World Rally Championships, Rally Cross, or just Rally Racing in general just oozes skill and determination when you start talking about motorsports.  At 12 years old I was introduced, unofficially, into this world of on the edge of your seat racing.  Now some people might think that's pretty impressive to be in a sport dominated by older men and women, but it's more of an image I'd like to portray instead of factual evidence that I have ever been in a Rally Race.  I was more or less reenacting rally driving, although at the time I had no clue what it was in 1987.

I know quite a few people that have sat on their fathers laps and "steered" the car around at an early age and that's something I can admire.  My father taught me at a young age in that exact same way.  My vehicle of choice was a late '60s Ford Econoline Van, the kind that looked like a brick and had about the same kind of steering wheel as the VW Bus.  I remember driving up RT16 going towards Conway from North Conway and almost running into some other vehicle on the road, although since I was sitting on Dad's lap he made sure we were safe!  Thanks Dad!  Anyways, since that day in my Dad's lap I started, like most who were interested in it, begging to "steer" again and eventually was taught how to drive a manual transmission.

My brother , Justin, and I were quick learners.  From steering, to pressing the clutch in and out and moving forward, to actually driving a car.  Most of our experiences came from our father who would gracefully let my brother take one of his cars, first with his parental guidance and then without,  out into the logging roads that lined the mountains behind our home in North Conway, NH.  Why he would subject his cars to this punishment still to this day baffles me, but in the end both my brother and I learned quick and had lots of fun driving around on some old dirt roads doing our best to keep the car from scraping the ground as it passed beneath us.  I'm also pretty sure that my father gave Justin the express rights of driving the car and not me with him not there to help out, but when he wasn't with us I certainly got a turn or two behind the wheel.

By the age of 12 I thought I was pretty dang good at driving.  I had the manual shifting down to a science (1st gear, push in clutch, look down at the shifter to find 2nd gear, row the shifter into 2nd, let out the clutch, and hit the gas).  I can remember I was pretty good at getting a car to go down the road, or up it for that matter.  All that would change though on a nice, sunny, fall afternoon.  My best friends mother, Pat, decided it was time to get a new (used) car and thought it would be a nice gesture to give her old car to my brother, with my parent's consent of course!  I remember my brother going and getting his new (used and wore out) car from Pat.  It couldn't be registered mainly because it was rotted out and would not be able to pass inspection unless you put some serious money into it, so the car became our back woods vehicle.  You know, typical toy you would let any 15 year old own.  One of your common death-traps:  rusted through floorboards, back seat not bolted in, lug wrench and other things in the rear of it that weren't tied down, winter tires (excluding the metal studs), you know - good cars for kids.

This particular beauty was a Renault LeCar.  Cream, tan, and brown.  Surprisingly not any collision damage and actually ran pretty decent.  It wasn't, however, one of those cool 5speeds, it was a 4speed, but who cared, it moved forward when you put it in gear and pressed the gas!  Naturally my brother and I couldn't wait for my father to come home from work so we could beg him to let us take it out for a spin and that wait seemed like it took forever!  Eventually Dad got home and we commenced to our begging and pleading him to let us go for a "short" drive.  We lucked out and he gave in.

Justin was the one who my father saw drove off in the car with me riding shotgun, lets call it our little secret, back behind the green tractor trailer and off into the back woods.  Justin was feeling the car out and pointed out a few of the difficulties of driving our new to us woods mobile.  One thing that was first noticed was the difficulty of keeping your feet on the pedals so as not to have them dropped through the floorboards.  Second was the lack of power the car had and I'm pretty sure it wasn't performing at it's best potential and I'd estimate all of 50 horsepower was all it had.  Also, the power steering didn't work at all so it was difficult to turn as well.  After a bit of watching Justin driving I was itching to get behind the wheel and started annoying him until he let me take my turn.  We swapped seats and buckled in.  I revved the engine and dropped the clutch and I'm pretty sure I got one of the front tires to rotate slightly, simulating a burnout without actually doing one and down the road I went.

