I know.....

I've been talking a lot about cars lately. Sorry if that's boring. They've always fascinated me. Back home, there's a lot of friends that are very involved in different aspects of cars. Until he decided to flee the country and screw a bunch of people over, my friend Booger was very well known around the globe for his Subaru motors and ability to tune. Neat guy but not sure if I'll ever hear from him again at this point. My good friends Adam and Dave have a 10 second VW drag car and they even appeared on Pinks All Out Outakes. There's Chuck Mathes who is a national caliber road racer with his GTI and Miata. We have lots of friends that are into autocross and rallycross. I don't know that we have anyone that does full on rally stage racing though (at least not when I was living there). Rally is probably my favorite to watch but it is so bloody expensive.

I was a little off with some previous numbers for cars. In talking with some friends in the know, a WRC car would probably run about 350,000. I believe that WRC mandates that teams have at least 2 cars and then pay about 40,000 for an entry fee into at least 10 events. Maintenance on 1 car is probably 2x what it costed initially. God forbid they wreck it. I'd hate to see the bill for tires. Transportation to each event has to be astronomical. Then you've gotta have engineers and a crew. We ballparked a team budget to be in the neighborhood of 2-3 million.

Where am I going with this? Obviously, I chose the wrong occupation to have a rally car. Even the small time drivers easily have 200,000 wrapped up in their cars, tow rigs, trailers, tires, wheels, motors and trannies. Rally cross is a lot more affordable and I'm considering doing a series on the front range this year. The Subaru would have to run in the prepared category because it has a decent amount of STI stuff on it. I've done a fair amount of homework. I am for sure going back home to attend the 100 Acre Wood Rally this year down in Salem, Missouri with some good friends. Both Ken Block and Dave Mirra should be there along with a slew of talented drivers and that's gonna be real good times. Tentatively, I am going to do a rally driving school sometime in March and see how that goes. It will be something different.