During Sunday's fuel break near the end of Thunderbird 2007, our closest competitor, Peter Ryce, and I discussed our morning. "Well, I'm handing you back some points," I admitted, "but I'm not going to give 'em to you all at once!" Ryce laughed, because he knew how desperately I wanted to hang on for an upset victory-and he and his son Tim were only half a dozen points behind us when we found out we were in the lead at the end of Day One.

Besides, at that point we were ready to quit.

You have to go back several years to understand our odd compulsion to compete in Thunderbird with a car that is older than most competitors in the event, back to an old, friendly T-Bird rivalry I've had with Bob Chandler, who still ran his ancient Datsun 240Z in Thunderbird. "I don't care about the overall finish," he said, "I just like to be the first two-wheel-drive car."

Like me, Chandler continued to drive a vintage car for the simple reason that he drove it before it was vintage! In his case, it's the very same car; in mine, it's the same model, the 1969 Saab Sonett in which I learned to drive sideways on ice and snow in Alaska back when you could still buy a Sonett new. But I was less concerned with finishing as the first two-wheel-drive car than with winning the historic class at Thunderbird, which always seemed to attract drivers of amazing talent. And in a two-wheel-drive car on ice and snow, the driver's skills are almost as important as the navigator's; a class win or a "personal best" is truly rewarding when you've spent two days imagining yourself as Erik Carlsson or Roger Clark or Hannu Mikola: choose your favorite hero!

But when ace navigator Russ Kraushaar and I started campaigning ancient croakers instead of modern all-wheel-drive cars, we didn't have too many ambitions toward an overall victory at Thunderbird. After all, the last time a two-wheel-drive car won Thunderbird was 1991, when Gary Reid, John Nispel, and Steve Richards pulled off the feat in a VW Rabbit Gti. In the Saab, we were just trying to win the Historic class, which had undergone an interesting political upheaval in the wake of Martin Wilson/John Rapson's 1997 Historic win in a Porsche 911S. Eschewing a Halda TwinMaster in favor of a Brantz odometer with larger, easy-to-read LED numbers, the two were criticized by some grousers for having "electronic rally gear," and whether this was the causative factor or not, the following year saw some changes in Historic Class rules: now we would be allowed any mechanical equipment, or any equipment more than 25 years old.

Which convinced us to try the Historic class-for this meant we could use an old Zeron rally computer! And though it may be ancient, the Zeron was the inspiration for today's TimeWise rally computers; it may be rather big and clumsy by today's standards, but it still calculates with accurate precision. Then, a few years later, rally officials took pity on the Historic class and opened it even to TimeWise computers-but I'm getting ahead of the story. Back to our original search for a Zeron 550, 660, or 770 rally computer and a proper car to put it in!

It took several seasons to procure a vintage Sonett-okay, a Saab Sonett II V4, for the purists-and equip it with a Zeron, but once we blew up our all-wheel-drive BMW in Thunderbird 2000, the die was cast; we would have a year to put together our Historic Class entry. The Sonett was purchased late in 2000, the Zeron cobbled in place, and the experiment was underway-quite successfully. And our Historic Class win in 2001 was a revelation. In a field of nearly 60 cars, we finished sixth overall! Then, during the Totem Rally that year, navigator Kraushaar, who has spent years tweaking the factor in four-wheel-drive cars as well as vintage beaters, made an interesting observation. "An all-wheel-drive car is always going to get some wheelspin," he said, "and you can't control which wheel is spinning. So a two-wheel-drive car running the computer off a 'dead' wheel really ought to be more accurate than a four-wheel-drive car!"

Well, perhaps. . . maybe. . . with a few caveats. First of all, the tradeoff is accuracy for traction; a perfect dead-wheel cable driving a fiendishly accurate rally computer doesn't help when you're trying to get a front-drive car up an icy hill. I have a mantra for these situations: "I can make it louder," I say, "but I can't make it any faster!"

Then there's that business of staying on the road. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can lose a rally by stuffing your car in a snowbank. Which is what I did the last time we came close to a Thunderbird overall victory.

There are limits imposed by weather conditions, too. For the last few years we've been blessed with a set of genuine Pirelli P Zero rally tires, skinny, many-studded donuts that dig down through the snow to claw at the underlying surface. But there are years when Thunderbird's weather will keep anything but a well-shod all-wheel-drive hero off the winner's podium. And of course you can't drive to the rally on tires like that, so we've been lucky to persuade friends like Brandon Harer and Jason Webster to carry the Pirellis for us; they have the room and we buy the beer.

Finally, there's the basic problem of running a 35-year-old car: You're running a 35-year-old car. There are times when just finishing the event counts as a victory. In our case, there are times when just getting to the rally should count as a victory.
And 2007 was just such a year.

