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Auto Week
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30

I

AutaWeek December 9, 1985

By Satch Carlson

OK, let's get something straight: Of
course John Buffum won. He had thebest equipment. That is, he had Tom
Grimshaw, who for all his flaws (I think
Grimshaw collects flaws, the way somepeople collect art; these people arepracticing up to become patrons, while
Grimshaw is practicing up to become acurmudgeon) is nevertheless still thesecond-best navigator in the Go Long, Go
Fast rally business.
· But this year's running of the AICan
5000 Rally also put J.B. up in thepantheon of Real American Good-Guy
Heroes, more about which later, so I didn't
mind not winning, even though of course I
was supposed to. Next year for sure. After
I get my navigator back. And maybe shootGrimshaw in the foot.
Where to begin this tale of splendid
excess, this story of le voyage formidable,
as our French-Canadian amigos and-ami­goettes might put it? The entrants? No:
We'll get to them in horrifying detail a
bit further on. The cars? Well, there's notmuch you can say about the cars, ex­actly ... unless you talk about Buffum's
Audi 5000 Quattro ... or the IPD motor
home, for God's sake ... or the
four-wheel-drive Rolls-Royce ...
So maybe we start with the rallymaster,Jerry Hines, since by now he'll havegotten off most of the feathers and someof the tar, and the event itself. And maybe
Brock Yates, who just may be responsible
for the entire decline of western
civilization.
It was Yates, after all, who discoveredthat if you came up with large-scale in­sanity, true world-class lunacy, you would
have an entire field of enthusiastic bozos
all eager to (A) drive across the country athigh speed, or (B) take a stultifying 8,000
mile tour around it. (Come to think of it,
maybe this insanity really got started backin the days of the old trans-Canadian Shell
4000 Rallies. Or, for that matter, theMonte Carlo. In any event, the. Whacko
Factor certainly breeds true. And it's
contagious.)
Since Jerry Hines, who lives in Seattle,
had long been pondering the effects of
microwave and gamma radiation on thebrain cells of the average car freak-i.e.,
would long-range symptoms really include
a tendency toward driving the Alaska
Highway up and back in a week, and, if
so, how could it be done-and since
he0
obviously had too much time on his hands
last year, he set up and executed the firstrunning of the AICan 5000 (which camevery close to setting up and executing Yr
Hmbl & Obdnt Crspndnt). Which was
wonderful adventure. Yes, so much that
Hines set about preparing to run it again
in the next even year (odd years were out
because there's already too much that is
odd about this whole affair).
But he was persuaded-some say
threatened-into staging it again this fall.
Which is why I bought a new car.
Nobody's leaving ME out of World Class
Loony Behavior.

Nor was I alone; somebody shook thefilbert trees, I guess, because there are allsorts of nuts running around with visionsof long-distance rallying bouncing aroundin their cavernous heads. The Canadian
AMC Jeep people, for example, have inmind a coast-to-coast run next summer in
conjunction with Expo 86. The rumored/re­
vamped/rumored again/revamped Amer­athon is semi-scheduled for next fall. And
there are mysterious rumors of a revival of
the old Shell 4000, as well as certain
plans afoot to run a sort of coast-to-coast
performance rally, one with high-speed
stages.
Could this be the coming thing?
Well, over two dozen AICan crews evi­
dently think so. There were the diehards from last year, of course, but we
had also been joined by such luminaries
as Competition Limited's Gene Hender­son, who was rallying Conestoga wagons
when Tom Grimshaw was in diapers-andGrimshaw's six days older'n baseball.
There were the Tiggers, as they- came tobe called, Paul Mlinar and Ron Weir, whowere flying across the wilderness onbehalf of Flying Tigers in a Dodge Shelby
Turbo.
Old hands turned up in new rides:
Derek Steele and Blake McGuffie, the two
Canadians who were in first place lastyear when their venerable Datsun 510
was delayed by construction, turned up in
a Skoda, of all things. Suzy Fouse rode
last year in another Canadian Datsun, but
this year she and husband John wereanchoring the Alaska Rally Team in abrand-new VW GTI, the Spirit of theVietnam Veteran. (f:ouse, himself aveteran of two tours on the other side,
spends a lot of time trying to shake a fairdeal for Vietnam vets.) We also had new­comers Jerry Heckel and Tom Olson in aglorious red Porsche 944, and of course I
was riding with my semi-ex-brother-in-law,
Craig Chanslor, aka Von Boot, andOregon newspaperman Jerry Boone in
the Spirit of Erik Carlsson, CB handle
Blackbird, my new Saab SPG.
We had originally planned on capturing
all honors for Excessive Opulence: The
SPG is lined with tan Scottish leather,
after all. Had I not picked it up in Yurrup?
Had I not driven it straight away to Safety
Devices·. Ltd., in Newmarket for fitment ofa roll cage? Had they not sent theirminions down to London for an entire hideof Connolly leather with which to wrap thecage so it would match the interior?
Indeed. And the Gucci roll cage might
have won us the plush award, had it
not been for the entries of Charlie Mar­tin/Doug Kopp and the assembled mul­titudes from IPD in Portland.
Martin and Kopp showed up in a Cadi­
llac-powered Rolls-Royce--on a Chevy
Suburban chassis (license plate
4BY4RR). About halfway through theevent, Martin was heard telling a gullible
CBC newsman that they had built the car
on special assignment from the Queen,· which one-upped the Gucci roll cage forsure.

