My racing addiction is really more of a dormant interest that was awakened a few years ago when I first saw a picture of Chris Duplessis’ Mk2 GTI rally car on a VWVortex thread. While not the same car, it immediately reminded me of two very special cars in my life. The first was more of a vague memory of an old race car that my grandfather had in his garage in Bogota, Colombia. I spent a summer with my grandparents sometime in the mid 80’s to attend a soccer camp and to pick up the language. That summer on a very soggy and rainy day, I was forced to kick my ball around in a little space in my grandfather’s garage next to an old car that was covered by a burlap car cover.
In one of my attempts at kicking the ball against the garage door it ended up bouncing off the hood of the car and moving the burlap cover enough for me to see some sponsor decals and a shiny black and white race flag. The car always held an aura of mystery to me and always remained in my memories of that summer. I later learned that the car was actually a Simca road rally car that was used to run old rural based rallies just outside of the capitol of Bogota, Colombia. My grandfather remembers that he kept it in his garage for a friend and that he occasionally made little custom parts for it. My grandfather has artisan’s hands and raised a family on his ability to create small interior and exterior body modifications for local car enthusiasts in his homeland of Colombia.
The second memory was of an old VW Fox that I drove back in high school and into my college years. That Fox took me back and forth between UMASS Amherst and my parents’ home in Massachusetts. That car also saw a couple of years as a pizza delivery vehicle on the UMASS campus. What a work horse!!! I would be remiss if I didn’t give it some credit for seeing me through a number of shenanigans during high school too…but I wont be putting any of that in writing! That Fox was my first daily driver and was the car that instilled in me a love for VW’s that I still have today.
As with all good VW’s there was that one time that it left me stranded on the side of the road! The story involves my dad and me driving from Amherst to Boston on a holiday weekend when I completely lost gas pedal play in the middle of the Mass Pike. We pulled over and I became so stressed out I didn’t know what to do. We were stuck on the Pike and had no tools with us. This was before cell phones were so commonplace. Luckily, my dad knew a thing or two about these cars and quickly figured out what happened. He hollered over to me to grab the shoe laces from one of my shoes and inside of 30 minutes we were on the road again. He rigged up my old laces to the snapped throttle cable and then back into the car. I made it home with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand holding the lace cable! I guess that was the moment my dad earned his “rally” mechanic bona fides and became my crew chief. My dad has always been good with his hands and works in the industrial printing industry where he is known for his diagnosing skills and uncanny ability to fix what others have given up on.
Great memories!
As a result of that single page view on VW Vortex and the memories it sparked, I decided to mount a search for a nice clean VW Golf just like Chris’ and began to look into SCCA RallyX. I ended up finding one on EBAY by a seller based in Miami and had it shipped up. The following RallyX season gave me the pleasure of meeting some incredibly amazing and welcoming people in the SCCA NER RallyX group. They welcomed my rookie sensibilities and were excellent guides. Many people offered help and advice and I couldn’t possibly thank them enough, but they know who they are! Thanks SCCA NER RallyX group! That car gave me some great experience and taught me a many things in addition to shedding light on how much I DIDN’T know!
Our team started in RallyX in that little Golf and while it was a dream to have that car built out to stage spec, it really was more practical and budget friendly to purchase a prebuilt vehicle and get to racing. In our next article, we will talk a little bit about the prebuilt Jetta rally car and getting the driver ready for stage rally and our first completed event.
Lastly, I have been asked a few times what “Pata Brava” means as part of our team name. In Spanish, it literally translates to “mad foot” and is used to describe someone who drives with anger and fury; like a good rally driver! In Colombian circles this expression is used to describe someone with a heavy right foot! As the driver of our team, I hope to live up to our name whenever I get into the car!
