Second Largest Exposure to Stage Rally in the US Was...the November Issue of DirtSports and Offroad Magazine?!?!

 

So a little while ago I posted that the RAV4 Virtual Reality display from Toyota featuring Ryan Millen and his stage rally SUV at Supercross events across the US was arguably the biggest exposure to this type of motorsport in the US this year.

On the heels of that comes what I would argue is the second largest exposure of stage rally to those of us in the US this year.  Written and shot by Cole Sprague for DirtSports magazine which is available both digitally and in print (see your local B&N), the article really doesn't cover anything ground breaking and only sounds like Cole attended and shot from the spectator locations (shocker that he didn't get any real proactive support from the series to put him in the thick of the action) but Team O'Neil gets a mention for their support of one of the racers as does the usual Higgins and Pastrana Subaru crew and, again, Millen's RAV4 showing and being mentioned prominently.

It would have been nice of Cole to have dug deeper into Bryan Bouffier's effort given his unique car but at least it gets a photo as does the classic Volvo of Derek Knight.

While print's circulation numbers aren't what they once were and DirtSports is not half the magazine it was a decade ago (its merger with "OffRoad Magazine" has resulted in far too much pandering to the mall crawler, bolt on accessory crowd) but stage rally coverage (three full pages with lots of photos!) in a magazine that has a reader count safely in the tens of thousands is a pretty good thing and positive exposure for the sport.

Sooooo...the two arguably largest exposures to stage rally in the US this year were...Supercross event displays and an article in a largely desert racing/offroading magazine.  Nice work Rally America...nice work...

Mexico Route 1 "Euro" Stickers

Introducing the first real product from NISMOStuff Racing.  Not exactly a hardcore fabrication product but after racing down the Baja in this years NORRA 1000 I knew I had to have these made.

Anyone who has driven Mexico 1 down the Baja Peninsula knows exactly what I'm talking about.  Military checkpoints, agricultural checkpoints, scores of dead bodies both animal and sometimes human, rampaging 18 wheelers, never ending construction zones, incredible roadside taco stands, friendly locals, slide-rule straight sections of highway, non-existent breakdown lanes, mangled guardrails, turquoise blue waters--there is nothing like it.

When I got home I knew I wanted something on my daily driver commemorating the trip and representing the difficulties involved in just traveling that road.  So I looked online...there a handful of places that sell similar Mexico Route 1 vinyl stickers for vehicles but none seemed to use the correct font or design to appear authentic.  So the above was designed and I had the result printed at a local car wrap facility using quality 3M vinyl.  The stickers are 5"s by 3.75"s.

I am selling them at this point for $5 inclusive of shipping to anywhere in the continental US.  The simplest way to purchase one or more is simply send me your mailing address along with an appropriate Paypal payment to: spalind@yahoo.com

They will ship the next business day after any order.  If Paypal doesn't work for you, just drop me a line at the same email address and I'm sure we can work something out (Square, Venmo, paper check, etc.)  Get your Mexico Route 1 vehicle sticker now--either for yourself or to hand out to the ever rabid Baja "steeker hunters"!!

Old Xterras Never Die They Just...

just get sold for $1100 to a new owner and then spray painted, sold to a used car dealer and sold for $6000...

Or at least that's what has happened to mine.  I sold my 2000 Xterra about one year ago for $1100 to a private buyer who said he wanted a winter vehicle for his girlfriend.  At the time it did not drive though it did run.  I estimated at the time that it needed about $3000 worth of work to really get it on the road and inspected again.  The work required would be new brakes, rotors and drums all around, new tires all around and some serious alignment work.

A year later (I have grown to believe in some kind of purpose driven fate as I've seen too many instances of random happenstance result in a seemingly predestined outcome) I am picking up Chinese food for dinner and the order is delayed so I sit down and randomly begin perusing one of the free auto flyers listing local dealership inventory.  Flipping through, on the third page (I would never have seen it if the ad was on the 10th page as my order was ready fairly quickly) I spot a black 2000 Xterra for sale for $5995.  Hmmm...it has big tires...Huh...it has a winch bumper....Wow...it has fiberglass front fenders....Hey!!  That's my old truck!!

Looking it up online at the given dealership it appears to have received a small amount of work to get it inspected and up for sale and it "looks" really good--shiny with good paint and great offroad setup.

I assume the brakes have been repaired as the rotors where broken and the pads shot and truck undrivable at the time I sold it.  But outside of that, little has changed.  The tires on it are still the old ones that I had on there that are COMPLETELY shot and exhibiting massively uneven wear.  It does look like someone has spraypainted the wheels and rear bumper to hide the rust on the steel, have added blacked out corner lights on the fenders, put in a new passenger side front seat (as I had removed mine and tossed it) and removed waterproof seat covers as well as adding a high lift mount on the hood.  So I'd estimate that they've put some $1500 worth of work into it and are now trying to sell it for some $6000.  With some 146,000 miles and a TOUGH life having gone to Labrador, Kentucky, the beaches of North Carolina and numerous HARD offroading trips (as well as some significantly "custom" suspension work, I would have a very hard time paying more than say $1500 for it as you are going to near immediately have to dump another $1000+ into it for new tires.

Good luck to whoever buys it (if someone buys it) and I'm glad to see it still out there and running...but this just shows me the ridiculous nature of typical used car dealership pricing and  reinforces my decided lack of sellers remorse.

My Old Xterra For Sale...