Full Throttle Directions

The 2011 Chicagoland MG Club Driving Season is in full swing. Actually, with so many successful, and new, events behind us and even more activity in July and August, Full Throttle is a much more appropriate term.

In this issue of the Driveline you'll find reports on the new Garage Tour, the sort of new Autocross and the renewed Lucas Memorial Rally. I am pretty sure that I speak on behalf of all participants when I write here that all three where very good events; nice weather, superb MG driving, and great friends. There is only thing we all wish to see more. Yes, you probably guessed it - more MG's. The next two months are packed with more driving events and we hope to see you and your car at one or all of them.

The 2011 championships for the Moss Motors, Victoria British or any of the associated trophies are wide open. The top standings, after the Lucas Memorial Before Night Rally are as follows. For Driver of the Year, Barney Gaylord is leading with 16 points, closely followed by Dino Perez, Seth Jones, Jim Evans, and Victor L'Heureux (11, 10, 8, 8 points resp.) while Theresa Gaylord and Lisa Perez are numbers one and two for Navigator of the Year (15 and 11 points). The complete results are available on the club web site. And because there are still so many events to come, you can still participate and accumulate points for the 2011 Drive.

I received many questions about the shape of the 2011 dash plaques. The story goes back many years. When I started with rallying in the late 60's it was common practice

that all rally cars had numbers on the doors and a shield on the hood and the trunk. The shields were about 12-15 inches wide and had the rally number on it also. Open up any MG book with old pictures of MGA's in the Alpine or Monte Carlo Rallies and you'll see what I mean. The shield on the hood and trunk had basically only two different shapes - halfround or half-round with a bar underneath.

As a personal memory of the rally, the drivers sometimes received a small replica of the shield. With other rallies you got a lapel pin version of the shield the first year and a small attachment with just the year every time you returned. I think that the small replicas eventually became known as dash plaques, although I have never seen one actually mounted on a dash. In the mid 80's, when rallying with old cars developed in The Netherlands, the shields were still used as you can in the picture, right on top of my MGC power bulge. I don't know how the dash plaques that we've used in our MG events became rectangular, but that's how they've been for all the years that I attended club events and national conventions.

For this year it seemed a good idea to break the routine and go back to the old style and original shape. Our dash plaque supplier was a little apprehensive at first, but eventually developed a process to manufacture the raw plates from round stock. The final results have been very well received by the driving event participants this year. And you too can still get quite a few. All you have to do is bring your MG to one of the upcoming events!

"The more you drive, the more you smile".

-- Reinout Vogt