Well, this story is kinda Chapter 2 (or three) of my old '65 Karmann Ghia that I bought from Cynthia Shockley...

As I was telling' ya'll, I had modified the poor car for autocross racing and it as fast as it was it was equally ugly...

(How ugly was it, Boberdz???)

Well, I took it to Manassas for the semi annual Bug Out, won the slalom event with it and had a picture of it printed in the Hot VW magazine where the writer described it as "semi-ugly"... So I wrote the magazine and complained that the writer had described the car accurately... The editor printed a correction in the next edition that read, "The slalom event was won by this ugly Karmann Ghia with a small reprint of the pic that had run the previous month...

A couple months later a buddy told me about an autocross coming up sponsored by the Corvette Club of Virginia... The event was a two-day happening at an airport in Crew, Va... I got a hold of the an ad for the event and it read "open to everyone" so I figured I was part of "everyone" so put my racing tires on the Ghia and trailer-ed it behind my 60 VW bus to Crew...

When I got there with my son's mother we - no, the car - got more than a fair share of dirty looks from the Corvette folks who weren't at all happy to have such an ugly car compete against their shiny Vettes... Might of fact, we got a tad roughed up by the tech people who tried to find some reason no permit the car in their event... There were a few semi-heated words but they finally agreed to let me race and placed me in A/Mod (top class) to insure that I wouldn't beat out any of their B/Mod Vettes...

Well, the 1st day went real well... I had 3 or 4 runs and ran within 5 seconds of the A/Mods and had better times than any of the B/Mods, which I'm sure made these folks pretty mad 'cause as the after noon went on an camping spots were being taken seems that no one wanted to camp anywhere near us so we ended up way down at the end of the runway of the airport, a good 1/4 mile from the Corvette people...

The following morning a couple of Corvette guys walked down to where we were camped and tried to play nice and act as if they had any interest in my car, which they didn't... Then one said that a lot of the Vette people offended that I had brought the car to a Vette event... Hey, there were several Z-cars, a couple of Porsches and a few big muscle cars so...

...I ran it early and nailed the run and was within a couple seconds of the slowest A/Mod and a good 7 seconds ahead of anything in B/Mod - where I should have been teck'd - and it was going to be a real hot afternoon and I knew I had to tow the car back behind my bus so I just put it on the trailer and headed out... Out meant having to drive right thru all the Vette guys, half of whom I had bettered, so I took my time driving thru the pit area and gave a few waves, a couple winks, and completely enjoyed the entire grand exit, as I am sure they enjoyed it as much...

I'm sure that this story is being told from time to time when the old Vatte club guys get together for beer and story swappin' and would love to be a fly on the wall to hear their side...

Anyway, this ends Chapter 2 of "My Ugly Karmann Ghia" story...

B~