Peugeot 106 Rallye Register

What is the Rallye Register

The 106 Rallye Register is an exclusive car club based in the UK. It caters for all Peugeot 106 Rallye models around the world, including motorsport Rallyes. We offer a massive source of information and technical data on the Rallye models, built up over the last 10 years. We have a large online interactive forum and website that provide everything you could possibly need to know about the Rallye.

We have over 250 members, and 3000+ forum users that shows the huge popularity of the 106 Rallye. We organise exclusive events throughout the year including track days, road rallies, social gatherings and are present at most major car shows in the UK. Our huge discount directory is one of the best around, offering members great savings on parts from the major performance and tuning manufacturers.

The bottom line is....if you're a Rallye owner, membership of the Register is an absolute essential part of your Rallye experience!

History and Formation

The 106 Rallye Register was formed by Mark Yates in November 2000, with the aim of tracing all the Peugeot 106 Rallye models left in the UK and bringing together the owners into an exclusive club. Mark bought his first Rallye in the spring of 2000, a completely standard indigo blue series 2 Rallye. After his purchase Mark was keen to talk to other Rallye owners to discuss various aspects of the car but found out the only way of contacting other Rallye owners on the net was via email through Peugeot based websites.....however at that time the number of Rallye owners online was very limited!

Mark's enthusiasm for finding out more about the Rallye model lead to the creation of a relatively simple website appropriately named www.106rallye.co.uk. As the amount of visitors to the site rapidly grew, a database was created to store all the information of people emailing Mark to tell him about their Rallye. The database contains information on each individual Rallye such as colour, mileage, owners, location, etc. It acts as a registrar for all the Rallye models left in the UK, and it's this database that is the actual "106 Rallye Register". It is a private database that only Mark has access to, so it's completely safe and confidential.

There were only initially 1000 Series 1 and 500 Series 2 Rallye models officially imported in the UK, that makes the 106 Rallye an extremely rare car, especially when you compare it to the number of 106 GTi's - over 5500 registered in the UK. The Rallye Register database is vital in keeping track of which Rallye's are left in the UK. As time goes on more and more Rallye's are crashed, heavily modified, converted into rally cars and scrapped, making them even more scarce.

The database tracks owner details, chassis numbers, engine numbers, registration plates and more. This information is very important when tracing a cars history. Some of the S1 models are now over 10 years old so just think how much could have been done to a car in that time! In years to come we may only have a few hundred Rallye models left so keeping track of what cars are left is an essential aim of the Register.

Growth of the Register

Since those early days the Register has steadily grown in size, with the website continually evolving into a bigger, better, more informative site. By the summer of 2001, only 6 months after the Register had begun, there were over 50 members in the UK. Membership was free and all you had to do was fill in a form on the website giving details of your Rallye for insertion into the database. The members contacted each other by email, none of this fancy online messaging, live forums and chat rooms that are taken for granted these days!

In early 2001, it was decided that it was time for the members to meet up and show off their Rallye's in person! Our first official event was PUGFEST 01 organised by the Peugeot Sport Official Owners Club (PSOOC). It was held at the Heritage Motor Centre in Warwickshire on the 24th of June. We had over 12 Rallye's there on the day, in a neat little display which put the Register firmly on the map in the Peugeot world and made people sit up and take notice in the amount of interest in this little 106!

Pugfest & French Car Track Day 2001

From then on, the enthusiasm for the Rallye Register just grew and grew throughout 2001. We had another few events that year that attracted even more new members. The website got bigger and bigger as there were now events to report on and details of the new members cars. The Rallye has always been a real drivers car and therefore attracts a certain type of owner who just wants to drive it to the limit and not a lot else! To cater for this, we attended our first track event at the REVS French Car Track Day at The Three Sisters Circuit in Wigan, Lancashire. We had 3 cars on track and had a great time exploring the limits of the cars handling. It was also fun exploiting the weaknesses of other cars on track, as the 3 Rallye's drove rings around most of the other cars there! It certainly made people take notice of the superb handling ability of the Rallye.

The Rallye Register has always had very close links with the PSOOC which caters for all Peugeot makes and models www.psooc.com . In July 2001 we were affiliated to the PSOOC to help attract new members and to create more awareness for the Register. The Register's first magazine report soon followed in the November issue of Torque magazine, distributed to all PSOOC members. Mark wrote a general introduction to the Rallye model and let all the readers know all about the Register.

The winter of 2001 was an extremely busy time for Mark as he was improving the website even further, adding new material, attracting new members and of course carefully planning for an even bigger year in 2002! By the spring of 2002 the Rallye website was full of photo's, video clips, downloads, member profiles and much more. We were attracting a lot of interest from Rallye owners around the world, so we set up an international Rallye Register to cater for all these people.

The summer of 2002 was full of great events for the Register. Firstly we attended a PSOOC rolling road day in Derbyshire bringing along four Rallye's to be tested on the dyno for power figures. Mark then organised a very exclusive day out at K&N Air Filters Research & Development test facility in Cheshire. The ten members who attended this event, were shown around K&N premises and then each Rallye was carefully power tested on their very accurate dyno. This event was so exclusive that a report on the day was published in three national motoring magazines, attracting even more interest in the Register.

Events Galore

We decided to hold our 2002 national meet at PUGFEST, held at Prescott Hill Climb in Gloucestershire. Before the event we were pushing hard to get as many Rallye's there as possible. There was a distinct "buzz" about the Register at that time and we were quickly attracting lots of new members. Through his close links with the PSOOC, Mark organised a dedicated display area for the Register at PUGFEST. We had over 20 Rallye's present on the day in our special area that proved to be one of the main focal points of the day. Our display looked professional and organised, enhancing the reputation of the Register even further.

