After one dropout, other participants are only beginning to discover the precarious nature of the journey. In New Jersey a brush fire burning out of control in the Meadowlands forces the rerouting of about 30 cars. A Vixen 21, made by Vixen Motor Corp. of Upper Saddle River, N.J., runs out of gas but coasts to a stop in a nearby service station. Another Vixen has rear-axle trouble and is stranded for 12 hours awaiting repair in beautiful downtown Randolph, N.Y. And at the New York Times printing plant in Carlstadt, N.J., where the participants make a mandatory stop for promotional purposes, Yugo vice president Tony Ciminera hears some great news when he delivers several hefty sandwiches to the drivers of his two little white boxes: The men are in 2d place, the women in 5th. ”They`re humming right along,” Ciminera fairly sings. ”The men are tied with John Buffum.”
So if the exalted Buffum, winner in `85, is tied with the Yugo for 2d, who is 1st? Say hello to a 1986 silver Toyota Celica GTS sponsored by a dealership in South Burlington, Vt. Nothing fancy about the car, though it does have one unique feature: On the hood is a grid drawn with a black felt-tip marker. People can scribble their names in one of the slots in return for a donation to the Hands Across America campaign (held May 25 to raise money for the homeless and hungry). This car is on a mission. The car also features the considerable skills of navigator Phil Suomu of Lexington, Mass. Phil became involved in rallying at the suggestion of his high school librarian
–true story–and went to college on a scholarship earned in an Explorer Scout rallye sponsored by Lincoln-Mercury. This guy knows where he is going and how to get there in precisely the right amount of time. He and codrivers Karl Chevalier of Hinesburg, Vt., and Nelson Sheppard of Williston, Vt., are only one teeny-tiny point ahead of Buffum on Monday. They retain that reed-slim margin the next day, too, after 3,300 miles.
By Tuesday the word ”boring” attains new meaning for Jacob, Bates and Rouland as they negotiate the endless miles of Texas. The days and nights are already a blur, and Texas just compounds the cloudiness. They try to remember the previous 60 hours. A stop at the state capitol in Providence, R.I., where they were served the best homemade lemonade they`d ever sipped. A short pause at the Lock, Stock and Barrel restaurant in Darien, Ct., the start of a few Cannonballs in the early `70s. The third TSD leg in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, where they`d amassed only three penalty points and watched a half-dozen deer at the side of the road watching them. The second autocross at Road Atlanta race track in Georgia, which they completed with dispatch. The fourth TSD leg on winding Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, where the police actually helped them with directions. And then came Texas. It was hot. And it was flat. They`d begun calling it the ”Twilight Zone.”
Somewhere around Louisiana–or was it Mississippi–Bates and Rouland hit the cellular phone. Bates, 28, an applications engineer for Robert Bosch Corp. of Broadview, Ill., which markets automotive equipment, fuel and ignition systems, calls the office. Rouland, 31, service manager at Velde Lincoln-Mercury in Peoria, tries to reach his wife. Jacob, 29, focuses on the road. He`s the glue that holds the team together. Effervescent and congenial, with an innate sense of organization and a large amount of hustle, Jacob is the one who promoted the team to Dodge, to Walker Communications, to Hewlett-Packard and to his own company, Mobay. It is Jacob who assembled the team: Bates is a high school chum from Homewood-Flossmoor, Rouland a college acquaintance from Western Illinois University.
What they share is a love and a deep knowledge of cars carried from childhood. For Rouland, it runs in the family: His father is a mechanic. The other two aren`t sure of the origins, but each recounts stories they have heard from their parents of how they were able to identify every model on the road as youngsters. Now Bates lavishes his money on a Formula Ford race car, which looks like a smaller version of an Indy car. Jacob spends his time and money restoring and tinkering with an ever-changing fleet of everyday cars
(currently four) in his driveway. During the One Lap, he and Bates talk about buying a couple of used cars in the warm-weather states, where rust is virtually nonexistent. He points out various rust-free beauties as the team gets further West. As they settle into the One Lap, each assumes a role. Bates maneuvers during the autocrosses, since he regularly drives his Formula Ford under those conditions in amateur events. For the TSD`s, Rouland handles the wheel, Bates navigates and Jacob works the computer. And during those long transit sections in between the TSD`s, those hundreds of miles along dozens of interstates, the three take turns behind the wheel, driving until they can`t see straight. At the end of the race, they`ll be averaging 45 minutes on each shift.
