Katie wrote:
>Gymkhanas with two-seater English sportscars became popular in the
>1950s, and evolved to autocross I'm assuming in the 60s. When it was
>gymkhana, there was a bit more physically and mentally involved. It
>was like solving math. You didn't just drive around cones; you had
>to negotiate obstacles, some of which included even getting out of
>the car. One stunt could only be achieved on the hard, narrow tires
>of the day, as it required simultaneously locking the brakes and
>putting the car in reverse while still traveling in a forward
>direction into a box marked with pylons, probably, or maybe even hay
>bails. You could never do that with wimpy ABS. Another was something
>called a four leaf clover, that consisted of four cones, set up as
>four corners, and you had to drive around each one, and the
>resulting design left on the ground, if your car could draw, would
>look just like a FOUR LEAF CLOVER!
>
>I have photos of an autocross/gymhkana from the 50s, in DIRT! Here's
>a photo of my dad at one in his 1956 Austin Healey, and I can only
>guess it's from that same year. What I find terribly eery is not
>only the lack of helmet, but the appearance of HAIR. This would make
>him about, well, I should say it, TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD.
In Australia they call it Motorkhana and they still do it on
dirt/grass/clay/whatever that pasture is. I went out and played with
the Victoria Holden Club when in Melbourne in '99. Nothing that
involved getting out of the car, but many of the courses involve
pylon boxes called garages that you have to reverse out of, and yes,
the faster guys with older cars would have the wheels locked and
putting it into reverse before stopping. The courses were timed from
a standing start to a full stop completely inside the finish garage.
One nice thing it that there is a book of standard courses used
throughout the country (I have a copy, it's loaned out right now.)
There are "Championship Courses" and additional "Non-Championship
Courses". (or something like that) It's nice because the event
notices would say what courses would be used for a particular event.
All the courses are small, I think the largest was on the order of
120 meters in the largest direction and lasted around 20-30 seconds.
Multiple patterns could be used with identical pylon setups, so if
you had a brain fade and did the wrong pattern you would get a DNF -
AND you only get one shot at each course. The event I went to had 4
courses set up and 7 patterns were used that day. And yes, the
four-leaf clover was part of one of the patterns used that day. :-)
Gene
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