Especially if you have an interest in potentially purchasing a classic piece of Japanese automobilia. It appears to be a Twitter account that searches Craigslist ads across the country and then posts some of the best and most interesting Japanese vehicles. I never imagined the variety of vehicles that are still out there waiting to be bought, loved and restored. The best thing is that since these are from Craigslist you generally aren't talking about $50,000 spotless masterpieces. These are often rusty, broken, used and most importantly--cheap.
If you like classic Zs, Celicas, Supras, Datsun trucks, old Landcruisers, 35 year old Subarus, etc. This is a great account to follow.
So it was a busy month for developments in North American Rally now comprising four separate organizing entries in the US alone...
On the ugly and disappointing side of things is the USRA. Formed only in '14 and coming out with a number of announcements and expectations early in '15, it has fairly well thrown in the towel for the year. First off, as stated in last month's report you had the Waste Management Winter Rally which "should" have been one of the USRA's first events with organizers of the event also being party to the new Rally organization but was foiled in this attempt by supposed contractual obligations and remained with Rally America. Then there was the Matthew Noble-Mark Memorial RallySprint which also should have been an USRA event. For whatever reason (not disclosed to public by organizer) this event was cancelled outright. Lastly you then have Denise McMahon (a listed board member of the USRA) out in the Southwest announcing that "The USRA at this time is not ready to put on a rally program but should be able to take over in 2016 of what the Organizers HP RallyGroup has already in place since last year" seeming to indicate that we will not be seeing ANY events put on by the USRA in '15. Denise did announce that her own group, HP Rallygroup LLC, will be putting on the Bilstein Southwest RallyCup series that includes:
Desert Storm Rally - April 11th in Blythe, CA (coefficient 3)
Mendocino Rally - July 18/19th, in Ukiah, CA (status TBD) (coefficient 2/3)
Rally Utah - August 7/8th, in Cedar City, UT (coefficient 2/3)
Arizona Extreme Rally - September 12th, in Kingman, AZ (coeff3)
Seed 9 Rally - November 7th in Jean, NV
This is pretty darn impressive for a small (one woman?) organizing effort, many people struggle to put on a single event, let alone five, and without a National organizing/sanctioning body behind her? Going forward we will replace the USRA with updates on the HP Rallygroup events unless the USRA has anything of note to mention.
USRA grade for the month: F
Then you have the reentry to US Stage Rally of the behemoth that is the SCCA. Exiting stage rally in the early 'oughts for numerous reasons while continuing autocross on dirt for the past decade or so, the SCCA is now officially dipping its toe back in the stage rally waters. Rumored to be happening on a "test" basis for a while, the very first SCCA RallySprint was announced in late February and is to take place at the Team O'Neil facility in New Hampshire. Documents show this to be a two stage (each of some 2.5 miles in length), run multiple times event. Supposed top speeds will reach 70 mph and there will be no cones...this is a real stage rally event presenting all the risks seen at a non-sprint length event, just shortened up a tad. It will be interesting to see just how much mileage is done in the event. The entry cost is under $200 and the # of competitors is to be capped. Additionally, the individuals actually running the event are long time SCCA Rallycross and NEFR Stage Rally contributors who know how to run events pretty well. I have entered the event as is very close to me and at the price its hard to go wrong...as long as we aren't sitting around trying to tech the vehicles all morning it should be OK. I encourage the organizers to not take a real "lunch" break and just build in a brief "service period" as a normal stage rally would have. The absolute minimum amount of down time possible should be built in. I know of no other official SCCA RallySprint events that have been announced yet though I'm sure there will be soon. The SCCA has stated that it will be running RallySprints only in '15 though given most national Rally America events have deep roots in the SCCA, if the USRA isn't pressuring events to move to them in '16, I wouldn't be surprised if the SCCA was...All that said the SCCA doesn't seem to be putting much effort into promoting the RallySprint efforts with no info on it on their site, nothing broken out separately from their RallyCross or RoadRally programs, nothing in their forums...if you weren't keyed into watching websites like Jalopnik or in close contact with SCCA Rallycross staff in the New England, you might not have any idea that such a series of events is coming to fruition.
