Subaru never built performance cars until they got into Rally.

Now that we have WRX's and STI's all over the place I really expected that we'd see a few more people wanting to enter and run road rallies.

This year Golden West had all of two subie teams from the bay area entered.

Next year there probably won't be a Golden West because the SCCA is sick of losing money on it.

Unless I can get a buch of people to show some interest in the sport, theres a good chance that the local SCCA will not do ANY more rallies, so you'll be able to go Rallycross at Thunderhill, but just about any other motorsports will require a cage- prepared car and huge costs for track time.

Am I looking in the wrong place? should I be trying to recruit from the honda boards?

So my question comes back to this;
What would we need to do to get some of you out and trying your hand at road rallies?

 

naked women.

 

Do you have a direct link? I've always been interested, just never done it. Probably more apprehension than anything else. I thought they had super hardcore teams out there doing it...I didn't want to be the n00b running off the side of a cliff.

 

give me a car to drive and I am there.

 

my biggest deal with not doing one yet has been worries about ground clearance and road conditions. If I feel like I can get through the course without killing my DAILY DRIVER then I'd be more than happy to do it. Rally isn't as popular for that very reason....most of us use our cars as daily drivers and can't afford the down time of folding a control arm or ripping my front bumper off or smacking my rear dif off the a rock.

I love to get sideways. I love the dirt. But I've watched rally....been to them. My car isn't set up for that.

tell me I can make it and maybe I'll be down.

Or if someone wants to throw a car in I'll be the driver. I grew up in the dirt.

 

unfortunately $ is the issue with me...

 

I have neither the experance , training nor the $$$ to get into racing, that is my excuse.

 

+555

 

+1.

That and the fact that my struts are toast.

 

time, and a street legal car i'm willing to rally in. My "rally car" isn't something I'm comfortable driving on the street (outside of transits on stage rallies), and my daily driver VW is on the edge of dying. If my 240 ever gets completed, then I'll be up on the road rallies fo shizzle.

The other factor for me is free time. Most of the road rallies and dirt drives are 2+ hours away just to get to the start. That usually means getting up at an ungodly early hour and making a very very long day.

just MHO.

 

That's why road rally is the bomb! it isn't racing, rather it is attempting to stay on time and on course on open roads at legal speeds.
You are cometing against people with the same level of equipment in terms of computers and odometers, but you don't need mondo horsepower or mad WRC skills to run these and have a great time.

I'm trying to make one last shot at it with a series of LOCAL all-paved short afternoon events next year, maybe one every other month or so- but it's going to need a lot of people checking it out for it to succeed, so I hope some of you will be there.

 

You can make it.

We went up to the Golden West TSD road rally on our daily driver - a stock WRX wagon - and I'd had the same concerns about possible damage to the car. In reality, there was almost no risk of injury to the cars.

Most of the roads were smooth gravel at 30-35mph. There was some tarmac, and a few low-speed rocky roads (20mph). Let me say this, there are few things more enjoyable than 8 hours of driving on gravel roads with a crowd of people. Beats the 1.5 minutes of seat time at the local autocross. It's a challenge, but not hard on the car.

The biggest challenge getting prepared was finding a full-sized spare for the gravel rally. Really. I can help folks with that for future gravel rallys since I now have 3 extra spares sitting in the backyard.

Frankly, I feel I have higher risk when I drive the back roads on my own. At a road rally there are plenty of folks around to make sure you're okay, half the people have Subarus, and the pacing is brisk but not dangerously fast.

I'll just add that I put in front skid plates and a rear diff guard just in time for this rally because I like driving on dirt.. I checked them out afterwards and I didn't see a single mark either of them.

 

Now yer talkin, Pete! That would address every one of my concerns, and I could even do it in my beater car.

 

Just so you know, my car- which has run the Alcan 5000 twice, done "car zero" duties at Rim of the world, Gorman Ridge, and Laughlin, pre-checked 3-4 times and ran each Golden west in the last 3 years... still on its stock struts and springs with stock ride height. without having broken any major parts underneath

 

OK I can work on that too, but be careful what you wish for you just might get it,

(you should have said pretty naked women)