Now we`re ready to tackle a ticklish subject. We`re talking S-P-E-E-D-I-N-G. Most of the drivers will tell you they do it, but they`ll explain why in different ways. Ya go with the flow of traffic, some will say, pointing out that even daily commuters on the Dan Ryan Expressway go faster than 55. Others will tell you that to grab a meal at other than a Burger King, Wendy`s or McDonald`s, ya gotta go above the limit. And how about if ya get caught in a traffic jam or bad weather? Ya gotta build a cushion. And in order to grab a shower, well, let`s face it, ya gotta keep rolling. True, there is an 18-hour rest stop at the Portofino Inn in Southern California, but that comes after 4,900 miles of nonstop driving. And since the NBC-TV cameras are going to be there to record the moment–as are other television types–and since your sponsors would like ya to look good on TV, well, ya know what we mean. In short, buy yourself some time, and before you hit California, find a motel and freshen up. Jacob and company do just that, pulling into a motel outside Las Vegas in the wee hours of Wednesday. They aren`t due for breakfast at the Imperial Palace Hotel until 7–this is one of the hospitality stops contestants must make along the way–so they stretch out for two hours, shower and shave. The oh-so-brief respite costs each about 15 bucks, but boy, do they look pretty at Portofino later that day.
The Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and owner Mary Davis, a buxom platinum blond who once raced cars herself, has known Yates a long time. The Inn was the terminus for every Cannonball ever run. On Wednesday Davis marshals her whole staff and prepares a spread of hors d`oeuvres in the Sea Bucket restaurant, which serves as an oasis for the drivers until they seek the comfort of clean sheets and a peaceful night`s sleep. No one seems particularly tired; for the most part, they look good
–credit the quick pit stops that morning. Some are unshaven, but even that could be for show: One team vowed not to shave during the event. How do they sound? In some cases, not real coherent. A few have trouble stringing a couple of sentences together.
One by one, under contest edict, they pull into the Inn`s parking lot in the same order they left Detroit. Immediately the rallye announcer grabs actor Kent McCord and brings him to a jerry-built platform with microphone.
”Detroit? Seems like that was about a month ago,” says McCord, who`s in 50th place and sounds a little foggy as he adds, ”This is a heck of a lot more fun than anybody would ever imagine.” Well, not for everyone. A dentist waits at the Inn for the occupants of a 1985 Ford Bronco: Bill Grant cracked his dental plate while devouring a ham sandwich in New York, and his codriver, Bob Briggs, broke a tooth while chewing on beef jerky in the same place. But the dentist isn`t about to linger; by the time Grant and Briggs straggle into Redondo Beach, the dentist has checked out. Driver Herb Adams is luckier. He`s in a 1985 Saab Turbo sponsored by the Portofino Inn, and the employees there make certain Herb`s chiropractor sticks around to work on his bad knee. There are other casualties. A deer, an armadillo, a possum and a snake have all given up the ghost for the cause.
Drivers who have factory rides find mechanics waiting in Redondo Beach to change their oil and make needed adjustments. Uniroyal Inc., primary sponsor of the rallye, has engineers there to handle any problems. Every team, by the way, must use Uniroyal tires to qualify for the prize money. And Phil Smart, owner of the dealership in Seattle that sent the Mercedes, has driven down in a chauffeured limo to urge his team on. Cans of beer begin mysteriously appearing: One Lappers are breaking out their private stock. The modern-day pioneers lean back, take a swig and swap stories about their trip West in some really wild covered wagons.
Tom Grimshaw and John Buffum open a couple cans of Budweiser, while their third driver Richard Hughes, an Englishman and a first-time rallyist, gabs with some others. Asked if there had been any friction among the three, Grimshaw laughs and says, ”We got a Limey in the car who we can`t
understand.” Adds Buffum, ”Tom and I get along like an old shoe. Richard is such an amateur. He sits in the back seat during the competition sections, and every time we start, he says, `Good luck, guys.` ” Grimshaw and Buffum will need some good luck to catch up with car No. 19. The Toyota still leads the field and is slowly creeping ahead. Two points now separate the Celica from the Audi. Coincidentally, two of the drivers in the Toyota live near Buffum in Vermont. ”I`ll never hear the end of it if they win,” Buffum says.
