Go fast! - The unique Monte-Vegas Rally
02/28/2023
Unlike in Europe, rallying has never really been able to gain a foothold in North America. However, this does not mean that nobody ever tried to establish orienteering in the land of opportunity. One particularly ambitious project was to create an American counterpart to the Monte-Carlo Rally in 1959 with the "American International Rally". The destination: Las Vegas. Specifically: the Thunderbird Hotel, which opened in 1948 (and was demolished in 2000).
From Miami, Detroit, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Vancouver or Mexico City, the participants could set off on October 13 on a journey of around 3200 miles (5150 km) and five days to the gambling metropolis in southern Nevada. They had to pass various checkpoints along the way and meet a target time as accurately as possible at the end. The winners, Les Scott and Ted Sparks, were only 33 seconds over the target time in their Rambler at the end of the rally.
The field consisted mainly of European sports cars such as the Triumph TR3, Austin-Healey Sprite or Porsche 356, which were painted with the name of the rally, start number and start location. The driver of the VW Karmann-Ghia above also wrote a request to the traffic ahead on the front of the car, even if it was probably only understood by very few road users.
The Chevrolet Corvair in the crowd of sporty import cars is also interesting. The rear-engined saloon had only been presented to the public 11 days before the start of the rally. Fittingly, second place went to a Ford Thunderbird. The date for the second "American International Rally" from November 7 to 11, 1960 had already been set, but was then canceled. Most Americans probably found the newly emerging superspeedways more exciting after all.
