February 1973. University
of British Columbia Sports Car Club. Ron
and Paul Lychako took the 1973 Opel Ascona 1900
sedan to Canada representing MORE Opel Rallye
Team (one of three cars). . MORE was a parts
importer and service tuner for OPEL in the USA,
with parts generally supplied by Buick/GM in Europe
and Steinmetz Gmbh, a German race and rally tuner.
This little sedan had a 1900cc motor with twin
Weber 40-DCOE carbs, rally suspension, and was
pretty darned quick. It looked a lot like Opel's
FIA rally cars driven by Walter Smolej for Irmscher
Germany, Ari Vatanen of Finland, Tony Pond in
England, and Walter Rohrl of Germany, winning
the 1973 Czech, the '73 Danube, and the '73 Munich-Vienna-Budapest
Rally.
We left campus, flagged off by the Deputy
Mayor, and ran from Vancouver to Hope on a transit,
then over the Hope-Princeton mountain passes.
We turned north into the Tulameen valley on dry
roads and over the ridge into Merritt.
We were doing all right as part of
a large contingent from Puget Sound Sports Car
Club and another from Rainier Auto Sports Club,
both Seattle based. The dry roads turned
to snow covered and then to deeper snow claiming
a couple of cars. Somewhere late in the
first night the snow began falling in record volume,
putting six inches or more of new powder on top
of an existing base. We were pushing through
bumper deep snow along a creek bed and over several
bridges. We made all the bridges, others
did not. We came out of this valley to a
main highway, probably Merritt to Kamloops.
A short transit and we are all stacked up alongside
the road waiting our time into the hills again.
A couple of cars start out but
are gone only a short time when they come back
to the highway. They said they were having
car trouble. The rest of the rally tried
to traverse the deep snow; most failed.
I had been watching the voltmeter steadily drop
so I had killed the rear-window defroster to try
to keep the battery charging and use the driving
lights. We lost traction and momentum on
one very deep snow hill climb and as I couldn't
see out the back, I managed to plant us in a ditch
as I backed up for another run at the hill.
Paul and I managed to put on chains while in the
ditch, shovel and push our way back onto the road,
and ready everything for another assault when
headlights came our way. Back down the mountain.
The report was the road was "impassable".
We turned around, deciding to follow the crowd
rather than be snowbound in BC, in a blizzard.
On the way out traffic stopped because of an extraction
by "come-along". A rally car was in the
creek bed-the tree on the other side of the road
used for an anchor. The car was coming back
to the road nicely but we had to wait.
Back out on the main road, the locals led
us around the mountain, to where there should
have been a control. We were so late the
control left! We found later that we had
all been time-barred, out of the rally, no discussion,
no recourse, "force majeure". To be fair,
there were a couple of Canadian cars in our bunch,
but at the time we were certain of a conspiracy
against the cars from the States.
The two cars that started and quickly came
back? They had skirted the mountain, driven
backwards past our missing control, turned around,
entered the control from the right direction and
been timed in-with pretty low scores! These
two and some later followers of the same ploy
were the only finishers. Local knowledge
helps.
For years I thought these two were Randy
Black in the Datsun 510SSS and Sven Halle in the
Datsun 240Z. On T-Bird 2001 I found someone
else who knew this story and confirmed Randy Black
and Tom Burgess of BC. Sven having stuffed
before this. It seems Burgess had overheard
checkpoint crews discussing the route at a restaurant
a few days before the rally-He surmised the location
and recognized a detour opportunity when they
hit the deep snow. Rally Improv at its best.
First and second place were both Scandinavians
in Renault 8 Gordinis. Black and Burgess
finished tenth. Other Seattle-area drivers
in our same plight were Rod Johnson, Jerry Hines,
and Bob Chandler. 46 started, 33 checked
into the finish, only 22 were credited as finishers.
More Opel later hired second place driver, Taisto
Heinonen, to drive an Opel Manta 1.9 in the Olympus
and in the FIA Press-On-Regardless 1973 |