t ,··n&!f!

Saleh Cartson photos

The Spirit of Erik Carlsson and its crew of Satch Carlson, Craig Chanslor, Jerry Boone were sure they'd win Excessive Opulence honors but they couldn't top the competition.
Richard Gordon and Rob Rissbergercame from Portland in the Ultimate
Cruising Vessel: A 29-foot Rockwood
motorhome, complete with closed-circuit
television (for backing up), a microwave
oven (to prepare their catered meals), andenough luxury options to make you con­sider selling your house and moving i..-if
you could get enough money for thehouse. At every rest break in the rally, theIPD crew would have open house (WIPE
YOUR FEET BEFORE YOU COME IN
HERE!), and their only moment of panic
came when it looked like the microwave
oven was about to go Tango Uniform,
forcing them to eat their catered meals
cold.
Thus we set out on the second runningof what must be the most beautiful
rally-cum-tour-cum-adventure you could
imagine; up through the river valleys ofwestern Canada, the trees glowing goldin the crisp fall air. Off we set withodometers dialed in, hopes high. Had we
not learned from last year? Were we notintent on keeping it on its wheels andnavigating to a gnat's eyebrow?
It wasn't until the first turn in the first
timed section that we ran into trouble.
Hines had wisely outlawed rally com­puters this year, having grown weary of
the whines of people who insist that they
couldn't have been half-a-hundredth-of­
a-minute off at the last checkpoint. But
anybody with a hundredths-reading clock
and an accurate odometer can factor it
into a one-leg computer, staying right on
the mark until hitting a speed change.
That wasn't our problem: We simply forgot
to make the first left turn.
Well, it wasn't my fault. We were all so
intent on matching the numbers that weforgot the first rule of rallying, which isstay on course! It does you no goodwhatsoever to keep perfect time in thewrong direction, and, before we had
recovered, we had already amassed 14
penalty points.
They would not be the last.
As if to reassure me that this would not
be our year, the Rally Gods, on a twisty
uphill section of timed road, opened thehatchback of the Saab and dumped out
the ice chest. A brand-new ice chest!

Twenty bucks at Jafco! MY 20 bucks!
Along with a few other items, like Jerry
Boone's portable computer, which I
backed over in my haste to return for theice chest.
We never did find the lid.
This was still the first day, of course,
barely 200 miles into the 5000; there was
no way we were going to win this thing,even with Hines' new kindness, a plan
whereby we would throw out our worst
scores in various sections of the event. So
we settled down to minimize our losses,
practice for next year, and ·enjoy thevoyage.

