Our History
The Oxford University Motor Drivers’ Club, also known as the OUMDC, was established in 1934 to contest the ‘Battle of the Blues’ motor race with Cambridge University. The competition ignited a great sporting rivalry racing bikes and cars, which would become the prestigious annual Varsity Match.
While the club still partakes in the legendary Varsity Matches, it is has broadened to include the British Universities Karting Championship (BUKC) and the British Indoor Karting Championship (BIKC). All three events offer drivers a chance to earn themselves a half-blue.
Organised by the Oxford University Motor Drivers’ Club, the Targa Rusticana regularly attracted the country’s leading crews, many of whom went on to international fame. Names such as Moss, Sprinzel, Clark, Elford, Siegle-Morris, Allard, Bengry, Fidler, Procter, Hall, Broad, Bullough, McBride, Gibbs, Malkin, Simister, Bloxham and Gibbs spring to mind, and there were many more. Even the organisers themselves were notable competitors, two of them having been winning co-drivers in the RAC Rally.
Neither a national race in Sicily nor a swift departure from university, the name is actually that of one of Britain’s most legendary rallies, inaugurated in the Fifties and last held in 1973. It was one of the great classic events of the road rallying school on which anyone who aspired to rallying stardom was obliged to cut his teeth.
Road rallies, mostly centred in the least populated parts of the British Isles, were invariably held at night on little-used country roads, mostly those shown white or yellow on the then one-inch Ordnance Survey maps. There were no special stages, and timing was in minutes, not seconds, a format which Kenya’s Marlboro Safari Rally retains to this day despite pressure from FISA to change its character.
