Category: Winter Trial Rally

We just finished the opening dinner of the rally and the participants are beaming with optimism about what lies ahead. As most participants are true classic car enthousiast, it’s easy to connect around the table. Here’s The organizer of the rally welcoming you to this blog’s updates:

In honor of another Classic Events rally, Carrera Copacabana a band of Brazilian samba dancers performed on stage and the contrast with our winter outfits could not have been greater!

The evening started with cocktails in the bar of the hotel here in gorgeous Sankt Wolfgang. Co-driver Joost Cohen welcomes you to the event.:

Le Mans Legend Gijs van Lennep has returned to compete in the Trial Class with a Porsche 356C with co-driver Ian Tullie. Victory has eluded Gijs on earlier editions of this FIA rally, due to technical problems. Preparation by the State of Art collection has been meticulous so we all [...]

At 4 am the alarm awoke me rudely to the first of 8 days of early 911 fun. After a nice wonderful breakfast prepared by Mrs S, I set out to pick up my co-driver Joost in Zeist. Our schedule permitted a quick espresso and we left to meet Fer and Gerard and their red 1973 2.4S Targa at the Dutch German border.

In the meanwhile we are at 1/3 of the 1.000 km track from Amsterdam to Sankt Wolfgang near Salzburg, from where the Winter Trial 2010 departs tomorrow morning. We have dodged two traffic jams already and missed a pile up by 2 minutes, judging by the limited size of the traffic jam…

Our 2.7 RS engine hums away beautifully and Joost and I discussed what a huge job it is to get everything, particularly the car, ready for a rally of this magnitude. Then again, the way our Silverado behaves, drives and [...]

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m on my way back to Amsterdam from a foreign assignment. My plane has just come in so there’s good chance I’ll be arriving in Amsterdam as scheduled. Tomorrow is T-2 for our Winter Trial adventure and I finally have time to consider how close our departure is now.

My friend Lex and my son Daan have been keeping an eye on the finishing touches to the rally car in my absence of the last 10 days. Our mechanic has been honing the wiring to the kill switch, which seemed vulnerable to chafing by the fuel tank. The Messerschmitt fuel pumps have been connected and double checked and to avoid risk around the ignition set up, Ton has downgraded it from optical to points-based. The logic being that we don’t know the origins of this ignition system (not OEM), so bringing spare parts is not a short term option. I didn’t [...]