As for the guys in the leading vehicle, they are low-keying it. ”Just ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” navigator Phil Suomu quips, quoting the hallowed motto of the Sports Car Club of America, to which all One Lappers are required to belong. Suomu and company have had their share of woes. Their air conditioning broke down before they reached the Texas heat. And they`ve also had trouble with their rallye odometer, which was rigged up as a favor by none other than John Buffum. When the sensing magnet fell off the rear wheel in Ohio, the three drivers looked at each other and thought:
”He`s trapping our car.” Hmmmmmm.
At the less-competitive end of the rallye, things aren`t going especially well for Rocky Aoki`s crew, but the sometime balloonist and ex-speedboat racer refuses to let bad gas–as in gasoline–ruin his fun. Seems that the team stopped for fuel in Laredo, Tex., then drove less than a block before the car came to a dead halt. The teammates had to drain the tank and refill it. That took more than two hours and cost them mucho points. Other than that, Aoki is pleased with the voyage and happy to show the car off to onlookers in Redondo Beach. He feels great, he says, like he`s on vacation. He loves being able to sleep or eat anytime he wants. He has just one regret. He has been mainlining on sugar and coffee for three days. ”I learn all the bad habits,” he says.
”The `Eh` Team” from Ontario seems a little shaken as they hurriedly unload the van and head for their rooms. ”It`s a lot tougher this year,”
says driver Bill Martin. ”It`s a lot more professional. Actually, I feel bad for those drivers who came unprepared. To the world it looks like a lark or a cakewalk, but if you don`t have any experience, it`s a real horror story.”
Ken Lloyds in the pink pickup is also a bit disillusioned. The truck lost its brakes coming off Skyline Drive in Virginia–which meant missing the autocross at Road Atlanta to get them repaired–but that isn`t what ticked Lloyds off.
”There`s not enough time to run this thing legally no matter what the organizers tell you,” he says. ”When you stop for 20 minutes at a Burger King, you gotta do 75 to make up the time. It`s a cat-and-mouse game.” Lloyds says that the field is too large and lacks camaraderie. ”Of course,” he adds, ”after four days on the road, everything is magnified.”
Cab driver Harry Ferran can hardly contain his excitement upon learning in Portofino that he`s in the top 10. Not only that, but the cab is now the highest-ranking American-made car in the field. Yes, the team has had its problems. They`d crashed into some rocks while making a wrong turn in Ohio. They`d seen a plume of smoke emerging from the engine compartment when a battery shorted in Connecticut. And codriver Betty Wheeler, a trial lawyer in real life, found it very difficult to drive at night. Nevertheless, Ferran chooses not to complain about the greater difficulties in this year`s One Lap and is annoyed at those who do. ”This is not a tour,” he says. ”We don`t spend this money to go on a tour. This is a `run what you brung` event. If they didn`t bring it, they shouldn`t complain.”
And then there are the girls from Yugo. They are very pleased. Very pleased. At Portofino they are in 12th place, and the car is performing better than they`d been led to expect from the prophets of gloom and doom in the field. But the ladies are a little perturbed by the antics of one of their fellow drivers, who had attached a sexually suggestive sticker to their bumper at some unknown point during the journey. They hadn`t noticed it until Portofino, just after the NBC cameras had photographed them coming into the parking lot. No wonder so many truck drivers tried so hard to get them to pull over to the side of the road. And what is Brock Yates thinking with the rallye more than half completed? ”I`m delighted so far,” he says. ”It`s a real close contest.”
The next morning there are more stories being exchanged during an ample brunch in the Sea Bucket, but they have nothing to do with the rallye. Some of the drivers had been rudely interrupted in the midst of dinner last night and hastily evicted from area restaurants by the Redondo Beach chief of police. The reason? Tsunami–otherwise known as a tidal wave. It had been threatening the entire California coastline. After the police chief cleared the patrons from Ruebens restaurant (where the gals from Yugo had to leave 80 bucks worth of drinks and chow on the table), he headed for the Portofino Inn to warn all the folks at the seaside resort. Reservations manager Bonnie Fields laughed in his face. ”I thought he was a One Lapper dressed like a policeman,” she says. And why not? Cannonballers had been known to pose as cops, priests, doctors, pregnant ladies and lots more. Finally–and forcefully–convinced that the cop was not an impostor, Fields called owner Mary Davis. Davis had heard tsunami warnings in the past and assured Fields that the threat would come and go. And so it did. Not until morning were the blissfully snoring troops made aware of how close they`d come to getting thrown out on the road again.
