The following article appeared in our club newsletter. I thought the
SOL-ers might enjoy it. It is reproduced with permission. Frank
Tarpley has a very fast Twin-Cam, and Al Rice has a concours-winning
1600.
--
T.J. Higgins | tj@alpine.b17a.ingr.com | Intergraph Mapping Div | Huntsville, AL
"If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing."
-- Kingsley Amis
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NAMGAR GT-17 Kansas City
by Frank Tarpley
Wednesday started way too early. The clock read 5am but it felt
worse than that. After a few minutes I finally rolled out of bed and
was off and running to the North American MGA Register's GT-17 in
Kansas City. My first stop was to meet the Rices and Lawleys at the
Tennessee welcome rest stop on I-65. I arrived there a few minutes
after 7am. As I drove up I noticed Al Rice and his red MGA. Missing
were the Lawleys. They were going to trailer their MGA and as they
were loading their car earlier, they discovered it didn't fit the
trailer. This initiated a search for a new trailer and a much later
start time. So the Rices and I started out our 660 mile marathon with
the goal of reaching St. Louis before stopping for the night. The
weather was uncharacteristically cool and overcast. Driving down the
interstate was boring, but at least it wasn't hot. In Nashville we
unexpectedly picked up another MGA and chase car. Just as we were
leaving Nashville I noticed two MGAs behind me instead of one. At the
next rest stop we met the new travelers. Stan Fischer, Goff, Stan's
father-in-law and Liz, Stan's daughter were now official members of
the GT-17 Tour 92 run to Kansas City. We finally arrived in St. Louis
about 3pm. This was the same day Clinton and Gore wrapped up their
bus trip with a large rally in St. Louis. Traffic was heavy and the
roads were inn miserable condition. After sliding and bouncing
through the middle of St. Louis we settled for the night on the west
side of the city.
We were on the road by 8:30am Thursday morning, looking at only a
200 mile trip to Kansas City. We arrived at 1:30pm. The parking lot
was already about half-full of MGAs. We made it just in time, it
began raining about 5 minutes after we arrived. It cleared later that
afternoon and by six we were off on a walking dinner tour down to the
Plaza in the heart of town. After dinner it was time to meet with
people I hadn't seen in a while, in some cases several years.
Friday was a day to attend several very intersting tech sessions.
The most interesting was given by Kent Prather who races a 1962 MGA in
the SCCA. Actually he races very well, winning the national run-offs
in his class in 1986 and 1990. His car was highly modified,
developing 149 bhp from a 1622 engine using 1.5-inch SUs. One very
interesting feature of his car is he has fitted a constant-mesh Chevy
transmission which allows clutchless shifting. Friday ended with pub
night where we ate bangers, fish and chips.
Saturday morning all the cars lined up for the popular judging.
There were over 120 cars on the field including four Twin Cams and a
deluxe. The show was over in three hours and after a quick lunch, I
sat down at a table with a map of North America with the mission of
determining who would win the long distance award. It took awhile to
do this, but finally it was determined that Jose Tapia from New Jersey
was the long distance driver. Jose had also won last year, NAMGAR's
first two-time winner of this award. George Simmons from Pulaski, TN
won the Twin Cam Class and was the only local area winner. Saturday
closed with a very nice awards banquet.
I was up very early Sunday morning to prepare for the mad dash
home. The Rices were going to continue their trip into Oklahoma so I
was on my own. I left about 6:45am and was back in Decatur at 7:45pm.
The car performed great the entire trip, using only about one quart of
oil. GT-17 was an excellent meet and thanks go out to the Midwest MGA
Club for a great job.
I'm already looking forward to GT-18 in Niagara, Ontario, Canada.
Start thinking and planning now and hopefully next year we can entice
even more of the NABMS MGA owners into making the trip north.
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