Pugfest 2002

Mark's enthusiasm for organising Rallye events was growing steadily throughout 2002, after the success of PUGFEST he negotiated a great deal to hold a Peugeot track day at the Anglesey circuit in North Wales. This was booked for a wonderful summers day in August and there was a variety of French cars in attendance, including 4 Rallye Register member cars. It was a great achievement for the Register to hold an event of this size and stature, once again we were credited in the national press and on many Peugeot websites.

After the success of Anglesey, the Rallye Register went for an even bigger event, never seen before in the Peugeot club world....a road rally weekend based in deep mid Wales!! This was organised exclusively for members of the Register and PSOOC. We had a superb weekend of driving on the glorious Welsh B roads from our country hotel base. The 6 special stages took you out into the surrounding countryside to enjoy a wonderful mix of fast A and twisting B roads which cut their way through the hills & valleys past lakes, rivers and stunning scenery. The four Rallye's on this event were certainly in their element on these kind of roads! Once again, a Rallye Register event attracted a lot of press and media interest.

After the superb events of the summer 2002, the size of the Register was really gathering momentum. The website was crammed full of Rallye material but we lacked the interactivity of other car club websites at that time. We needed a way to bring the members together online. In November 2002, The Register launched its first internet forum. This proved to be a major step in recruiting new members as people could at last chat to other Rallye owners online in a totally dedicated Rallye environment. The forum was a breath of fresh air and gave us the interactivity we needed. It attracted many new Rallye owners from all around the world and enabled us to build for 2003 after a highly successful year in 2002.

The beginning of 2003 was spent building up the website even further, adding new material and pages. Membership was still free of charge, but in 2003 we asked for the members to make a £5 contribution towards the costs of running the Register for another year. The majority of members at that time had no qualms at all about this voluntary contribution as they realised it would help the Register get bigger and better. This new lease of funds allowed us to buy our first club banner to display at events!

Our first event in 2003 was the PSOOC karting endurance team challenge held at Daytona, Manchester in January. The Rallye Register sent two teams along to this event and we decimated the opposition finishing 1st and 2nd. The Rallye drivers really showing off their karting skills! After so much fun at this event, the Register organised its own karting event for members, again at Daytona in March. We had an endurance race for 12 members and then a few drinks afterwards, so it was a good social gathering.

By this time, the Register members were gearing up for a hectic summer of events. Busily preparing their cars and adding new modifications. We had over 100 Rallye owners registered on the forum at that time and many of those guys were present at our events that year. We were beginning to build up a large number of "hardcore members" who were active on the forum and made the effort to attend our events. In May, Register members took over the PSOOC track day at Curborough in Staffordshire! We had 11 Rallye's there on the day, opposed to only 7 other Peugeot's from the PSOOC. We had a superb day on the small former airfield circuit, testing out our Rallye's handling in a safe environment. It was also a good opportunity for the members to meet up and have a chat, giving it a really friendly atmosphere.

Curborough Track Day 2003

We had massive exposure after our day at Curborough and it seemed to attract even more people to our forum to find out all about the little Rallye's! The next major event was the French Car Show organised by the Peugeot GTi Autosport Club (PGAC) held at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire at the end of May. The Register had a dedicated display area for members cars and we had over 15 Rallye's there, showing their class and pedigree in a show full of highly modded Peugeot's.

Next up was the big one - PUGFEST 03, we decided to hold our national Rallye meet at this event for the 2nd year running. It was held at the same venue as last year, the fabulous Prescott Hill. We wanted to get as many members there as possible and the popularity of the Register was clear to see with over 30 Rallye's on display in our parking area. We had so many cars present that the organisers had to move us to a special area just to fit us all in - all the others Peugeot models there were well and truly blown away by the number of Rallye's! There was a Rallye Register track parade up the famous hill climb and our members enjoyed flying up the hill on solo laps afterwards.

More superb events followed in 2003 including another outing at Curborough and a trip to Anglesey for the annual Peugeot track day. As usual we had plenty of Register members in attendance. We also attended the Rallye Super Car Day for the first time. This is an event dedicated to rally cars and rally bred road cars, held at Castle Combe Circuit in Wiltshire. We had a joint display with the PSOOC Wiltshire Group and also booked a Rallye track session for 10 of our members to have sole use of the circuit.

After a hectic summer of events, 2003 turned out to be another great year for the Register. We had grown into an exclusive car club full of active members who were very enthusiastic about the Rallye Register. We had to satisfy the needs of these members so at the end of 2003 we purchased a brand new ultra modern forum full of exciting new features. This was a key stage in increasing the membership even further. We now had an online Rallye community where members could interact using the latest forum software. The end of 2003 was spent preparing the new forum for a big launch at the start of 2004.

We had big plans for 2004 to increase the size and stature of the Register. However we had reached the stage where the lack of funding was proving to be a major hindrance to all our new idea's. For the last few years the costs of running the Register was funded by the member contributions and from Marks own pocket! From the start of 2004, we introduced a membership fee to join the Register. This was set at £10 for UK members and £5 for International members. Anybody was free to join and we did have a few 106 XSi and GTi owners sign up as they knew the Rallye Register offered them more than any of the other Peugeot clubs!

The new forum was fantastic and was proving to be very popular, many members commented how it felt like a real "community" online. In the first three months of 2004 we had 60 people join. The new lease of funds allowed us to buy two new club banners and frames ready for the busy show season. Our aim for the first year of the membership fee, was to have 100 Rallye owners join the Register.

The success of the Register continues and we are celebrating our 5th anniversary in 2005!

You can see many more photos of all our past events in the Multimedia Gallery section.

To join the 106 Rallye Register, please click here.