For the second year in a row, veteran Australian rally racer Andrew Pinker has won the Oregon Trail Rally, but the real winner might be DC Shoes founder, and long-time extreme sports sponsor turned competitor, Ken Block. With his second place finish, he moves to the top of the season's scoring. While his Subaru Team USA team-mate, X-Games superstar Travis Pastrana, dropped out of the first stage only a few minutes in due to a blown engine.Hopefully this is a sign that Rally America will not be cursed with a single big star, as so often happens in sports that are big everywhere else but struggle to take hold in the States. Pelé? Beckham? Of course the real stars are the cars themselves, which currently happen to be almost entirely Subarus. If this thing is going to catch on, there needs to be some brand rivalry. Embattled Mitsubishi has a new Lancer out, and maybe we'll be seeing the new Evo by this time next year. Audi and Suzuki also have some all-wheel drive compact hatchbacks rounding out the top and bottom of the market respectively. Certainly they could put together some teams.
I do however think that the organizers and sponsors already made a smart move by using the "extreme sports" angle to appeal to something other than the Bud-Light-drinking, Charlie-Daniels-listening, masturbating-to-photos-of-Ann-Coulter crowd who are the backbone of NASCAR. Frankly, there's no point in trying to catch the attention of a bunch of knuckle-dragging crackers who like to watch ancient automotive technology masqueraded as crappy family sedans going around in circles. Better to tap the XBox-playing, Wolfmother-listening, masturbating-to-photos-of-Dita-Von-Teese market. Sure they're a bunch of worthless douche-bags too, but they like to think they aren't.
4 comments:
You sure as hell won't find anything from the big three very competitive. But it surprised me that VW isn't making anything right now that could really compete. It's time they consider a production Baja line and scrap the SUV.
And let's face it, the X-box kids are still jerking off to Lara Croft.
VW plans to bring over the R32 next year, which is basically the same as the Audi A3. Either one of those cars could be a contender with a good weight-loss plan.
As far as the big 3, I actually think that an AWD SRT-4 version of the Dodge Caliber/Jeep Compass could work. And I say that as someone who hates Chrysler with a deep and burning passion.
I actually brought myself around to liking the idea of rally racing. It happened with the realization that rally racing was remarkably similar to the old back road games of cat and mouse I used to play. In those days, my 440 New Yorker would give my friend's Rabbit a hell of a chase. And he never could catch me.
That's the angle that got me interested in it too. Except that I raced against the clock because I didn't have any friends.
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