I just came across this great video of the Rocky Mountain Rally way back in 1987 courtesy of Shawn Bishop at Rallysport.ca
This was a time when rear wheel drive rally cars still dominated the Canadian rally scene. I was at the Rally of the Tall Pines in 98 or 99 when Tim Bendle brought that yellow Datsun 510 out of retirement to have another go. The man is stunning to watch in the snow. In the early 90’s, I spent some time driving a Plymouth Fire Arrow that had a full rally suspension that had been pulled from a rally car that had some level of success. I wonder if it was one of these shown in the video.

While some of our friends and family are enjoying the warmer climes to the south, here in Ontario it is still pretty chilly. For many racers, this isn’t a time of frustration. Rather, it’s time for a different type of racing. Ice racing.

Regular readers will have come across the odd photo or video of Darth Viper in The Garage over the past year. During the winter, Nick Majors abandons the snake in favor of a turbo powered Nissan and heads north to the track at the Minden Fairgrounds. This video shows the view from the windshield of the 2007 Ontario Stud Champion!

Somehow it wouldn’t surprise me if Nick puts that on his business cards!

So you want to have some idea how NOT to lap the legendary Mosport track? It’s easy, just watch this great compilation by John Cosgrove & don’t do what any of these guys do!

Nelson, welcome to The Garage and I just wanted to say I am looking forward to your future articles with great interest. I have been involved with racing in one form or another since I was a little boy but my path took a very different road (no pun intended) than most. On the other hand is there such a thing as a “normal” means of a passion for the love of racing? I think not and I am sure each persons chain of events that led to their passion or involvement of racing is as much of an interesting story as any other.

In my case I grew up in a small town in southwestern Oregon back before the muscle car era when anything that had a set of mag wheels or a hole in the muffler was classified as a hot rod. My racing bug started with my buddies and me racing our bikes down hills in something similar to what today is called Mountain Biking. Later on it was go-carts and that eventually led to me lying about my age so I could drive an old beat up “Hobby Stock Class” car in the dirt stock car races. I can remember one of my father’s friends had an old Corvette stored in my dad’s garage. For hours at a time I would set behind the steering wheel making tire screeching sounds as I yanked the shifter around pretending to bark off the gears. I am sure that even with a dead battery I probably wore out the tires on that car without ever leaving the garage.
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