MY TEAM, FOR ONE FLEETING MOMENT, was leading the pack. At a dealership outside Toulouse, France, Sid Horman, 43, his 13-year-old son, Martin, and I watched our 1991 SEAT Malaga 1.6, a bland, Spanish-made diesel sedan we'd named Ros Bif 1—a nod to a favorite French epithet for Brits, "roast beef"—as it puked an oily, brownish-green gravy from its coolant reservoir while an impassioned mechanic threatened to impound the car for safety violations.

We'd hit the road two days ahead of the Challenge's official February 18 start date and had already pushed Ros Bif to her limit, revving up to 91 miles per hour on the slick motorways of Gaul until her head gasket blew. After a few poorly translated lies, we managed to ditch the French mechanic, praying the engine wouldn't go Chernobyl before we could stop for repairs in Spain.

And, really, there was no hurry. Teams enter the PDC with one goal: making it to the finish. The event is a mad Englishman's answer to the Paris–Dakar Rally (now Lisbon–Dakar), the notorious 6,500-mile pro-am event in the North African desert that involves, among other expenses, a $10,000 entry fee and $250,000 off-road racing cars serviced by professional chase crews. While the Paris–Dakar offers prize money in the hundreds of thousands, the PDC—or Banger Rally, as it's widely known in the UK—ends with a charity auction.

I'd signed on as Sid's co-driver—a loose term, considering I'd neglected to learn to drive a stick—after he'd responded to a message posted on the PDC's online chat room. During our one brief conversation before I flew to England, Sid, who admitted to having killed a couple of bottles of wine before dialing, described himself as a semiretired international banker from the Isle of Jersey now living on a farm in Devon.

Translation: He was a former bank compliance officer who'd had a breakdown and moved to the countryside to soothe his nerves. Now, two years later, he was taking medication for manic depression while making ends meet by selling Kleen EZ products door to door and stabling neighbors' horses. Six feet tall with broad shoulders and a Nixonesque perpetual five-o'clock shadow, he is a chronically nervous man. When things go wrong, as they often do for him, Sid likes to drive. And not at the back of the pack.

"They call this a challenge, but really it's still a race," he confided to me as he gunned Ros Bif into Spain. "You still want to be first!"