2005: All Dirt, All the Time
For 2005, we decided to shake things up in a big way. Long reviled by readers, the Show & Shine and Engineering competitions were dumped, as were the pavement contests: Acceleration, Braking, and On-Road Ride & Drive were cut from the curriculum, being deemed unnecessary for vehicles that were no longer expected to be (and all too often weren't) streetable. We also added a brand-new task: the Trail Fix, a timed test of competitors' mechanical skills, teamwork, and trail-readiness.
Reader response this year reached an all-time high, with over 2,500 ballots (and more than 25,000 votes!) mailed in. It took us nearly two weeks to count them all, another TTC record.
Winner: Hey, you wouldn't want us to ruin the suspense, would you? We haven't even shown you this year's field! To see America's Top 10 Trucks for '05, check out next month's issue of Four Wheeler, and we'll have full event coverage in the December issue. 'Til then, if you absolutely can't wait, log onto fourwheeler.com for in-depth coverage. And keep an eye on these pages for news of our Top Truck Challenge 2005 video. With nonstop four-wheeling action, it should be the biggest and baddest DVD we've yet produced.
John Stewart: The agony of WD-feat
My favorite moment came in Year 1, when one Richard Pewe was on the verge of winning the first-ever TTC. The way I remember it, Rick entered the mud bog in his big-block-powered flatfender and drowned out just a few feet short of the lead.
No problem. Rick reaches back, digs around and finds a can of WD-40. He crawls forward, opens the hood, finds the distributor, and prepares to dry off the points with the spray. The can sputters. Empty. Laughing like a madman, Rick crawls back, digs down to the floor, finds another can, gets ready, and tries again. Empty. We all fall down laughing. Time ran out and Rick never got it started ... but he never got muddy, either. He ended up in second place. Thirteen years later, Rick is Editor of 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine, his flatty is still around, and I'll bet you 10 to one there is at least one empty can of WD-40 in the back.
Mark Williams: "How am I going to make this call to my wife?"
At TTC '94, Eric Graves drove his wife's 4Runner to the competition. He was under specific instructions not to damage it-it was her daily driver. During the Slalom Course, he caught a rut during a hard right-hander, popped up on two wheels, then rolled completely over and back onto its wheels. Everyone was stunned, worried that the driver and co-driver might be hurt ... but after driver and co-driver cleared their heads, the co-driver yelled, "Go! Go! Go!" The engine roared, the Toyota gunned it past the last two turns and the finish line, with everyone cheering at the top of their lungs-judges included. Driver and co-driver jumped out of the truck, arms raised in triumph, as if they'd just won Indy. Later, after assessing the bent body panels and broken windshield, Eric was heard saying with head in hands, "How am I going to make this call to my wife?"
Jimmy Nylund: The fountain of youth
It was the second Top Truck Challenge (1994), when the judges were still stupid enough to run the various obstacles in their personal vehicles [They still are.-Ed.], including the Tank Trap, and usually at night. This was Monday evening, when a fancy pre-event welcome dinner awaited both contestants and judges at a ritzy joint in nearby San Juan Bautista. The sun was setting, but five judges and their flatfenders were still in the Trap. Rick Pewe had lost three beads off his GPW (some more than once) and his converted A/C compressor finally seized, which burned the fan belt off. Overheating and practically immobilized, Rick needed to be winched out, which Soni Honegger was in a relatively good position to do. Ned Bacon, clad in his anti-poison-oak rubber outfit, waded Soni's cable to a stand of trees and rigged the strap and snatch block.
Soon the sounds of winching were joined by some less pleasant ones-those of a cracking tree. Before anyone could react, Soni had winched the tree right onto his now-not-so-flatfender. Turns out that Ned had picked the only dead tree in sight, and also put the strap some three feet up from the ground in an effort to improve the pulling angle.
With Ned and Soni trapped behind Rick and time running out, we had to abandon the stuck Jeeps and rush back to camp in the two remaining CJs. There, we piled into more streetworthy vehicles for a very hurried trip to the dinner that had already begun.
More upstanding patrons of the establishment surely wondered about the severely mud-covered crew that practically ran through the restaurant in an effort to grab whatever leftovers were still above room temperature. We scarfed down whatever we could, cold or not, and in a matter of minutes the party was over and everybody casually strolled out towards the entrance. That's when yours truly decided to clean up a bit before heading back to camp, using a cute little fountain in the center of the courtyard. Just as the last globs of mud came off my face and hair, the owner appeared. He stood silently next to me for a few moments, watching the ornamental basin disappear in a cloud of heavy silt, then said in a calm voice, "I've never thought of anyone using [the fountain] for that before."
We were allowed back at the restaurant the next year, and the judges' vehicles were all extracted from the Tank Trap by daylight on Tuesday. Both somewhat miraculous.