[Shotimes] Cannonball!

[Josh Salaets]

>>> It struck me that the SHO would make an excellent vehicle for this type
of thing.  The earlier races were won with fairly ordinary vehicles,
hindered by insufficient range between fuel stops.  They also seemed to have
a lot of rain and some snow and ice involved.  Also, it was important to
maintain a low profile to not attract attention from the Highway Patrol.
Some of these competitors' vehicles didn't have extraordinary top speed.  It
seems that the SHO could provide good speed potential, good fuel economy,
plenty of room for driver, co-drivers, and supplies, and would handle well
in adverse conditions while not attracting a lot of attention.
Unfortunately it was just made 10 years too late.  Of course nowadays you
could make a pretty long list of cars that could work for this type of race
but I was impressed by its qualifications in comparison to what was actually
used. <<<

It wasn't made too late - there's a race real similar to it that still
exists!  In fact, they had one here last June that went from one coast to
the other, and it was called Gumball 3000.  Of course, it's still a highly
illegal race, but that didn't stop some EXPENSIVE cars from showing up.  A
lot of the entrys were people in exotics (such as Tuscans, Audi RS4's, Lotus
Elise's, etc.) from Europe, but there were even some V6 Mustangs.  Even
Playboy entered the event with a new Cooper! : )

This race is ran in different countries every year, and I am not sure what
country they plan on running in next, but here's a good link to the event
that happened last June:


http://bmwm5.com/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?s=bd133f431ada5cc77d8a687d58cee9
f6&forumid=28

Download ALL the videos you can off that page - they are all AWESOME!
There's also a lot of fun reading material there, too! : )

Josh Salaets
95 SHO MTX (See it here: www.cardomain.com/id/sh0gun)
85 Omni GLH-T (Autocrosser)
Eugene, OR