To those lucky enough to have witnessed Targa Newfoundland first-hand, this photo might look familiar.
Only bigger.
That's because this is The Silverdome - not the one in Pontiac Michigan, but a velodrome in Launceston Tasmania, the day before the Prologue (practice) stage of the 20th Anniversary Targa Tasmania car rally.
Belleville-based PR executive Doug Mepham and I did the 10th running of the five-day Tasmanian rally, the Granddaddy of all vintage-car tarmac rallies, back in 2001.
We had so much fun the germ of the idea for Targa Newfoundland popped into our diseased little brains.
Eighteen months later, thanks to the efforts of Bob Giannou from St. John's and literally thousands of volunteers - and we cannot forget the tolerance and hospitality of thousands more Newfoundlanders - we had our first Targa Newfoundland.
2011 marks the 10th Anniversary of the Newfoundland event, and Doug thought it would be a nice sort of squaring-of-the-circle if we went back and did Tasmania again.
So here we are.
Rather than ship a car down here - it is horrendously expensive - he decided to rent one. It's a 1995 Mazda RX-7 Twin-Turbo, a Japanese-spec lightweight edition of a car that we already knew was plenty fast.
Did I mention Tas is like Newfoundland only bigger? There are some 340-plus entries here (compared to 70 - 90 for a typical Targa Newfoundland) of which maybe 280 are entered in the high-speed competition. The rest - typically older vehicles - do what is called "The Tour"; they run the same course but not at speed.
The machinery here is truly amazing. While the organizers make special efforts to attract vintage cars, there are plenty of modern cars here too. Tons of Porsche 911s, in various forms. Nissan GT-Rs. A surprisingly large smattering of American muscle - Corvettes, a new Camaro, a new Dodge Challenger, boatloads of Mustangs, including one built and run by Australia's Len and Gayle Cattlin who brought another Mustang to the first Targa Newfoundland - and won it!
All sorts of Aussie cars of course - Holdens, Australian Fords, even at least one 'ute'.
Some true exotics, like a brace of Lamborghini Gallardos, several Ferraris, and the Jensen CV8 belonging to now-retired but still world-renowned racing yacht builder Peter Ullrich.
Porsche often sends a few special cars - and drivers - to this event. The last time I saw former World Rally Champion Walter Rohrl, he was giving me rides in a Cayman R and a 904 GTS at a race track in Mallorca Spain. This week, he's here running a 911 SC which he drove in the San Remo (Italy) Rally in 1981, accompanied as he was then by co-driver Christian Geistdorfer.
Porsche has also dusted off a fabulous 908/2 roadster for Klaus Bischoff, the curator of their museum, and the 718 RS 60 Spyder which won the true original "Targa" event, the Targa Florio road race in Sicily. Here, it will be helmed by Bernd Ostmann, editor-in-chief of Germany's top auto magazine, Auto Motor und Sport.
I've barely scraped the surface.
I hope to be able to post semi-regularly on our progress during this event.
For more details, visit the Targa Tasmania web site.
Wow! Many, many years ago (close to 35), I had a female friend whose father owned a CV8 (in Toronto. One of the very few in Canada). I got to drive that car on occasion, and it was a bear. Manual rack and pinion steering. Chrysler V8 (330 ci? I forget). Adjustable shocks. Fiberglas body. British Racing Green. Looked hideous. But a whale of a lot of fun to drive. You have no idea how much fun it was to pull up to a stoplight in 1970 in this thing, with it rumbling away, beside some V8 Pony car, and just blow the doors off the Chev/Ford/Chrysler/AMC/ muscle car. Never got a speeding ticket. Just lucky I guess.
Posted by: Davep | April 05, 2011 at 01:47 AM