More than 85 Sportsmobile 4x4s and their owners gathered near Park City, Utah, for the 6th Annual Rally. This year the events returned more toward the original purpose of the rallies — to let owners understand the abilities of their vehicles and as always, to have fun. Here is what it was like to take part …
For Olympic Competition purposes, each “van” was assigned to a team with four other vans. The idea was to accumulate points during the Rally in hopes of winning some really great prizes. The members of the winning team each received a set of five brand new BF Goodrich All-Terrain TA’s, so people took this seriously (or semi-seriously anyway).
There were a number of educational and interesting challenges for the teams …
The first course was a 30-yard-long obstacle course laid out by Alan and his volunteers with a number of holes and logs to traverse. The goal was to run the course in the longest possible time, with points deducted by getting out of bounds, sing the brake, or having the vehicle stop forward motion. This was harder than it seems because you had to keep moving without stalling when you came to a log.
The second challenge was the “Stream Crossing” which simulated crossing a gulley or stream on a pair of logs. The driver could not look out the side window and had to rely totally on his/her spotter in front of the vehicle … and the spotter could use only hand signals. However, some illegal butt signals were spotted!
After completing the Stream Run and climbing up the final bank, a volunteer secretly unlocked one of the front hubs, and a team member was then directed to back the van back down into the stream. Of course, when they tried to drive back off the bank, the van got stuck and the remaining team members were given 20 minutes to winch the van out of the stream.
In addition to the Road Rally/Poker Run there was a Scavenger Hunt that included such items as the Book of Mormon (hey, we were near Salt Lake!), cowboy hat, Sportsmobile shot glass, old Rally t-shirts and pins, fortune cookies, dice, and so on. Most of the items were readily available or easy to acquire. Some were downright difficult and required some real creativity — and a little, what some called, cheating.
The Food? Well, it’s always outstanding. In fact, Fat City Caterers does such a good job they attend almost every rally.
