Great car for the Targa Newfoundland

So, every Targa competitor likes to play the "what car?" game. Heck, every racer plays that game. And one of the cars that I've singled out as having the potential for winning the race overall is the Mk1 Escort. See, the Targa has a handicapping system. The newer your car is, the faster it has to be to avoid penalties. That's how a BMW 2002 can beat a factory-backed EVO with a professional driver. For example, on one of the town stages last year, my Miata had to finish the stage with an average speed of 83.3 km/h to avoid penalties. The Group B Quattro had to do 88.2, and the classic Minis were in the 73-76 km/h range depending on modification level.

So why the Escort? Because these things have been rallied for the last 40 years. There are a huge number of factory parts available to hop them up and you would simply have to follow a well-known recipe. They love to drive sideways. I think you could even run a BDA 1600 engine in a Class 4 car for a pretty great power/weight ratio and with one of the best noises in motorsports.

You'd have to do a bit of checking for class legality on some of the parts, but this car would either run in class 4 or class 5 depending on the model year. In the example above, that means either 76 or 77 km/h average.

So. Pick this thing up on eBay for the current bid of $8100, ship it to the US and run it in the Targa (should be legal to run without any modifications at all if it's logbooked). You could even sell it when you're done and probably make a profit.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=310149003479

Russel Brookes would be proud.

Keith (and others well-versed in the subject), not to hijack, but your thread has made a couple of my brain cells collide in a semi-productive manner. (It's a rare occurance, so I have to make the most of it.) Do you know where I might find out more on vintage road rallying?

My dad bought a '66 Fulvia a while ago, race-prepped to some unknown standard, and since then, he and I have been scratching our heads over how to use it. It seems to have been used for TSD in the past, since there's a Halda clock on the passenger dash, but no logbook or anything otherwise helpful came with it.

Because of a good degree of expense and rarity for replacement bits (it has a 1.3 motor at the moment, which we would likely pull out to preserve if we got serious), we'd like to use it in a relatively low-risk environment, at least to get its feet wet again.

Suggestions?

In my opinion, Targa NL class 4 has the highest chances to win the overall. Probably a good choice of machinery, but parts would be scarce indeed.

My class (8 modified small) has one of the lowest chances, unfortunately. Your Hondas are in 8 small as well, right? It's definitely a tough class for the overall win. The lack of maintenance and chassis strength of a modern car is really nice though, and I certainly appreciated having a modern suspension instead of having to drive around a live axle's weight.

If I go back, it's going to be in Open Class with a whole bunch more horsepower. Besides, I think it would be fun to scare myself silly

As for vintage rallying in the US, check to see what Per wrote about his Saab experience. I don't see why you couldn't run in a normal rally, but slower. The level of risk is really a decision on the part of the driver. You'd need modern safety gear of course. Or, if you want to stay a bit safer, you could always start in with TSDs.

Some escort parts cross over to the capri, and I'm finding it hard enough to find parts for my Capri and it was actually sold in this country. It would probably be different on the other side of the pond or in Oz. (And if another person tells me to talk to Team Blitz; I've already sent an email requesting information, their website hasnt been updated since 2007, and their ebay store has nothing in it.) Are there any other euro ford parts places in the states? BAT Inc doesnt have any Escort or Capri parts...

so is it in age "brackets" or just by the year to year age of the car.

I would think a Fiat X prepped to rally spec with a 2litre as in the Fiat Abarth 2000 prototipo would be a lot of fun.

For those that don't know.. Fiat considered using the X as the replacement for the 124 as their rally car of choice.. they changed it when it was discovered the X was FASTER than the lancia Stratos...

That's what Ari Vatanen drove when he won the WRC.

Isn't that a Mk2?

Here's how the Targa class breakdown works:

Open Division:

Category 1. Open All Open Division vehicles

Classic Division:

Category 2. Thoroughbred Classic Division all to 1961.

Category 3. Early Classic Classic Division from 1962 through 1965.

Category 4. Classic Classic Division from 1966 through 1971.

Category 5. Late Classic Classic Division from 1972 through1976.

Category 6. Post Classic Classic Division from 1977 through 1981.

Modern Division:

Category 7. Early Modern Modern Division from 1982 through 1990.

Category 8. Late Modern Modern Division from 1991 through 1997.

Category 9. Contemporary Modern Division from 1998 through present

Small Displacement

• Classic Adjusted Small Displacement 1999cc or smaller
• Modern Adjusted Small Displacement 2999 cc or smaller

Large Displacement

• Classic Adjusted Large Displacement 2000 cc or greater
• Modern Adjusted Large Displacement 3000 cc or greater

(Tim, we really need a line break equivalent!)

My friend Eric just pointed out that with the K suffix on the plate, that would date this car from August 1971 to July 1972. It might be a class 4 car.

So, my '62 Tempest LeMans would end up in Category 3, if I prepped it for rally?

I'm not sure a swing-axle suspension is a good idea for rally though.

That's why a Category 3 car gets approximately 5 hours to get through a stage

I think I need to prep a 1.9 Opel Kadett for that, small displacement cat 4. If it was a winning car back then, it should still be competitive against it's contemporaries, right?

Keith, what are the approximate average stage speeds? That's a little more universal than just the time given. Old doesn't necessarily mean slow averages--at STPR, we were averaging 50mph on gravel. rough gravel.