SCCA grade for the month: B
Rally America saw two events in February. First up was the aforementioned WMWR in Pennsylvania. Though the primary Rally America site provides little to no info on the event, the stand alone web page for the race reveals 14 entries (double the 7 entries seen in '14) with three Open Light Impreza's on the podium, led by Jon Kramer taking the win by a bit over five minutes and a time of 1:15. The event even generated a 7+ minute long video and interview on a Wellsboro, PA news website to be seen here:
Continuing with the "winter theme" after Sno Drift and WMWR Rally America is usually done with the snow but not so this year. With the deep freeze the US has seen this year, 100 Acre Wood was more a snow/ice rally than the very high speed gravel/dirt it typically is. The 2014 version of the event included nationally known (even outside the Rally community) racers like Pastrana and Block as well as National level competitors like L'Estage, ACP and Matt Johnson and 25 National entries. The 2015 version saw growth in the overall number of racers from 50 (25 National, 25 Regional) in '14 to 58 this year, it saw a substantial drop in National entries (from 25 to 17) and an exit of all of the aforementioned names except ACP. David Sterckx provided David Higgins only competition and finished 5:42 back of the winner. In equal vehicles and tires a Sterckx/Higgins contest would be a great thing to watch. Jim Beaver again provided nearly live radio coverage of the event, much as he did at SnoDrift. Rally-America posted "full" video coverage of SnoDrift about 10 days after the event and had posted very nice daily recaps of the event just after the finish of action each day. Rally America completed the same nice recaps for 100 Acre Wood as well. Rally America did generate a bit of negative press for itself when it reversed an earlier decision to grant Bill Caswell's "Build Race Party" photographers media access to the event, likely as a result of comments and articles from BRP asking where the National level competitors have gone and if Rally America is really being run properly--questions anyone with a brain would contemplate. Because of this action, Caswell revealed that his group had gone unpaid for an extended period of time in '14 after being hired for photo coverage of an event. Eventually he was paid he stated but not after months of collection efforts and pressure from a third party. Not exactly the way a racing organization should be run but it continues a long established pattern with Rally America.
Views on YouTube for SnoDrift Rally--17,200
Views on YouTube for 100 Acre Wood--10,600
Facebook Likes--30,556 (up from 29,748 last month)
YouTube Subscribers--10,334 (up from 10,033 last month)
Twitter Subscribers--20,000 (up from 19,700 last month)
Instagram Followers--5,296 (up from 4,246 last month)
Alexa rating of Rally-America.com--146,292 (down from 139,632 last month)
Rally America rating for the month: B
NASA Stage Rally saw one small event happen and picked up a second event as it was announced to be the sanctioning body for the RallySprint test day that was organized in the place of the failed USRA Matthew Noble Marker event.
The California Rally Series Rally School event saw 53 participants looking to learn more about the sport and get some tips from organizers and current drivers/codrivers.
The Washington Test Day #1 was put together in very short order to help accommodate the plans that a number of racers had made but were in danger of going unfulfilled due to the cancellation of the USRA event. A small turnout was expected in early March as entries are capped for the NASA test day program that was introduced this year.
NASA also released their updated version of their Android Rally Clock app to run on your phone or tablet just as NASA uses on their NOOKs. Additional NOOK developments included some online training/education on how to use their NOOK timing system via their YouTube channel where they posted a series of videos such as the one below:
NASA Stage Rally staff also attended the North American Motorsports Expo in Charlotte, NC as an outreach to educate/promote the NASA Stage Rally Program and showing off some Stage Rally vehicles to boot.
Facebook Likes--3,031 (up from 2,615 last month)
YouTube Subscribers--238 (up from 232 last month)
Twitter Subscribers--319 (up from 301 last month)
Instagram Followers--458 (up from 378 last month)
Alexa rating of 290,220 (up from 526,968 last month)
NASA Stage Rally rating for the Month: B+
As always, comments are welcome as would be a recap of events/developments of Stage Rally either North or South of the border...
