A while back, unemployed gearhead Bill Caswell became a household name thanks to taking 3rd place in class in the Mexico round of the WRC. Ok, so maybe not a household name, but a lot of gearheads knew about the dude in the $500 BMW beater.
That’s right, Caswell and co-driver Ben Slocum patched together a $500 beater and went to Rally Mexico. Not only did they finish, but they beat a ton of very expensive racing equipment, finished 3rd in class and would have been counted as 23rd had they been entered in the WRC portion of the event. For those of you who don’t understand international rally, that is the equivalent of showing at Daytona in a 4 cylinder mini stock from the local 1/8 mile oval and beating half the NASCAR field!
So where does an underdog rally crew head next? Well, first off is Pikes Peak, but the truly logical step is to take on the X games. There is only one problem: the X games bosses don’t want a beater showing up and beating the superstars!
The good folks at Jalopnik have stood behind Caswell through his whole journey and now that his X games journey is in peril (hasn’t even started) they are leading the charge to get the X games Commandants to allow Caswell into the show. If an entry form isn’t good enough, then maybe a show of public support will do the trick! Head on over to Facebook and join the petition to Get $500 Craigslist Rally Car Into The X Games.
I wonder if we could somehow get Ken Block involved in this. The Beemer might look cool with some DC stickers!
This is asinine. Any of the true gearheads at the X-games would think it was cool if the $500 beater beat the `big boys', I would. The X-games bosses need to get off their flashy car high horse and see that good, competitive driving is far more fascinating and fun to watch than a bunch of flashy cars.