<VV> Rally Cars

[james rice]

Joe: I've looked in my magazine file on Corvairs and Rallying.

The rally's in question were similar to the ones we run at CORSA
Conventions, only mush much longer and in the dead of winter in southern
Canada.  (Which sounds like a oxymoron to me.)  They were TSD rally's -
time/distance/speed.  The winner was the team which arrived at the check
points on time the most.  These were not the performance rally's we see
today, which are "little more" than speed events on closed roads, where team
with lowest accumulative time during the stages wins.

The Corvair teams did reasonably well during these events during '62 thru
'65, actually winning a couple out right.  The teams were sponsored by
dealer or the participanting individuals.  Car preparation was mostly timing
equipment.  Unless fitted with them, the cars probably did not even have
seat belts.  (Seat belts being a realitively new addition to real race cars
back then.)  Since these were, while difficult to compete in, low speed
events, there was no "race preparation" to speak of as we understand the
term today.

So far as I know, none of these cars exists today.  How would you know?
They were nothing special - the people were - and no one thought of, much
less bowed down to, "historically significant" cars.  They were just tools
for an end, and had no intrinsic value in and of themselves, other than
being a means to an end....or getting from here to there.

The only people most of us would recognize would be Denise and Doug Roe.  He
actually got his start in rallying in Michigan before GM transferred him to
the proving ground in the Phoenix area.  There is a picture of him in a LM
in one of the period articles I have.

I have not looked at the site.  Since lowering a car isn't a good idea given
the winter slop they drove thru, the neg camber could be evidence of wheel
travel due to a hard landing.

Historically Yours,
			James Rice

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Message: 10
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:33:26 -0500
From: jwcorvair at aol.com
Subject: <VV> Winter Rally Cars ...
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
Message-ID: <8CA38121E619B78-304-65D0 at webmail-nd05.sysops.aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

In Jim's ad blog site were several ads featuring Corvairs that were run in
the Canadian Winter Rally and Trans Canadian Rally. Does anyone know
anything about the cars? How the cars were prepared? Aside from Denise, who
drove the cars? Where any of the cars might be now? The rally cars are an
exciting part of early (as opposed to EM) Corvair history. Did anyone else
note the amount of negative camber in the sedan that Denise is driving
(Early sedans rule!)?

I really enjoy seeing early ads and reading about early?performance
modifications.

Joe White (62 sedan, 66 Porvair)
CORSA, RMC?
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