This past Saturday (Dec. 5th) we entered our V70 XC in a NW regional SCCA Rallycross. A rallycross is basically like an autocross except that it is held off road. The approximate .75 mile long course was primarily mud and gravel since the area had been drenched by record amounts of rainfall the previous month before the event. On the day of the event it rained and snowed non stop, so conditions were pretty miserable. Since the event was not too far away from Portland, we thought we'd enter just for fun. We pulled the 17" performance tires and wheels off of our project XC-R and installed a set of inexpensive 195-65-15 M+S tires on the XC's stock alloys in preparation for the slick conditions. We thought we'd have a pretty good chance at placing in the event if course conditions were poor. The course was located just South of Olympia Washington at the South Sound Speedway near Tenino WA. When we arrived, our hopes of winning our class quickly faded. The pit area was full of trick AWD Audis, Subarus, BMW's, Toyota All-Trac Turbos and even a few fully prepared rally cars. Oh well, we'd at least have some fun sliding around the course and slinging some mud. After tech inspection and a short drivers meeting the 2 liter class began to chew up the course. The course was extremely slick, it was taking most entrants 120 to 140 seconds to make it around the short course. Every other car was sliding off the course and racking up additional penalties for wiping out cones and missing gates.Most drivers didn't have the self control to stay off of the throttle in the slick stuff. It was incredible to see car after car come into the first hairpin way too fast and slide through the cones with the wheels at full lock and the brakes locked up as well. Especially since the track was in full view of the cars staged and waiting to run. While the 2 liter class was running, we got to work the course replacing all the wiped out cones and getting the penalty informtion to the score keepers by radio. I shared the XC with another ipd team member Tim Werner. Tim is a Solo II autocrosser of national caliber. When Tim passed through the timing light at the flying finish, the large L.E.D. display flashed 78.46 seconds. Oh great I thought, some one walked through the timing light during his run and caused a timing error. The rules stated that timing errors would result in another pass. I took my place behind the wheel and waited to be waved to the start area. I was starting to get a few buttrflies in the stomach as I pulled up to the starter. 5-4-3-2-1 GO! the starter yelled and the XC hooked up incredibly well, I made it around the course in 80.76 seconds. We were posting unbelievablely quick times considering the competition. Throughout the day each entrant eventually got 3 laps on the course. The times were combined to determine your fianl score, i.e. no practice runs or throwing out your worst run. Our best runs were our last runs. Tim managed a 72.2 second lap, my best was a 73.5 . The incredible thing is that we won our class (AWD over 2 liters) and we also won 1st and 2nd overall for the whole event. There were over 80 cars entered. The main thing that suprised me is that we pretty much smoked the competition. Tim is an experinced competition driver with several years spent training performance driving techniques at the Pitaressi Pro Drive School here at Portland International Raceway. On the other hand, I haven't done any "real" competitive driving in over 10 years. Maybe my motocross racing skills helped? Although I haven't done that for over 10 years either. I have to attribute alot of our success to the Volvo AWD, TRACS and ABS. From the magazine articles I've read and even from some of the postings I've seen here on the Brickboard I had the impression that the AWD system Volvo uses was marginal in comparison to the Audi Quattro system (there were several at the event). The completed list of official times from the event hadn't been calculated when we left, but I don't think that there was an Audi within 20 or 30 seconds of the XC's times. I also thought that the lightweight Subaru Impreza GT's would have killed us. Maybe it was a fluke, but we sure had fun!

PS, this is not an ad for ipd, I just thought that those of you that own an AWD or are considering one might find our experience helpful. From all the questions we got after the event I think we converted a few Audi and Subaru owners. Some of the Subaru loyalists didn't like the sticker we had plasterd across the tailgate glass of the XC,

SPEED KILLS, Drive a Subaru and live forever.....