by Peter Walker
AONE Director

Ten cars, including two from AONE, participated in a rally organized by the Boston Area MG club, which started Sunday morning, October 28, in the parking lot of Ponte Vecchio (how’s that for an appropriate Italian name?) in Danvers. There were several MGB roadsters and two MGB-GTs, a Triumph TR-4, a TR-5 (or TR-250, as they were called in the States), a TR-6, a TVR, the burgundy Alfa GTV of Paul and Cheryl Leone, and my own 1977 Spider. There was also a late-model Monte Carlo SS (a Chevy Monte Carlo, not a Lancia Beta one), that seemed very idiosyncratic.

The cars started off at one- or two-minute intervals, and the rally master passed out a set of driving instructions when each left Ponte Vecchio’s parking lot. The instructions led the cars through a series of North Shore back roads and towns. Along the route, navigators had to answer fill-in-the-blank questions, and every once in the while the instructions called for the cars to stop and pick up an envelope that was hidden along the roadside and contained a playing card. At the end of the route, organizers gave each driver a final card to complete a hand of poker.

Unknown to most drivers was the fact that there were two different routes, so that following the car in front wouldn’t necessarily lead one on the right route. I was on the route that led through Danvers, Topsfield, Ipswich, Essex, and Gloucester. The final instruction was to turn around at the Gloucester Cinema on route 133, head back toward Essex, and stop when I saw either "red or something from across the pond". Having once owned an MGB-GT, I realized that "from across the pond" meant something typically British and, sure enough, half way back to Essex, I came upon a British pub named The Red Barrel, with a red London bus and a red Mini (complete with Union Jack painted on its roof) in front. This was where the rally ended, with a lunch of fish and chips and pints of Double Diamond, in good British fashion.

It turned out that the route I was given was far shorter than the other one and, since I passed one slow-moving MGB, I finished the rally first. But the Leones, in their GTV, won the rally, since they were the only team to answer all of the fill-in-the-blank questions correctly. I happened to mention that naturally I finished the course first—I was driving an Italian car. The Brits in the crowd didn’t take too kindly to that remark! With such a strong showing from the Alfas in the rally, we’ll have to see whether we get invited back again…