My wife, Sandy, has informed me that as of 2009 she was retiring as editor of Salina Region’s newsletter, The Write Line (also as the region’s membership chair). Somehow in a fit of musical chairs at a recent board meeting I ended up with the jobs.
Sandy has done this since Y2K, quickly proving herself to be the Best Small-Region Newsletter Editor in the Country — three first-place awards (and two 2nds) from SCCA in her first five years before SCCA changed the rules of the game to put newsletters and websites into a single all-encompassing category. Which struck us as kind of like putting automobile and bobsled racers into a single best-driver category (and Geoff Bodine might ask, what’s wrong with that?). 
So anyway, I’ve got this thing now, which lets me indulge in something I thought I’d do for some time — do a monthly column on whatever solo topic strikes my fancy. About the same time Scott Hearne came and asked if I’d do a column for his solo-centric website Rogues-Racing.com — for the same salary I get as editor. Wow, who can pass up a chance to get paid twice for the same job!
And so, Assorted Nuts will become a regular feature in both The Write Line and Rogues-Racing.com, following the trail blazed by our inimitable Abner Perney whose Just Idling Around is reprinted in John Kelly’s North American Pylon monthly autocross newspaper.
People keep making references to me as if I’d begun autocrossing when wheels were made of wood and tires of steel (e.g. Conestoga wagon). No, not quite that, but when I bought my then two-year-old Spitfire in 1966 it was shod with OEM Michelin X steel-belted radials that lasted another two years before I finally wore them out. Still have the car, don’t still have the tires. What’s on it now is twice as wide, 2� shorter and don’t last near as long.
I got started autocrossing in 1965 — okay, yeah, I am from motorsport’s Jurassic age — doing an event on Long Island in New York. I’d gone to NYC to visit my brother, Buck, for two weeks, and he had this MGA he took to gymkhanas every weekend. The visit crossed three weekends and at the third event I asked if he’d let me try. The event was called the Virgo Autocross put on by Buck’s own club, the by-invitation-only Team X. The date was Sept. 5, 1965. The site: Mitchell Field at Hempstead, N.Y. The course, by today’s standards, would at least be in the Solo Trials range — he hit 4th gear, I was well into 3rd.
Back then they didn’t class by prep levels. If you had an MGA, bone stock or full-race, you were Class F, along with a passel of Triumph TR3s, a couple of Turners, a Sunbeam Alpine and an Alfa Romeo. Class F was the biggest class at 21 cars, Buck was 5th, and I was 12th. Yes, I still have the flyer, the course map marked with my incredibly naïve driving notes, and the results.
I was a student then at the University of Kansas and my daily driver was a Vespa motor scooter. I came home from New York, went to my local Triumph dealer and bought my ’64 Spitfire. The Vespa never turned a wheel again under my hand. My first local events were rallies until I found out how to locate the weekly autocrosses held in Kansas City, which by the next spring became an every-Sunday commute.
Back then, SCCA was a very minor player in the game, whether called gymkhana, autocross or slalom. Local councils ruled. The Kansas City Council of Sports Car Clubs encompassed marque clubs driving MGs, Triumphs, Mustangs and Falcons(!), Corvairs, Alfas, Porsches, a couple of generic clubs that didn’t care what you drove, and KC’s own by-invitation-only clique, Group XXV. Someone had an event every weekend. Sometimes you could choose from two, or try to make both. Rules were pretty similar to what I’d seen in New York, although classes and groupings were different. But I still found myself out there up against full-race Spitfires and Sprites, but as bad as I was then it really didn’t matter much. It was still totally addictive, and the racers would give me tips. One of them took the time after an event to school me on how to get a 2-1 downshift in the Spitfire’s non-synchro gearbox. Yeah, we needed first gear a lot then — today’s drivers probably cannot even comprehend a slalom on 25-foot centers or 180-degree pin turns (handbrake turns!) in the middle of a 2-lane road.
Forty-four years later I’m still doing it. Still in the same Spitfire although it is hardly still “the sameâ€? as it’s now prepped to full-race. Two years ago I finally pulled off a double-dip delight, winning both road race and solo championships in the Midwest Division — the only year the car was “GPâ€? in both disciplines (G Production/G Prepared). In solo it had been DP up to the year before, in racing it moved to HP the year after.
I tell people I race as budget allows (these days it doesn’t), but I’ll always solo. I may be old, fat and gray-haired, but in the driver’s seat I’m a kid again and I don’t plan to grow up anytime soon. –Rocky Entriken
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