There was a particular area of our backwoods we called "The Beaver Dam", for obvious reasons of course.  The road is relatively straight here although there is an elevation change of about fifty feet starting high, going low, and then back up again.  In my mind I knew I had to get the momentum up to make it up the other side of this hilly area and by the time I hit the crest of the first hill I had already shifted into 3rd gear (about 40mph) and the engine was screaming at me to hit 4th and so I did with my foot on the floor being careful not to let my feet slip off of the pedals.  Down the hill we went as fast as I had ever been in a car driving it myself, an impressive 55MPH!  As we crested the other side of The Beaver Dam I kept my foot on the floor and downshifted to 3rd waiting for the squirrels in the engine bay to ramp back up so I could crunch the gear shifter back into 4th gear.  At this point I was so caught up in going fast(er) that I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going or that there was a hairpin corner at the end of this straightaway.  Naturally, this is where instincts kick in when encountering a dire situation in a vehicle:  HIT THE BRAKES!!! And that was exactly what I did, except we were in a LeCar, once distributed by AMX the the American public, and it stunk at braking.  But what it was good at was finding the ruts in the road left there by the logging company by a 12 year old kid that didn't know any better when it came to evasive maneuvering. These were deep ruts that waved back in forth as if one of the tractor trailers had been stuck up to the tops of the rear tires.  I'm pretty sure the LeCar had 12" rims which would make sense as to how my brother and I were shot off into the ditch and then in to the woods.  I held on tight to the steering wheel and Justin, who at the time was a young Arnold in training, grabbed his door handle and swung his left arm across my body and hung onto my door handle, creating a sort of double seat belt.  We ended up flipping a total of 6 times in a barrel roll, during which we took out 3 trees and somehow landed out in the road again.

This is where I don't really recall what happened, although from what I can gather neither me or my brother ever did figure out how this went down - After the car had stopped flipping and settled back on the road I was outside of it doing my damnedest to pull my brother out of the passenger window.  That's what we both don't understand was how he was still holding onto both of the door handles and I was outside trying to pull him out of the car and to this day, after many discussions afterwards, we still can't come up with a conclusion.  After I helped Justin get out of the car via the window, both of us turned towards one another and yelled, "RUN!" and off we went as fast as we could bolt out of the area.  Exhausted we turned around to find our car staring us down from 100 yards away, happily idling.  I guess cars don't just blow up when they flip over, who would've guessed?

Looking the car over and counting all of our limbs and bodies for injuries we came to the conclusion that it was "driveable", I mean it had to be if it was still running!  There were a few more issues with it though:  The windshield was crushed in and had just barely missed smashing my brother in his face, the right front fender was smashed in, and everything that was in the back, including the rear seat, was sitting up on the front seat, other than that it was good to go!

We chucked everything that didn't belong in the front seat into the rear of the car and started to head back home.  An interesting side effect of having the front fender smashed in was immediately noticed by the both of us when Justin attempted to take a left hand turn.  As the steering wheel was turned to the left more the winter treaded tire would dig into the fender making an interesting noise, kind of like having cards in your spokes on your bicycle only more metallic sounding and much, much louder.   Of course the turn into our driveway back at home was a left hand turn and as it would turn out it was a lot louder than we thought.

By the time Justin had parked the car my father was standing in the front door of our house with a puzzled look on his face and I could tell he wasn't very happy with what he was looking at.  Justin and I took the walk of shame on our way back into the house and as we turned and looked at Dad, he said, "Give me the keys..." .  I knew right away that he was just glad to have his boys back safe and sound and after that experience I know I'll never do something like that again.

Ok, so I didn't do any Rally Racing at all.  As a matter of fact I think I drove that car for about 3 minutes before I flipped it, but I can say that I unofficially did mimic a Rally Car and that's good enough for me!  As for the car itself?  That old LeCar sat in that same spot in our driveway for a couple more years collecting BB's and acorns.  On it's last day in our possession and on it's way to the scrap yard, my father came up to me and asked me, "Hey Ty, where are the keys to that car?"