The Missouri Endurance Rally.
April 18, 2015

I spent the week prior to the event vacillating between the MG and the TR and in the end decided on the MGB-GT despite the lack of air conditioning, I haven’t had it charged with R134a yet. I’m glad I choose it because of all the dirt roads that we ended up on would have not been good for the TR’s paint job.

The MG was faultless, meaning it got us home with the same faults that it left with! All in all we did about 850 miles, 300 to St Louis, about 240 miles on the rally and 300 miles home again. We got the tires wet once at a ford & treated the car to a well-deserved car wash afterwards because of all the gravel roads. The dust got everywhere!

This year format was different from prior years. Last year used a modified Moss Challenge format that I didn’t care for much as it tended to make one speed to collect more points within the time limit. This year reverted to the more traditional approach of least miles wins, only with a twist. We were given 15 locations in Missouri & Illinois. We had to pick 5 and then visit them using 1980’s only technology -- maps & gazetteers, no GPS, smart phones and the like. Least miles won. So this added a new level to the navigational challenge, in that one had to pick ones locations. We spent 2 hours planning & strategizing  before heading off, so that was the first part of the challenge. The second part was both driver & navigator staying mentally awake and not missing turns and adding miles as a consequence. The third part of the rally’s challenge of course is the reliability of the car. In this case a 45 year old one. No problem on that front. We must have done pretty well as we managed to win by 1.3 miles. The second placed team chose the same 5 locations that we did, only ran them in reverse order to us. Not that I think that was the mileage difference. There were 8 cars that started and 7 finishers. We were one of two from Illinois. The rest were from Missouri.

  We had a great time. The weather was fine but not too hot. We came across a couple of turtles in the road and one alligator on a leash! The scariest moment was being over taken by a gang of motorcyclists with some sort of death wish, judging by the speed they were travelling and by them overtaking us on both sides of the car on a two lane road. We pulled over & let them race off to their Armageddon. Apart from that incident it was a lot of fun.

  Editors Note: The 2015 edition of the Missouri Endurance Rally is in the history books. Eight teams took part in the challenge with Steve & Rose Skegg driving 1970 MGB-GT taking 1st place covering the record 239.3094 miles.

~~ Steve & Rose Skegg