[Note: Shared content from DR1665.com]
I stumbled upon coverage of the World Rally Championship (WRC) on Speedvision back before they became NASCAR TV Speed Channel and fell instantly in love. I loved seeing the cars slide ‘round corners, fly through the air over jumps, and how, at least in the non-NASCAR world, the fans found their way out to the middle of nowhere to camp out by the road to watch the teams race past, one at a time. When I saw Petter Solberg and Phil Mills breaking out the tools to tighten the steering wheel (which was coming off) without stopping the car, I was hooked. I mean, that’s awesome.
I watched WRC on Speed for years, thinking it was something that happened everywhere else in the world but here in America, where people have settled for cheap-beer-sponsored dinosaurs driving in circles for hours on end in stadiums. Then, out of the blue one day in 2005, my friend Kaiser in SoCal sent me a message asking me if I could help out a couple of his friends who were going to be just up the road from me in Prescott campaigning their Dodge Neon rally car. I jumped on the opportunity.
My first experience at Prescott was also Kris and Christine’s first outing at the event. I talked a handful of az2gnt buddies into coming along and lending a hand as well. While we spent most of the weekend standing around in the dirt parking lot that is the service park for the event, seeing all the rally teams and cars not even two hours from my door proved to me that rally in America is possible.
Upon getting home, I posted up on my favorite Mitsubishi forums that I was looking for a first generation, all wheel drive DSM. Kelly Prine in Clovis, New Mexico contacted me and told me that he had a decent 1G Talon in red that just needed the engine rebuilt. He also mentioned that he had a Galant VR4 with a blown head gasket available for the same price. I’d never heard of the GVR4 until then.
After doing some research and numerous other people telling me that the Galant was an awesome car that I should get instead of the Talon, I made the deal. The rally was in October. By November, I had bought and paid for 195/2000, having seen only pictures of the car. This was also the month I met Vanessa through eHarmony. By February, I had figured out how to get the dead Galant from the far side of New Mexico to Phoenix.
Vanessa let me borrow her Isuzu Amigo and I rented a tow dolly from U-Haul for the job. I left Phoenix early in the afternoon and got to Clovis late that night. In the morning, Kelly showed me around my Galant for the first time. We removed the prop shaft down the middle of the car and pushed the car up onto the tow dolly for the drive home.
Before leaving Clovis for home with my prize, I decided to pull the car through a car wash to get the dirt off it. It had been sitting, by Kelly’s best estimate, something like three years. He bought it dead from the previous owner and they just pushed it down the street to his mother-in-law’s carport, where it sat. After the trip through the wash bay, I made my way back to the interstate, rally car project in tow. Once I got out of Clovis, I pulled over to double check the straps on the dolly and decided to take the first posed picture of my new car.
Next time out: Engine No. 2?