Hey, what's up? My name is Nolan. I'm from a little show called Past Gas. We're an automotive history show made by Dona Media.

This week we're talking about a man named Bernie Ecclestone, a name more commonly spit out than spoken.

How do the son of a fisherman born into poverty come to be the billionaire mogul of Formula One?

How does a man go from living in the North English countryside to jet setting with a string of new wives over the course of his life?

What kind of person could have such an incredible hero's journey only to end up the villain in the eyes of the public?

Well this week on Past Gas it's the story of the notorious Bernie Ecclestone.

This one was a really fun one to record. Learned a lot about the man and his contributions to the sport but also a lot of his faults and failings.

He's a complicated guy. Let's just say that. Anyway, Past Gas, get it wherever you listen to your podcast today.

The trans-Amazonica highway cuts a muddy swat from one of the densest jungles in the world.

The road is tough enough during the dry season but during the rainy months the local Brazilians consider it impassable.

Rivers flood the road threatening to swallow trucks whole. Soaked by constant downpours the powdery soil turns to bottomless sludge the consistency of porridge.

If a truck is unfortunate enough to get stuck in the mire it will often be abandoned there for months until dry conditions return.

In 1989 at the height of the rainy season the various fainting poisonous creatures of the Amazon witnessed a site that locals thought to be so unlikely that there is an active betting market against its success.

A convoy of sand yellow land rover 110s their bodies painted with the flags of 14 different countries from around the globe slogging through the muck.

This was the 10th anniversary edition of the Camel Trophy one of the few driving events in the world where a rain delay was not a problem. It was the whole point.

The organizers had purposely picked a rainy season for the timing of the event which was part competition, part expedition, and in their minds the more difficult conditions, the better.

The drivers were amateurs selected from over a million applicants worldwide. The event was not quite a rally, not quite a race, not quite a series of technical challenges.

It was an adventure nicknamed the Olympics of 4x4. On one particularly brutal day the convoy of land rovers covered just 800 meters of distance.

What made the Camel Trophy so iconic? How does it tell the story of land rovers evolution as a company and could it ever stage a comeback?

Now showing in the pass gas drive in theater Indiana Jones and the range rovers of the last arc the Temple of Room and the Camel Crusade. The adventure starts now.

Pass gas, podcast, e-smoke, gorge, it's not about forks!

I used to do a little thing that I called the Olympics of 4x4 except it was at Inno.

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