballed from there, because then Martin Clark asked me to do some work for one of his events. In 2004, having been working with ERA for a while, I was asked if I would go and turn the Mongolia leg of the Peking to Paris from a line on a map into a road book!

“They said ‘you can do this!’ Somebody thought they had a route through Mongolia, or so Philip believed, but at that time it was simply a line on a map. Could I go and find a way for crews to get through, and by the way, ‘whilst you are there, can you do the China bit! Oh, and you may as well stay on and do Russia as well!!’

“A week or so in Mongolia turned into five to six weeks, and I actually ended up leaving the car in Tallinn, turning up a few months later and picking up the car from the Estonian Motor Club who were really very good. Then we were told that we may as well carry on and do the rest of the reccy for 2007, so that was the first major event I was heavily involved in.

“I worked with Philip, really, from that 2004 point onwards through to his unfortunate demise, and then I stayed on until after the 2016 Peking to Paris for him then moved on to another organisation.”

Kim Bannister has an enviable record of route finding and running adventurous events and discovering new rally routes on the continent of the Americas, particularly in South America. He outlined a few of his chart to reality successes, and one non-starter.

“I ran an event for Philip Young in 2013, the Vintage Cape Horn from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. I then did the route for the 2016 Rally of the Incas for ERA, which finished in Lima starting from Buenos Aires. Then I worked on a 2019 rally recce which went from Colombia producing the road book from Cartagena to Lima, but the event never ran. There was further work when I ran the 48-hour car on the Lima to Cape Horn for HERO-ERA in 2022.

“So I have covered an awful lot of the continent across many events in South America, from reccies and everything else!”

Given his experience, what would Kim say are the big attractions of historic rallying in South America?

“I think it's just the continent itself. I mean, it's just so varied and so different and wide open, there's lots of great gravel roads. There's lots of amazing things to see, forests, mountain regions like the mighty Andes, Chaco, Pampas, it is breath taking! The culture is fascinating, I think it's just a wonderful place to be able to take your old car to. People over there, of course, are very much car people. They love their cars, they particularly love old cars and they love motorsport. You're always very welcome if you drive in an old car, and the memories of Fangio, Gonzalez and other motor sport heroes like that live long in their memories.”

Kim may not be enamoured by the comparison to great discoverer of the Americas, Amerigo Vespucci. Yet he is an adventurer and discoverer in his own right in the world of rallying, with the aim of bringing a whole ‘New World’ of adventure to Historic Motor Sport.

Who knows what paths he may lead four-wheel adventurers over in the future?