Maybe we'll try and look at the state of Rally on a month to month basis in 2015 so that we develop an ongoing story as to what is going on and where things stand. A nice narrative may give a better impression of the health and development of the sport than picking out singular points in time and individual events/circumstances...So for now we'll just try and cover the major events and news in stage rally as they occur. If you are reading this and have info/results/data/developments that are not mentioned, please feel free to forward them to me at spalind@yahoo.com and I will either go backwards and edit prior entries to include this info or place the information in the following month's recap.
Lets take it series by series...
Rally America was the only major series with an actual event occurring in January with Snow Drift in Michigan. Though '14 saw TV coverage on NBC Sports of this event, that coverage disappeared after a few events without stated reason and has not returned for '15. Replacing the TV coverage was an Internet broadcast by Jim Beaver (a noted Trophy Truck driver and internet radio host via his weekly Down and Dirty Radio show). Airing during the event were various interviews with drivers and crews, "Rally America Radio" is seeking to provide live content and scoring at all eight of the National Rally America events in '15. Listening in to the broadcasts revealed a professional operation and near realtime updates but its still radio and leaves the action and personalities to exist in the mind's eye only. This also comes after prior abortive attempts such as rallystream.tv, vlirp.com as well as the non-payment of prior RA radio host Greg Strange who died without ever being paid. Rally America also announced the soshutter.com platform for sale of photos and in the future, video shot by Rally America itself and then sold by Rally America. It does seem to have Sno Drift 2015 photos included already so it is fairly up to date but does not seem to have fairly intuitive breakdowns of photos by event with everything dumped in one large folder and relying upon the user to search by driver, event, car, etc. A nice menu with dropdowns to at least the most current events and then breakdowns by class, driver or car would be something you would think would be present. Speaking of Sno Drift, it was the one significant Rally event to occur in January and saw 13 National entries and 24 Regional entries begin the day vs. 19 and 38 in '14 (a drop of 20 entrants). David Higgins would take the win in both '14 and '15, with his '14 margin being 2:10.5 over Antoine L'Estage and his '15 win being 9:05.5 over Nick Roberts. Rally America's next event takes place in late February at 100 Acre Wood where Ken Block has already announced his entrance and will provide a legit competitor to Higgins in this event while extremely fast National competitor David Sterckx is also participating. As of now there are 62 listed entries (19 National and 43 Regional) vs. the 25 National and 29 Regional entries in '14. If these entries come to fruition it would make for a great turnaround in the number of participants from Sno Drift but not completely making up for it. Rally America also saw some great publicity via popular stories and videos written by Alex Lloyd of Indycar fame regarding his entrance in a Honda Fit at LSPR in '14 as well has his driving of Higgins' Open class Subaru for Yahoo. Lloyd seems to have gotten the Rally bug. On the video side of things, Rally America posted two videos of Sno Drift interviews/action, their first videos posted on You Tube in some four months. The quality of the videos and action was good and fairly timely being released shortly after the action was recorded though the aggregate number of views for the two videos is less than 10,000 and shows a decided lack of attention to this media production. Rally America--29,748 Facebook likes, 10,033 YouTube subscribers, 19,700 Twitter followers, 4,246 Instagram followers, 139,632 ranking for rally-america.com in the US via Alexa rating.
Monthly NISMOStuff grade: B (The "biggest" US Rally Series had a low turnout for its first '15 event and was unable to explain or replace its '14 TV coverage while it did have live radio coverage from a well known talent, released its internal photography on a new platform, has a solid # of early entries for 100 Acre Woods and generated some solid media coverage).