First of all, the Saab's engine was pouting, with low compression in the #1 cylinder and an oil leak resembling the Exxon Valdez. The week before the rally, we went so far as to pull the engine, remove the clutch and flywheel, and replace the rear main seal. Then we had to put the engine back in the car and button everything up again with less than a week before the rally. And of course the windshield wipers failed two days after that, but we had almost a whole day to diagnose and repair those before hitting the road for Canada-by way of Costco so we could buy cheap oil, since all our work had failed to cure the main-seal leak!

On the long ride up to T-Bird, the car ran all right, though it wanted at least a quart of oil every 250 miles. The real problem began when we hit the hills of the Coquihalla Highway, where we realized that oil drain from the main falls mainly on the clutch; although the road was dry, we felt something very much like wheelspin if we gave it much gas in the uphill sections. Uh-oh; slipping clutch! This could be a challenging weekend indeed!

But one advantage of age is the wisdom of ancient automotive lore. I had heard long ago of many folk remedies for slipping clutches, including Coca-Cola, baking soda, and dishwashing detergent. We had time before the rally to try all three, since the Saab has a convenient access hatch to the clutch housing. NOTE: Here's some brand-new automotive wisdom. When you are funneling odd substances into a spinning clutch assembly, STAND TO THE SIDE!

Saturday came clear and remarkably warm, which made changing to the Pirellis a little less of a chore than it is in most years. In fact, as the rally began, we wondered whether the Pirellis would be overkill, but we soon found ourselves sliding around on enough snow and ice that we were again grateful for these secret weapons. Moreover, we found some amazingly slippery MUD, which had been laid over ice or something; it certainly didn't have the dependable sticky tendencies of summer mud! And then there was the legendary water crossing, which deserves special mention. This was a puddle-some would call it a lake-shortly before a cattleguard, which itself came shortly before a hard left. The timing-control car was parked near this turn, clearly visible as we approached, so the trick was to stay on time throughout this stretch, since we didn't know where we would be timed. (We assumed the cattleguard, but you never know.)

So we hit the water at a good clip. A giant bow wave engulfed the Sonett, and to our horror we discovered that the water was not a clear Canadian crystal liquid but rather an opaque brew of mostly mud. By the time I hit the wiper switch and the wipers had reluctantly risen from their beds to make a circuit of the windshield, we were through the cattleguard-good thing we were pointed at it when we submerged!-and we just had time to wrench the wheel sideways to make the left before collecting the control workers. That we actually zeroed that control is an element I attribute to clean living and constant prayer-not to mention the best navigator in the country.

Day One also had its share of the dreaded uphill slogs that make us envy all-wheel drivers. But this year we couldn't even attack them in our usual wheel-spinning fashion, throwing Sno-Cones in the air off our front tires and zig-zagging back and forth looking for traction, because anything but a gentle toe on the throttle uphill would give us clutch spin to go along with wheelspin. All we could do was tiptoe through the sections and hope for an occasional level patch, or even a downhill run; we could accelerate downhill with no clutch spin at all.

Then, when we were nearly through the last leg of the first day of Thunderbird, we came across a very odd sight: Steve Willey's and Eric Horst's BMW 325iX lying in the ditch! It was odd not only because these guys are ace rallyists, but because the road was straight, the speed modest, and the conditions mild. We figured it was a incident best chalked up to inattention, but Eric later revealed the cause: magnetic ditches.

Thank God for fiberglass cars!

By the time we passed the final control of that leg, though, we had our own difficulties staying out of the ditches; the car was not just twitchy, it seemed to have capricious ambitions, lurching first one way and then the other. It was worse when we hit the pavement for the endless transit to dinner and the overnight in Vernon. We assumed at first that we had a flat-or maybe two or three-but all four tires seemed round. But still it felt like the rear axle was pivoting-

"Oh, mannnn," I said as I pulled over again. "I bet I know what it is." You see, these old Saabs have a solid rear axle mounted in rubber at the center; to keep it straight, there are tie rods running forward from the outer ends of the axle. These are bolted to the body through the floor pan.

Or were, anyway.

Sure enough, the right-hand tie rod had apparently ripped out of the body and was flailing around aimlessly. The left one was loose but still close to home, so we limped on to Vernon, where we hoped to find welding torches or some other means of repairing the damage, at least enough to get us back home at more than 20 miles an hour. During this slow, arduous trek, Greg Hightower and Steven Kang kindly followed us into Vernon with their emergency flashers blazing, since the blinkers in a '69 Sonett are about as bright as fireflies; we parked under the port cochere at the hotel and made enough calls to know that we weren't going to be doing any welding that night. Ah, well: As the man said, "More whiskey-and fresh horses for my men."

