The all-women Rebelle Rally sets off on its eighth running this weekend, and this year there are four teams driving Land Rovers in the event. Two LR4s, a Discovery Series II, and a new Defender 130 are all set to be part of this year’s adventure.
The all-women Rebelle Rally sets off on its eighth running this weekend, and this year there are four teams driving Land Rovers in the event. Two LR4s, a Discovery Series II, and a new Defender 130 are all set to be part of this year’s adventure.
The Rebelle Rally was founded in 2015 by Emily Miller, an accomplished rallyist. She had experience in long-distance, international rallies like the Baja 1000, Vegas to Reno, Carta Rally, and Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles – a Moroccan all-women’s rally. She wanted to bring the Gazelles concept to America, but was told over and over that it would be impossible. The permitting would be too difficult; it would be too hard to gather enough women to participate.
Miller tried anyway, and formed the first Rebelle rally in 2016. The premise was simple: one week, unconnected. No mobile devices -- everyone goes radio silent for the week, though the rally provides media to teams and they all have a non-participating social media coordinator. There's also no GPS -- the entire event is designed around map-based navigation. The many modern vehicles that participate have their navigation screens taped over at the beginning of the rally to prevent cheating. It's also the longest competitive off-road rally in America -- that just happens to be for women.
Rebelle has turned into one of the landmarks in the off-road calendar. Every autumn for a week, the rally works its way across Nevada and California, supported by just about every automaker that has anything resembling a 4x4 in their lineup. It's become a community of its own, with women returning year after year, some of them forming teams with different people every year. There are self-funded teams who gather the money to participate and ship a vehicle to the event via donations, and corporate-supported teams.
Rebelle has turned into an entire ecosystem supporting women in off-roading. The Rebelle U program trains potential participants, giving them basic skills in map-based navigation and off-road driving. The event is also driven around raising money for non-profits, and winners in various categories earn generous donations for non-profits of their choice.
There are four Land Rover teams participating in the rally this year, all profiled below. The women piloting the Green Oval across the dunes range from every-year participants to first-timers. Many are Land Rover enthusiasts, very well known in the community; others are Land Rover enthusiasts in the waiting, likely to catch the bug this week.
This year, JLR is supporting a Rebelle team for the first time, providing Jenna Fribley and Liza Beres of Team 155 with a 2023 Defender 130. The Underpowered Hour, the podcast run by Fribley's and Beres' husbands Ike Goss and Steve Beres, also supplied gas money to each of the Land Rover-driving teams.
You can follow the Rebelle coverage online, with a daily webcast and live tracker map. Check out the link here, and the webcast schedule:
Thayer and April met at Rebelle U training in Colorado in 2019, and after competing against each other in Rebelle in 2019 and 2021, they’re teammates this year. This year is Thayer’s fourth and April’s fifth Rebelle. Thayer and her husband Jake are well known in the Colorado Land Rover scene; April has explored all over with her Toyota 4Runner, a veteran of several Rebelles itself. The name Dusty Turtles comes from another thing they have in common -- both of them have rolled and totaled a truck on the Glamis Dunes in California.
Thayer's InstagramApril's Instagram
Karen and Dana have done every Rebelle so far together, which makes sense – they’ve been friends since 1993, when their six-year-old daughters became friends. They’re back at it this year in their 2013 LR4. Hoehn has run several Rebelle teams over the years, and the LR4 has always been a component of it, either a V8 or V6 Supercharged model. They even shipped one to Morocco for the Rallye Aïcha des Gazelles (that partially inspired Rebelle) in 2019!
Marie and Hanna bring this year's classic Land Rover energy to Rebelle, with a 2001 Discovery II named Bernard. Marie had the Rebelle on her bucket list, and when she asked Hanna to come along in 2021, the answer was an instant "yes!" They spent several years preparing for the event, which included preparing the D2. Marie had bought Bernard years ago when she fell in love with D2s, and hung on to him even when life threw some curveballs. Now after years of holding out for the adventures she dreamed of doing in the Disco, it's manifesting as the ultimate -- Rebelle. Hanna's primary motorsport background is in autocross, where she tracks a 1990s Honda Civic EG. She's always been an outdoors fan, so Rebelle is bringing her love of motorsports and nature together.
Jenna and Liza met through their husbands, Land Rover nerds Ike Goss and Steve Beres of The Underpowered Hour podcast. They found out pretty quickly that they got on just as great as the boys did, and since they'd both spent so much time in Land Rovers already, they decided to take on the 2022 Rebelle Rally in Steve and Liza's NAS Defender 90. It was a ton of fun, and they've spent a lot of the last year preparing for another round of Rebelle by refining their skills as often as they could. This year they gained the support of JLR North America, who has lent them a brand-new 2023 Defender 130 to use in the event. The team is also sponsored by Full Sail University, of which Steve is a proud alumni.
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