Most liked posts in thread: Road Rallys

Otherwise known as a TSD Rally (time, speed and distance) they are a lot of fun. The issue today is that everyone wants to participate in the run and no one wants to sit out in the country timing and verifying.

 

This site may be a little out of date but check it out for possible TSD rallys in your area.

Rally Central - The Road Rally Resource Page

Also the BMW CCA often has these in various regions. I'd imagine the Blue Ridge Region is your local club blueridgebmwcca.org -

 

I've put on several gimmick rallies over the years. Basically, you get a list of directions and spaced in between the directions are questions. You get the answers off of signs, buildings, trees, yard decorations, etc. If you get to the next directions before you find the answer to that question, you either need to go back and look some more or go on and forget that one.

There is no time, within reason, and we use the mileage as a tie breaker, whoever is the closest to the correct mileage wins the tie, if one exists.

An added twist is to change the names of roads. There was one rally we did in Va Beach that had all of us looking for "Tonto's Water rd". After about 45 minutes driving around, we finally figured it out. The road we were looking for was really "Indian River rd".

Gimmick rallies are much easier than a TSD rally and to my simple brain, a lot more fun. But hard core TSD guys really get into those type of rallies.

 

Our Corvette club here hosts a gimmick rally once or twice a year, as described: route sheet with the directions / turns, with points of interest to be captured via clues in-between, miles driven as a tie-breaker.

There are TSD offerings around here as well, a wholly different level of competition, "maintain average speed of 38.6 mph on Segment 4", clock synchronization, and a bunch of other variables to manage.

I haven't seen an automotive equivalent of the motorcycling long distance rally so far, however. In those, you get a booklet of several dozen "bonus" locations, each with point values, that are "captured" by riding there and typically photographing you and/or your bike with the landmark or point of interest in question (Popeye statue in Chester, IL; Superman statue in Metropolis, IL; Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville; etc.). You create a route to maximize points while still arriving at checkpoint locations within time windows (at a minimum, start at x:xx am and reach the finish by x:xx).

I've done 12, 24, and 48 hour versions, they have them that span several days, and it's been interesting to see the sport adapt from paper maps and Polaroids to GPS and digital photos over the past 20 years or so. Rally organizers weight the bonus location point values, so top finishers have to select bonus locations carefully to plan a route that's attainable in the timeframe while still netting a good point total. Rally organizers can also get creative with bonuses and have rally "themes": banks robbed by Bonnie/Clyde, town markers that include fruits/veges, presidential birthplace homes, and so on.

 

fwiw, THMMC has done some gimmick rallies as well. In fact, I'm working on one now. But I don't think they've ever done a pure TSD rally.

 

I am workign on a Gimmick one for later this year

 

:cornut: Our Clubs List above lists two clubs in Virginia. One in Hampton and another in Richmond. PM Maacodale for Hampton or g33kguy for Richmond.

Jason

 

:cornut: Gas prices in Europe could be putting a damper on performance models. How many Cooper D's (diesel) and MINI ONE D's did you see?

Jason