By the first night's stop in Quesnel, oldfriendships were being rekindled and thebattle lines had been drawn among theserious competitors. Buffum (who hadbrought his son, Paul Choiniere, along as
the third driver) was ahead, but not byenough to matter at that point, with
Henderson and Mike Van Loo in a new
Subaru up there as well, and Rod and
Lee Sorenson hovering in a new Mazda.
And then there were the Tire Wars:
Uniroyal had posted contingency awards
and provided tires to anybody who wanted
them, Buffum (and the Alaska Rally Team)
were on B.F. Goodrich, and the Rockwood

Cadillac-powered Rolls-Royce of Charlie Martin and Doug Kopp and ipd's 29-foot motor­
home stand head and shoulders above the Saab when it comes to cruising in luxury.

Is a navigator really necessary when there are so many signs to tell you where you are?

(aka Rocky II, since IPD had already put
together a LONGER motorhome with thesame fat sway bars and Bilstein shocks
and fuel injection and hot water and a big
refrigerator and THERE OUGHT TO BE
RULES AGAINST THIS SORT OF BE­
AVIOR) was on brand-new Goodyears
that were to prove delightful on the gravel
sections, as well as handling snow andasphalt with aplomb.
And then there was Al Schmidt.
Al Schmidt and Bill Todd had driven out
from the east coast in Schmidt's venerable(another word is archaic) VW Bug. You
may remember Al; he was the one who
remained cheerful and unruffled last year
as he went through nine tires. (Rally
stories being what they are, some people
maintain it was 17 tires. Trust me: It was
only nine.) This year he was not having
any tire trouble at all. Nor was he scoring
many penalty points. It looked like it could
be his year at last.
. Of course, the charm of the long­
distance rally is that anything can happen
in the course of a week or two: Strange
roads, mistakes, fatigue (mechanical andhuman), despair. The Rally Gods arepatient-and capricious.
The second night-we always measurethese things by the evenings, since that's
when the parties ar-..sees us once again
at the Fort Nelson motor lodge, the oddest
oasis in the Yukon, what with its insideswimming pool and stuffed elephant. By
that time (A) everybody has had a chance
to be photographed in Dawson Creek atthe beginning of the Alaska Highway, (B)several of us have learned the fiendish
rallymasterosity involved in keeping us toa 50-mile-an-hour average up a hill
shaped like an arthritic corkscrew, and (C)Ed Botwick has decided he knows more·
about time than the guys in Greenwich.
He starts a timed section exactly an hour
early and then tries to convince the world
there really WAS a time change in there
somewhere. Since Botwick is obviously
addled, having survived two One Lap ofAmericas (One Lapse Of America?), thesemi-aborted Amerathon, and the first
AICan 5000 in his Audi 4000 Quattro, heContinued on Page 32

AutoWeek December 9, 1985

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ALCAN 5000.

You ever work with that stuff? Pokes
holes in your fingers. Slides up under thenails. Yet here was J.B. helping out thecrew that had the best chance to beatContinued from Page 31
him.
The rest of us took up an· oil collection,is given the benefit of the doubt; he isflagging down the other rally cars until wehumored as one might humor the last­
had so much oil that Al could start beingborn child, the one spawned after the
picky about brands. Up comes thegenetic pool has dried up like an Africanswamp.
Rolls-Royce. "We don't.need any moreoil," chirps Suzy Fouse. "You got any
The next morning starts the Long Push.
GREY POUPON?!"That is to say, here is where the tour,
And sure enough, down rolls the smoky
the navigation, and the Vitamin C all melt
window, and out comes Charlie Martin's
together: A 24-hour push from Fort Nelson
blazer-clad arm, clutching a jar of theup north through Whitehorse, up past
infamous mustard.
Lake La Barge (three choruses of the
Unlike the '84 event, this one took us
cremation of Sam McGee), up along thedown the Cassiar Highway through the
Yukon River to Dawson. Gold country.
British Columbian outback in the
The birthplace of legends. Here is wheremost of the crews, doubtless addled from , daylight-and what a spectacular road it
is! Mile after mile of the sort of road thatlack of sleep, elected to turn right for apeople used to drive on the Alaska
250-mile jaunt even farther north, an
Highway: Narrow bridges! Ruts! Dust!
optional excursion up to the Arctic Circle
Gravel! And the worst fate of all: Following
itself.
an RCMP Travelall for 150 miles at 80kph.
It was during this stretch that John
That run took us into Prince Rupert,
Fouse got lost.
where we spent a rainy, boring day
You'd think it would be hard to get lost
waiting for the ferry to Vancouver Island.
in the north, wouldn't you? I mean, there's
By now we had figured out why we kept
only one road to speak of. But the side trip
picking up points: I had forgotten theto the Ar.ctic Circle required drivers tosecond rule of rallying, which is use
turn right off what we laughingly call the
Sanforized tires. See, unless you use
main road, and Fouse missed the turn!
steel-belted radials, the tires have a
Which meant that he pressed on about
tendency to grow and shrink at various
fifty miles or so on into Dawson, still
speeds over various road surfaces, giving
thinking he was headed for a tiny Eskimo
you very strange mileage readings. Whatvillage. It wasn't until he saw the sign
was even worse than my selection of theEuro Radial T/As, however-great tires,but no steel belts-was the fact that Hines
had laid out the course on similar gum­balls, so our error factors compounded,each other.

