Watch: on-board footage of a tight Kiwi rallying near miss

The best thing about rallying — apart from picking mud and stones out of your hair after each stage of course — is the element of surprise. 

Rallies are undertaken on roads that, while fenced off from the public, are still open to the elements of local wildlife. The flora and fauna can shift around with the weather, which sees the character of stages change with the weather. Far removed of course from the finely maintained uniformity of an isolated race track.

This often leads to rally drivers being plunged into weird situations. Like Ott Tänak's crash into a lake at WRC Rally Mexico a few years ago, Kris Meeke's last-stage spill through a makeshift car-park in Spain last year, and the countless examples of drivers either crashing into or narrowly avoiding cows.

New Zealand's own series (the Brian Green New Zealand Rally Championship) has seen something of a renaissance over recent seasons thanks to the adoption of new cars. 

But that's not to say that the trusty old Group N stuff (think Mitsubishi Evos and Subaru WRXs) doesn't still have a place in the sport. It still grabs victory every now and again. Among those to still run a Group N car is Matt Jenson (also known as Maddy J Rallysport), alongside co-driver Kieran Anstis. 

The pair got themselves caught up in a similarly uniquely rallying situation at this year's Rally of Otago. Approaching an apparent fork in the road, Jenson made the inevitable error of selecting the wrong path. 

Instead of continuing right along the rally's gravelly route, Jenson flicked his Mitsubishi Evo left ... directly onto someone's property and into their carport. Quite luckily, Jenson's Evo went straight into the corner of the structure rather than into the Commodore wagon parked inside (or the dog, which had been happily parked under the Holden).

"You alright?" asked co-driver Anstis; the eternal question for any post pants-browning excursion. 

But in typical rallying fashion the pair dusted themselves off, undertook the longest three-point turn in human history, before returning to the action.