At this point all we cared about was a decent meal and a warm bed. Russ went to the restaurant while I cleaned an accumulation of oil, grime, baking soda, Coca-Cola, and mud from my hands, face, and hair, and changed into clean clothes. Then I joined him for our hard-luck dinner and started asking around for baling wire. I figured if we took enough frapping turns around the jagged end of the trailing arm and through the holes in the body, it might stay in place long enough to get us back to Portland.

In fact, by the time we'd worked our way through a hot meal, I was feeling pretty confident. Erik Horst did, indeed, have a quantity of baling wire. We were warm and dry. We were well fed. And tomorrow is another day. Over dessert I started calculating: If we start after breakfast, we could probably be home by nightfall, as long as the baling wire holds. . . .
That's when Russ came back from checking the data on Paul Westwick's computer. "Before we make any decisions," he said, "you'd better go look at the scores."

So I made my way over to the rallymaster's throne, looking halfway down the page and then working my way up line by line. . . and up. . . and up. . . to find our car at the top of the page, just above the Ryces' Mazda. They had 16 points. We had but 10.
Well, shit.

Back up to the room. Off with the clean clothes, on with the pre-soiled garb. Down to the dimly lit port cochere where I lay in the driveway to get a better look at the damage. Hmmm; all four nuts seem to have backed off, but both bolts are still in place on the left side; that's a simple matter of cinching down the nuts. The right side, however-well, it had not torn out of the floor, exactly, but one of the bolts had lost its nut and fallen out, which allowed the arm to work against the remaining anchor until it tore through the arm's mounting tab. So the first order of business was getting the now-useless bolt out of the way-Vise Grips, anyone?-and then begging enough bolts and fender washers to reassemble the arm and secure it in place. . . not just well enough to get home, but sufficient to continue the rally!

I am touched and pleased to say that we were overwhelmed with help and advice. Bill McRae and Dave Harms, our favorite Historic Class rivals, hauled out entire tool kits. Eric Horst and Dan Comden scrounged bolts, washers, and more tools. (Actually, there were so many people eager to help that I can't remember them all, so please forgive me if I haven't thanked you properly-especially if you're the one who supplied the large fender washer!)

Before midnight, we had bolted everything together as well as we could, made a trial run to the gas station, and declared ourselves as ready as we were going to be for another day of clean, wholesome rally fun.

Sunday started with the Beaver Lake regularity, over 50 kilometers of hope-the-suspension-holds-together adventure. Here we had a number of epiphanies: If anybody asks why we waste all this time, money, and effort, all we'd have to do is point to this section to explain the joys of this game. Twisty, narrow, snow-covered lanes! Up-and-down roads all covered with ice! More freezing mud over frozen mud! Hard, concentrated driving, correcting the computer at every hard reference, lost in concentration, all our efforts focused on forward progress and staying away from the trees. It was delicious-and we knew we were in for a fight to keep our slender lead. Sure enough, we started taking points in a delightfully wicked set of uphill switchbacks, me feathering the clutch and consoling myself as I watched our penalty climb. "Well," I said, "we have six points to give away-and I don't think anybody's getting through here clean!"

It occurred to me, too, that if someone asked my favorite leg to this rally, I'd have to say, "Beaver Lake."

"But Beaver Lake is where you took the most penalty points!" they might reply.

Indeed: However, the rewards of the Old Car game lie mostly in the driving itself: setting up for a tight, icy turn, catching the first drift sideways with a quick flick of the wheel, then catching the rebound-twice, maybe three times before the car is truly straight again-all the while trying not to lose too many seconds off the merciless zero read-out, trying not to lose too much time in useless wheelspin, even-more-useless clutch spin. I swear there was a stretch that seemed like a hundred miles where I chased two lousy seconds up hill and down, through snow drifts and gravel berms, over hard-packed snow and splintered ice until finally, finally, the read-out grudgingly returned to zero at the far end of a long, smooth straight.

At the end of the shortened day, our efforts were vindicated: We had taken just three additional penalty points on Sunday. We had also re-tightened the bolts on the right-side trailing arm and fed the clutch another dose of baking powder, washed down with Coca-Cola, and given the engine another two quarts of oil to throw up on the clutch.

I call it the most significant win of my rally career. Certainly it was quite meaningful to me-not just because of all the help and camaraderie displayed in Vernon, but also because the assembled crowd at the rally's end appeared genuinely happy for our success. Everybody seemed to wish the best for the little red car and its two stubborn occupants: a Historic win on a historic occasion, the 50th anniversary of the very first Thunderbird Rally.

Oh: We hit a major snow storm on our way back to Portland. The windshield wipers worked almost all the way home.