Famous for his high-flying, sideways antics on asphalt, Kelly committed to competing in the EROAD Australian Rally Championship round earlier this year.
That came by way of a deal with Gary Mills of Steelweld Steel Fabrication, who Kelly had not spoken to for more than two decades.
Mills put together a package for Kelly to compete in the two-day gravel rally, shipping the iconic Ford to Australia from Ireland and have Alcorn Motorsport run the car.
It was thought they had enough contingency in their schedule to get the car cleared by customs with plenty of time to spare.
However, shipping delays and fumigation took them right down to the wire for the May 24-25 event.
“I had the task of getting the car built and ready to come to Australia and in a container,” Kelly explained.
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“The shipping time is seven weeks, and we had a good window to do that with a two- or three-week leeway either way. So I got it in the first container with the first ship available.
“It got delayed by a week, which was no big issue, but then we had problems when the container arrived in Perth and went on hold for 10 days.”
The team had planned to complete a shakedown on Friday before the rally, but only got the car that day at midday.
“As you can imagine, when you’re dealing with customs, anything can happen,” Kelly said.
“It’s the unknown. I was happy that the car was not going to be a problem. I didn’t even expect it to be fumigated. It’s normally when they suspect the container has a bug.
“They made the decision before the car was even loaded off the ship. Maybe it was a random thing, but that’s a 24- to 36-hour process. I knew that was going to make things even tighter than we were already expecting.
“Thankfully, when they inspected the car this morning, they were happy that it was immaculately clean and that there was no deep clean required because that really would have tipped us over the edge being a 12- to 18-hour job. That would have been a massive problem. That probably would have spelled the end of our rally.
“We were relieved this morning, we got the email to say fumigation was over and that the container was venting and they hoped to get the inspection sometime today and possibly get the car tomorrow, but luckily that happened a little bit quicker than we expected and we got the call at lunch time to say come and collect your car, which was a massive relief.”
The team had considered a last-resort move to loan a car for the rally, but were fortunate not to need to.
That idea ultimately defeated the purpose of the plans, which was to get the famous Ford Escort in front of Australian fans.
“I didn’t think it would go this late. We did make a few phone calls later yesterday about a possible replacement that someone could maybe loan us if we were stuck,” he said.
“But as you may have realised, in our team, the car is the star. I’m just the steering wheel attendant. It was very fortunate Baby Blue made an appearance for everybody concerned.”
The Forest Rally takes place over two days with a total of 12 stages around Nannup and Busselton split across two heats.
Kelly will have very little time to get up to speed on the stages, and admitted he doesn’t even have the car set up properly for gravel roads.
“Driving to the first stage on Saturday morning will be our shakedown,” said Kelly.
“We have new brakes on the car so we have to bed everything in and make sure the brake balance is right.
“We haven’t got a gravel set-up in the suspension yet but we can put an approximate one in. We’ll tweak that as the weekend goes on and hopefully stay in the rally.”
In any case, it will be a landmark occasion for the team having never competed outside of Europe with the car.
It’s just the second time Kelly has competed in Australia, having last visited in 2017 when he competed in South Australia.
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