USRA (United States Rally Association) is the upstart series that began early in'15/late '14 with its announcement of formation from a number of former current Rally America associated organizers and with a supposedly new insurance backer and a nationally known sanctioning body. It was supposed to have a schedule for '15 as well as a ruleset and other info out by now but none has been forthcoming. They did announce a partnership with Mad Media to assist in the production of PR and other media related items. Without much news, there hasn't been much for Mad Media to do. USRA's first event was SUPPOSED to be the Waste Management Winter Rally in Pennsylvania with its organizer Meredith Croucher being part of the USRA but as stated in a press release "Due to contractual obligations, WMWR 2015 will be sanctioned and insured by Rally America, Inc." What this means to me is that USRA was either threatened with a lawsuit by RA or there were late noted terms in the STPR contract that prevented the WMWR from moving over. So that was 0 for 1. 0 for 2 came with the move of the Arizona Extreme Shortcourse Rally from 2/14 to 9/12 reportedly due to feedback from racers looking to avoid the Valentine's day racing. The first event that looks like it may occur under the USRA banner is the Matthew Marker-Noble "Livin' the Dream" RallySprint organized by Steve Warren. Scheduled for 3/7 it certainly seems to have a lot of local interest but we'll have to see if it comes off as rules, pricing, entries, etc. have not been fully released. No media has been produced by USRA to date and it doesn't seem to have a FB page, YouTube account or other social media presence. Its homepage is currently ranked as the 22,051,690 most popular website in the world with no ranking within the US. In somewhat related news USRA's media partner, Mad Media did announce that they will be welcoming stage rally vehicles again at the Mint 400 (most popular desert racing event in the US and based out of downtown Las Vegas) contingency. The Subaru Rally Team (with Higgins' car likely) have announced they will be there and given the 25,000+ offroad fans present at the Mint 400 contingency, this will likely be the most viewed in person Rally/offroad focused display this year.
Monthly NISMOStuff Grade: C (the new series didn't hold to its announced release of information and had could not put on two events that were anticipated to be USRA sanctioned for various reasons while a new RallySprint seems to be coming to fruition and a USRA partner is welcoming rally vehicles to get in front of the most number of living bodies this year)
NASA Rally like USRA did not have any events in January. Upcoming events for NASA include the California Rally Series Rally School on 2/21 with 38 entries listed and then the Sandblast Rally on 3/7 with some 47 car entries and another some 47 motorcycle entries (both are maxed out and final numbers to be seen on race day). The popular Empire State Performance Rally in New York announced its move to a gravel event from a tarmac one disappointing a number of competitors who liked the difference in surfaces as well as the uniqueness of running flat out through the streets of small towns--something not seen in any other current US Rally event. Reportedly the "new" roads will incorporate some of the roads utilized last by the Rally New York group a few years ago, perhaps back at the Boy Scout Camp they utilized? NASA Rally also announced a "Test and Tune" program, basically downsizing its "Rally Sprint" format to an event held for up to 10 entrants on roads up to seven miles in length. This is not an SCCA Rallycross or SCCA Rallycross test and tune. No need for cones with this type of event, this is full stage rally test/tune or "race" on real roads or course. NASA also saw its stage rally event at the FIRM shown in part on the Extreme Off-Road TV show on Spike TV. The program covered the build of entry level Ford Focus as well as its entry into its first event where program host Ian would wring it out (though not showing on the results page?). Perhaps NASA's biggest announcement was that its Rally West Virginia '15 event will be part of the FIA NACAM Rally Championship. This series will come to the US after two events in Mexico and prior to events in Costa Rica, Panama and Jamaica. It will bring some major international attention and competition to the US and hopefully this can be taken advantage of. NASA Rally--2,615 FB likes, 232 YouTube subscribers, 301 Twitter followers, 378 Instagram followers, 526,968 most popular website in the US per Alexa.
Monthly NISMOStuff Grade: B+ (no events took place while near term events look to have excellent turnouts while introducing a new, low cost/impact event option, Rally West Virginia joins with a FIA associated series and NASA Rally gets great visibility through a cable TV outlet)
Again, this is just off the top of my head. I think I have been "fair and balanced here" and if anyone wishes to dispute that or point out where I am wrong in any of the above, I'm open to hearing your view. If there were major developments/announcements/events that I have missed here, please let me know--racers, organizers, advertisers, etc. are reading this...
