Coral Gables Historical Archive
The Coral Gables Times
Thursday, May 4, 1961, page 37 (of 56)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
Car Rally
BY KEN PURDY Navigator's tools—he uses instrument panel and clip board for a constant check on progress. ILLUSTRATIONS BY BOB BUGG toward: dirt, back country, up and down. Suppose you're embarking on a mildly difficult rally. The cars will gather at some convenient place—a park, a restaurant. Competitors will be given sealed envelopes. As the cars move off, their time of departure registered to the second, the passengers, or navigators, rip open the envelopes and find such instructions as: "Turn right on Route 34. Maintain 31.7 average. At telephone pole No. 1598 turn left on left-dirt fork for 6.9 miles, 28.9 average. At third red barn (faded red, not bright) take Lawson's Lane (no sign) to second intersection, average 18.9 for first 2.3 miles, 26.1 to intersection. Look for marked map on porch of General Store. . . ." And so on. ALL YOU NEED to win a rally like that, a little six-hour run in the country, is a good car, a driver with a miler's sense of pace, a navigator who can produce solutions like an IBM machine—plus patience, understanding, and tolerance. For a really tough rally, you need a lot more. Rally scoring is done in seconds, the usual system being so many points off a theoretically perfect score for each second the car is late—or early—in arrival at a check point. Check points are maintained by the sharp, stop-watch-wielding types who are running the rally. Location of some of the check points is known to the competitors; others are secret, hidden along some lonely stretch of road to make sure that you're penalized if you're doing 19.5 miles an hour instead of 20.1. Most rallies are run by one of the scores of motorsports clubs that have sprung up since the end of World War II, with the check points manned by members with a taste for mathematics and the ability to fend off boredom while sitting in a folding chair behind an alder bush out in the countryside, stop watch in hand, pencil always at the ready. When rallying began to be taken seriously in the United States a few years ago (it's a venerable sport in Europe) contestants could use fairly simple means of calculation. Ordinary wrist watches and the tenth-of-a-mile recorder on the car's speedometer were used. But as time went on and competition became tougher and tougher, such crude devices were abandoned. After all, the odometer, the mileage-recording part of the speedometer, is probably producing a 3-percent error, plus or minus; if you spin the rear wheels a few times in ice or sand, the factor of error will rise, and how do you know you have the right-size rear tires? When you're up against driver-navigator teams who can show seven seconds of error in a 48-hour run, such details become important. WHEN YOU SEE a rally car with a dashboard that looks like a section of the chief engineer's panel on the "Queen Mary" you will know that the owner is counting on modern science to help him win. He may have four tenth-of-a-second stop watches mounted in a row with a bar-lever arrangement to start and stop them instantaneously in pairs. He'll have an average-speed instrument, an Italian Tachimedion, a Swedish Halda or perhaps one of his own rigging which, when hooked into the speedometer, will deliver a steady average-speed reading. The passenger's side of the car will carry a little gooseneck lamp, a clip board rigidly mounted to the dashboard to form a desk, and something like a Blackwell Mark II circular slide rule will be in evidence, a gimmick that will deliver miles, minutes, or average speed when the other two factors are set on it (to get average Continued on page 16 Suburbia Today, May 1961 15
SCANDINAVIA RUSSIA NORTHERN EUROPE
Moore-McCormack's new ss ARGENTINA sails from New York June 1, 1961, for Spring at her best in the Northlands. A sell-out in 1960, this 35-day Northlands Cruise is filling fast! You'll see Norway's fjords, misty and magical, filled with flowers and tiny waterfalls; shop in the Scandinavian and Baltic capitals; visit Poland's Gdynia, a port seen by few Americans. LENINGRAD, Russia's most beautiful city, welcomes you; there's time to see Moscow. In the Netherlands, you can tour Amsterdam's canals, visit the world-famous flower auction at Aalsmeer. In Belgium, you'll find some of Europe's loveliest old buildings and paintings... and magnificent food! In port, your ship is your hotel—ss ARGENTINA, all first class, stabilizer equipped, all outside state-rooms; superb food, every shipboard luxury—a liner designed by, and for, people who know the best in cruising. Fares from $1,285—about $37 a day. Ask your Travel Agent for illustrated Northlands brochure. MOORE-MCCORMACK Lines Two Broadway Dept. ST 2 New York 4, N. Y.