This was in a Rally America news e-mail:

"Expect a surprise at Oregon Trail from one of the most surprising drivers in the Rally America series. Chris Duplessis and his twenty-year-old VW Golf have dominated the two-wheel drive category for two years. But the grey Golf won’t be at Oregon Trail. Chris will be a hired hand in Oregon in a car built by a magazine for SEMA, shall we say. Officially there’s been no announcement as of this writing but suffice to say you’ll be surprised at a “show car” being launched in the woods.

Feel happy for Chris, though. He’s getting a chance to fulfill his passion even though he’s leaving behind a well sorted rally machine. He said he’s helping with the transition of the car from show to go but, still, this will be the car’s first experience as a real car on real roads going real fast.

Check the Rally America Oregon Trail entry list to see what what car Duplessis is driving: rally-america.com/events/2010/Oregon/entries/

We wish them both well!"


There was an entry list that had the car as 2009 Scion xD.

I think that this must be this car:



The following thread has more pics of the car:
https://www.scionlife.com/forums/sho...hlight=sema+xd

 

Cool!
It's good to see this will be an actual driven rally car, instead of an XA 'rally' show car...

GO SCION!

 

I had actually been considering taking the drive down to OR to see this race, but now I think I'm really going to go! When I saw this from SEMA pictures I wondered if anyone would actually race it, very glad to see that they might.

 

I heard this car took 2nd place or something right? I'll have to look up the story here in a minute.

 

It looks like he came came in second in the 2 wheel drive class in the "National" version of the rally. The "Regional" version of the rally breaks 2 wheel drive down into further classes so he may have done better in his Group 2 class. Apparently the engine is totally stock, so he was up against much higher powered cars in the National 2 wheel drive class.

This is a link to the results page on the Rally America website:

http://www.rally-america.com/events/...s/liveupdates/

 

Found a little clip of the driver talking with some on-track footage near the end. Pretty cool, but obviously underpowered. Check his exit from the handbrake J-turn, ahaha. Definitely a stock motor on that thing...very cool though!

http://www.rally-america.com/news/665/

 

Sweet! make our community proud!

 

A video summary of the event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9_v6wdHVp8





There should be one more video coming.

 

To everyone who races in any type of event. Take heed of this picture and see where the driver's helmet is pointing...

Head and eyes are pointing directly where he wants the car to go...not where the car IS going. This is the PERFECT way to show how to keep a race line even at times when the car and the direction you want it to go aren't the same.


(Thanks for the pictures/video chuck47!)

 

Your welcome!

Here are several more videos. They are a summary of each day in the 2WD Max Attack class. Unfortunately no in-car video from the Scion as the Scion media guy would not give them any video (all the other competitors that had cameras did).

The video does work if you click on the link in the dark box at the top

Day 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByLM5...eature=channel

Day 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKC6jOKDNV0

Day 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPxQo...eature=channel

 

really cool, I went to stpr rally this year.

 

Wow that little thing looks frisky lol!

 

No love. They showed like 2 secs worth of vid when they got to the xD. Boo!

 

Thats because everyone else gave them in car video, but the Scion media guy would not give them anything. It's hard to much "side of the road" footage as any one camera location generally only gets the car once, and the Max Attack coverage is on a shoestring budget.

 

We got the footage this time from the New England Forest Rally (NEFR)! The Scion video guys were way cooler about it and we totally understand them wanting to keep control over their video. This time we have on car (its kinda quiet though and next time we're gonna try to get co-driver audio).

But here is more action with the Scion featured prominently since Duplessis was flying!

Day one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyAPrNCKBnI

Day two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DReRw3uay4M

And if you don't think the video quite did enough justice to how fast he was pushing, watch this at about 1:52 and listen to the Scion scream as he refuses to lift:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjg7bJBXhHk

 

That last video....good gesh, the xD sounded like a Freight Train coming. It definitely had a different presence when it entered the camera's line of site than any of the other competitors in the whole video.

 

Lovin' it guys. Keep up the good work and keep making us proud!