I wanna build a Category 2 Large Displacement Ford Falcon...

Per Schroeder wrote: Keith, what are the approximate average stage speeds? That's a little more universal than just the time given. Old doesn't necessarily mean slow averages--at STPR, we were averaging 50mph on gravel. rough gravel.

Well, I hit a speed bump at 80 mph with my foot to the floor at one point - and I finished that stage right on the target time

Average speeds vary dramatically over the course of the race. In our case, the required average speeds ranged from 64 km/h (the slowest, tightest stage of the event) to 123 km/h or so. The times for the first day are fairly easily attainable - I think there were 11 cars that finished that day without penalties, while we picked up 2 seconds ourselves. But they get tougher and there are stages that are designed to be impossible to finish "clean". Even with a national champion driving a Group B rally car!

One memorable stage on day 3 had us doing 120 mph on a twisting narrow two-lane road with patches on the patches, a forest on one side and a rock wall on the other. In the rain. On that 30 km (19 mile) stage, we beat our target time by 14 seconds. Meanwhile, on another stage through tight village streets we weren't able to maintain the required 40 mph average despite my best efforts. There is an absolute speed limit of 120 mph on the race for safety reasons, but never once did I have to back off because of it. Came close, though...

I've seen a chart in the past that shows the handicapping as a percentage - for example, our class would have an average speed that was 94% of that for Open Class. But I can't find it again. You could reconstruct it from one of the route books with a bit of math. The older cars certainly do get to go slower without collecting penalties. Does that mean they're going slow? Of course not! The fact that you can actually run an old 2002 against a factory Mitsubishi and have a decent race means the handicapping works pretty well overall. Still, I remember talking to a vintage Mustang driver about one fast stage. He was chuffed because he'd finished it clean, while I'd taken a minute in penalties. Our times were identical. Old doesn't mean slow, but it does mean you can drive slower.

Here's a sample route book complete with target speeds: http://www.targamiata.com/images_lrg/Brigus.pdf . If I'm doing the math right, a class 4 modified small car would have a required average speed that's about 87% of the Open class speed. That's a fairly big margin.

Want to see a vintage ground-pounder that is in the hunt for an overall win? Jed Buchanan's Acadian Canso has finished second a few times - twice, I think. I got to watch him up close on one stage when he passed me after I made a mistake, and he was working HARD. Let's just say that one of us was much closer to the limit than the other That's why he finished so much higher than I did.

Keith wrote: My class (8 modified small) has one of the lowest chances, unfortunately. Your Hondas are in 8 small as well, right? It's definitely a tough class for the overall win. The lack of maintenance and chassis strength of a modern car is really nice though, and I certainly appreciated having a modern suspension instead of having to drive around a live axle's weight.

Yeah, all of my rentals are Class 8 Standard Specification Small bore. With the 4 valves per cylinder & vtec penalties, they still are under 2L. I think impossible to win overall in this class, however top 10 - YES! I finished 8th overall in 2003 with a SOHC CRX in Class 7 Modified.

I agree, It is nice to deal with modern machinery. Nightly prep and maintenance is minimalized. These little Hondas are pretty tough.

Keith, I did find your Open class entry for this year...

http://www.nasaforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=19967

I bet $10K would take her home.

....incidentially, Jud's Acadian Canso was named after a Region not far from where I live in Nova Scotia.

Nah, that S200-engined Miata would get eaten alive in Open Class. The powertrain is pretty close in spec to what I drove in 2008, but I was able to do it in Modified instead of Open.

If I'm going to make the effort and take the penalty of an engine swap that bumps me into Open, I'm going to make that engine swap count. I took a street Miata with the same suspension as my Targa car but 400 lbs more weight and an LS1 to our local kart track and dropped nearly 2 seconds off my best time with it.

As it sits right now, my Targa car could probably have taken top 10 in 2008 instead of 16th. It would have needed a different driver, though Either that or more rain, I discovered that the wet pavement affected me far less than others. My speeds on the fast stages were still limited by engine power more than traction. Of course, every other car in the race will be faster for 2009!

Or you could just build up another 2002... The owners/driver/navigator of the back-to-back winning 2002 "Woodstock" are members of my local BMWCCA chapter. That car was a basket case when bought and doesn't have a ton of money into it either but is still fast for its class. You're right though, it's not fast in absolute terms - I ran circles around Woodstock on race rubber driving my stock '99 328i on street tires at a kart track autocross a couple years back - but it (and the crew) are fast enough to meet the time targets for an old car.

Yes, I raced against Roy & Adrienne in Class 7 when they were running the M3. I think they beat us by a few seconds overall. They are Smooth & fast. Then I think they also determined that Class 7 couldn't win and built a 2002 - smart.

racer025 wrote: Yes, I raced against Roy & Adrienne in Class 7 when they were running the M3. I think they beat us by a few seconds overall. They are Smooth & fast. Then I think they also determined that Class 7 couldn't win and built a 2002 - smart.

They're good people too. I really should get them onto this board.

By the way, the Escort auction just finished. 2 bids, final price approximately $8400. I think someone got a steal.

of course you could do the event lemons style....

but good luck this year keith with what ever ride you run the event with.

I'm not going to be able to go this year. It's an expensive event to run, regardless of the price of the car. My wife and I always figured there was a good chance it would be a one-time race for us.