You Are There: The Moment When Smoking Unfiltered Cigarettes Officially Became Slightly More Dangerous Than Driving
The Camel Trophy was an endurance race run through various third-world hellholes to see whose jeep or jeep-like vehicle would break down last, or which team of competitors would run out of unfiltered cigarettes last. The cigarettes were to cover the stink of the smelly Frenchman or Turk or whatever in the passenger seat, generally, and when you ran out, you’d quit. Failing that, you could always burn your car to a cinder making tea on the engine block if you were a smelly Brit, instead. The race was run for twenty years, from 1980 through 2000, when people just started staying home and waiting for natural disasters to signal the beginning of races to the 7-11 in their econoboxes to buy milk and bread.