2002-2022: TWENTY YEARS SINCE THE FIRST ISSUE OF TOTAL OFF ROAD
French Fancy
When your off-road race truck has finally hit peak perfection and turned you into a champion, your first instinct might not be to get rid of it. But having taken his class title in the French Tout Terrain championship, Dave Fletcher knew it was time for his Range Rover to give way to something altogether less British Words: Gary Noskill Pictures: Phil Masters
W
hen the vehicle you’ve built has just carried you to a class win in one of the world’s most fiercely contested off-road racing series, your immediate reaction might not be to start driving something else instead. But that’s exactly what Hampshire’s Dave Fletcher did when he bought a new vehicle to replace his victorious Range Rover.
54 | SEPTEMBER 2022
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Bizarre behaviour? Not at all. Because while the Range Rover still had plenty of racing left in it, his new machine was right off the top shelf when it comes to off-road racing technology – and its custom-built French background made it the ideal vehicle in which to mount a credible assault on its home country’s Tout Terrain championship. A part of a dedicated group of British racers whose comping ambitions had crossed the Chan-
nel, Dave and his navigator Marcus Healey regularly locked horns with a Frenchman by the name of Joel Clevenot, who from 1999 had been the owner of a long-wheelbase Fouquet Mk III. Styled very vaguely around the appearance of a Citroën Xantia and intended specifically for endurance racing, this version of the Fouquet was designed around the need for a high-capacity fuel tank. As such, it carried more weight than would normally
4x4 01/08/2022 23:25
