UPCOMING Sky One gameshow, Carnage, will see a local trio test their metal against other competitors.

Carnage, described as a mix of Mad Max and Top Gear, will air this Sunday, with 30 teams and vehicles battling it out in the deserts of South Africa.

One of the teams, “A Nut Between Two Spanners”, hails from Yorkshire and is made up of driver, Julie Forrest, engineer, Allan Weston and mechanic, James Darley.

The group came together through a unique shared love of stock car racing. Ms Forrest met Mr Darley when he built her first race car. They subsequently discovered Mr Allan through buying parts for Ms Forrest’s stock car.

Ms Forrest, 32, of Otley has previously served in the royal military police and therefore is used to being part of a male-dominant environment.

But, she said: “I just want to show all the little girls out there that girls can do anything they want too. I just hope I wasn't an embarrassment.”

What viewers won’t get to see explicitly is the grit and determination that went into creating the battle cars.

The team had £7,000 and seven weeks to build their weapon-on-wheels and despite some initial reluctance, they agreed on a concoction of two Land Rovers glued together as the base of their vehicle.

Mr Darley, 27, of Leeds, who works at a Land Rover specialists said: “As much as Allan hates Land Rovers, he was kind of bullied into it, because I could get cheaper parts from work.”

The shell of a Freelander 1 was attached onto the bottom of a Discovery to create a rugged but, good-looking, car.

The idea of a unicorn for the design came from Ms Forrest and her daughter’s mutual love of the fantasy animal. The idea was to make it stand out but also to put others on the back-foot.

She said: “I wanted them to think, 'what's she actually going to do in a bright pink unicorn’, then smash them up and leave a bit of sparkle.”

The team used several weapons, with a snow-plough, engineered to work more like a scoop, on the front of the car being their main go-to for causing havoc.

A liquid gun was also used on the roof of the vehicle, with switch-operated paintball guns on the side, and a rotating steel bar with hammers as a flail on the back of the creation, just for good measure.

After the weeks of preparation, their unicorn was shipped out to South Africa, ready for just over three weeks of further testing, assault courses and the daunting head-to-head battles.

But, it wasn’t the gruelling desert, or the hard-hitting battles that were the most difficult aspect of the experience for the trio.

Each of them said it was toughest during the building period as they all had to fit it in-between their normal lives.

Mr Weston, 46, of Skelton, admitted he’d take part again in a heartbeat and said: “Most of all the other teams were awesome to get on with and we made some really good friends and even met up with some since we got back.”

Mr Darley said of the experience: “It was everything that we love all rolled into one – someone paying money for us to build a full contact car and then smashing it up in the desert. What’s not to like?”

He added: “We got through a hell of a lot further than we expected – let’s just put it that way.”

Carnage will be hosted by fellow Yorkshireman, Freddie Flintoff, Lethal Bizzle and Vick Hope.

You can watch it on Sky One from Sunday.