I've been real lazy of late and haven't really posted anything in quite some time. Busy time of year made busier by some some outside factors.
Regardless, this story struck me as instructive of just how interconnected our world is these days.
A plumber in Texas with deer heads on his office walls and with a decidedly redneck tone to his voice ends up getting harassing phone calls from other Americans because he left his company's logos on a Ford F250 he traded in almost exactly a year ago and said truck somehow ends up in the middle of the Syrian Civil War with an anti-aircraft cannon mounted in its bed. Someone posts a picture of this truck on a "terrorist" Twitter feed, the phone # for his company is visible...and so the calls begin.
To me its shocking that such a truck would be found profitable to sell who knows how many times over and be found desirable enough to ship overseas. Also given the length of time that the Syrian Civil War has been going on I'm betting it was imported to the area specifically for this purpose. Generally Syria is a complete friggin disaster and I don't see too many common Syrian folk looking to rapidly import an American heavy duty truck and then leaving someone's English language logo on the truck to drive around downtown Damascus. ISIS is about the only people in the MidEast not caring what negative attention they draw to themselves. What's that mean then? It means the truck was likely purchased at auction in the States, moved to Mexico and shipped to the MidEast with the specific intent to act as a support vehicle in the conflict. I would wonder if there isn't a big stream of American trucks heading over there. ISIS is flush with millions of stolen and oil derived dollars. They are likely shut out from the typical arms markets but shipping big American trucks doesn't draw near as much attention and from the years of video we've seen of airstrikes in the Mideast we've seen if there is one thing we know they aren't short on over there its anti-aircraft guns and ammunition--so seeking to mount a bunch of these cannons that are useless against a generally non-existent air enemy is a logical move.
Just gotta make sure my Nissan doesn't end up over there!
In addition to the newly minted Twitter millionaires in San Francisco likely running out to buy themselves a new Model S we now have another group of nouveau-riche that are picking up Teslas.
Yes, those lucky enough to have bought in on the BitCoin craze early enough are now turning their fortune around and spending their wealth on various things you would expect rich people to spend their money on...
First it was a trip to outer space via Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic who now accepts BitCoin for reservations (and smartly immediately cashes out of said BitCoins) and now there is the first (?) auto dealership that is accepting BitCoins as payment for their vehicles.
Newport Lamborghini of Costa Mesa, CA announced today that they had accepted payment in full via BitCoin for a Tesla Model S Performance. Additionally they announced that accepting BitCoin is now part of their normal business process. So if any of you have any BitCoins made via shipping arms to Chechen rebels you can now use it to pick yourself up what is THE status symbol of the early 2010's.
While the rest of the world has moved on to other events--Syria, Egypt (again), typhoons, flaming Teslas, etc. Libya remains an unmitigated disaster. When the fall of Gaddafi occurred there was talk of Western nations and companies rushing into the country to begin divvying up the oil and other resources that were now open for plundering. There was also talk of the coming democratization of the country and its acceptance into the modern world at large.
Sadly none of that has happened. Instead you have what is but one of a growing number of failed states (Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Egypt to an extant, CAR, Angola, Western Sahara--Sensing a theme here??) where you have a state of civil war mixed with ethnic and religious zealotry fighting for control. Ahhhh...progress!
That said...there are good people to be found in even the most wretched of circumstance. Pictured here is one such individual. In the middle of a firefight in Benghazi (yes, that Benghazi) we have a brave and caring young man taking his own life in his hands to attempt to rescue a kitten from beneath a burning car. The photo was posted earlier today by Shabab Libya which calls itself the voice of Libyan Youth seeking Social Justice, Democracy, Free and Fair Elections via civil resistance. I am asking Shabab if they have a photo of the heroic "Catman" and said cat from after the rescue. I will update if there is a response. Well done sir!!! Well done!!
You're missing out...
