Bothell Crocs at the Olympus Rally. I did some spectating at the Olympus yesterday. It was the first stage rally I've been to since the 1989 Pacific Forest SCCA Pro Rally. Back in the 80's I used to regularly attend the SCCA Pro Rallies in the Olympia WA area. You can see some of the photos I took of those events on my other blog:
Vintage Northwest Motorsport. In among all the Subaru WRX's there was some interesting old stuff.
1967 Ford Cortina
Merkur XR4Ti. This car had a 2012 Ford Ecoboost turbo in it.
1979 VW Rabbit with a turbo!
2 of the 3 Volvo 242's in the event.
Volvo 940 Turbo
Acura RSX
Toyota Celica. It reminded me a lot of the factory rally cars from the 80's.
Here's the Subaru factory team car that won the event at Service 1 at the Ridge Motorsports Park:
Wow! What a great collection of cars. Sounds like you guys had a great day.
ReplyDeleteThose were the interesting cars. There were 27 Subaru Imprezza/WRX's of various years entered. It was fun to see what rallying is like now vs. 30 years ago. Also, it was fun to get out into the woods and stand around waiting for the cars on the stages. Long day though, left home at 7am and got back at 11pm. I'm still tired!
ReplyDeleteInterested in getting into it yourself?
ReplyDeleteIt would be fun, but really expensive. The gravel roads really tear up the car and when you go off you hit trees.
DeleteHa! Those darn trees. I hate it when they jump out into the road! Have you ever costed (don't think that's a word, there) it out? I wonder what it would break out to be with an inexpensive car as a starting point, like the vehicles you took pictures of. Who cares about winning, it would just be fun to do.
DeleteThat's one of those things where you'd want to find a used, already prepped car for sale. There would still be a lot of expenses to keep things going, but it would lower the cost of entry.
DeleteI like the shot of the Rabbit's engine bay. It looks expensive under there....
Yeah, I'd agree with Rfoster369, it would be pretty spendy to prep a car for just regional rally. You'd have the car cost of course, but then you need to cage it, skid plate it, beef up the suspension and raise the ride height, extra set of wheels, gravel rally tires, gut the interior, two competition seats with 6 point harnesses, intercom system, rally computer and other stuff I'm not thinking of. Compared to track racing, rallying is another level more expensive.
DeleteThe driver/builder of the Rabbit was pretty proud of the car!
Like these? Seem extremely reasonable to me.
ReplyDelete1983 MK1 GTI rally X/daily so many spares - $3500
http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/cto/5003931348.html
Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V (rally ready) - $6999
http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/cto/4991867746.html
The Sentra looks like a good deal. You couldn't build a car for that and have all the spares that come with. Plus it's done a couple of Rally America events, so it was able to pass scrutineering. The VW is a rallycross and not a rally car. I think it would need some work, probably a new cage to be able to rally proper.
ReplyDeleteRallycross is just autocross in a grass field. You can do it in a street car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P-gj_GpWyM
Rallying is for real men :-). This clip illustrates at 0:46 that it is not if you crash it is when you crash, how serious is it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-xxrZHDKMk
Which begs the question; why have you still not seen the entire "Love the Beast"? What, do you have a life or something?
DeleteThe plan is to watch it this weekend. Not sure if I consider these tarmac events like Targa Tasmania, Targa Newfoundland, Targa Taco Time, etc. rallies. But that's just me...
DeleteWoohoo! You're gonna hate it, now that I've built it up too much. You'll just have to watch it and decide for yourself if it's a true rally or not.
DeleteI'm probably in the background of some of these. Awesome event as usual, though I felt there were more interesting cars last year.
ReplyDelete