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that read DAWSON FIRE DEPARTMENT
that he realized his mistake; then,madder'n a Russian jumpmaster overWashington with a planeload of quitters,
he turned around and hammered it backdown the road to the intersection, turned
left at the junction, and joined the other
Why?-Because-it's-THERE! retardos at
the Big Dotted Line in the Wilderness.
Me, I've BEEN to the Arctic Circle. We
went to Dawson to rest up for the push to
Anchorage instead.
Anchorage was MAHVELOUS, dollinks,
what with good· champagne on sale, hotshowers, and two days to recuperate fromthe Halfway Party before heading up to
the shadow of McKinley on the way backdown the road. Here was the greatest
challenge: While we had hit some snowon the Top Of The World Highway out of
Dawson, now we were making the cross­ing through the foothills of the Alaska
Range, scootering out from under theleading edge of a major storm. This was
the road to Paxon, a twisty lane-and-a-halfcaribou track that would have been rutted
dirt if it hadn't been layered in drifting
snow.
Here's where Buffum played the hero.
What happened was that Al Schmidt,
who was now in contention for the overall
lead (second at the halfway point, andBuffum had lost some time waiting for aschool bus; they run in packs in Alaska),
found himself in the middle of the Alaska
wilderness with a big No Can Do on theoil pressure gauge, so he parked the
Veedub by the side of the road for alook-see. Buffum & Co. stopped to see ifthey could help out, and by the time wearrived (you have to plan these things
carefully so you can offer to help without
any real chance of getting dirty), there
was Buffum under the hood, reassembling
the fitting on a braided steel oil line.

John, Suzy Fouse anchored Alaska Rally
Team in a brand-new Volkswagen GT/.
On the ferry-where Buffum turned 40,
by the way (you might want to avoid such
ferries)-Jerry Boone figured out that westill had a statistical chance to win theevent. 'The way I figure it," he said, "wecan still pull it off-if, when they're
unloading this barge, they dump the firsteleven cars into th.e bay."
The British Columbia Ferry System
refused to cooperate.
So there we were, cruising home in12th place. Schmidt's orange plague­
mobile finally threw a fan pulley, giving
him his second straight Rotten Luckaward; the only serious threat to Buffumcame from the Sorensons. They actually
scored fewer penalty points, but the
toss-your-worst-scores provision had themthrowing out piddly little two- andJhree-point scores while the rest of us
were discarding disasters. When thesmoke had cleared, then, Buffum had afinal score of only 43 points-to theSorensons· 50.
In third place with just 56 points were
Gene Henderson and Mike Van Loo(which rounded out the Tire Wars nicely;
Buffum was on BFGs, the Sorensons
were on Uniroyals, and Henderson chose
Bridgestones). Back another half a minutewere Canadians Derek Steele and Blake
McGuffie in the Skoda, causing many rudecomments about tortoises and hares, andthe wonderful Rolls-Royce rounded out
the top five with 111 points.
We, of course, consoled ourselves withhaving stayed upright and pointed mostly
in the right direction and running
the whole thing on the original�Dfour tires. Next year for sure.

•••