Autocrossing: Running Wild
Image by Anthony Porta
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Jason Isley | 18 hours ago
If you’ve been autocrossing for any length of time, you are likely familiar with rules. No matter the discipline, participation usually requires analyzing a set of intricate rules, and those rules can be downright intimidating. Certainly, there is no getting away from many of the SCCA’s rules as those are in place for the sake of safety, but others – well, what if those were eliminated? The result could be chaos, or it could be Classic American Muscle (CAM), one of SCCA’s hottest new autocrosses categories.
The CAM category as we know it today is actually the adaptation of something longtime member and SCCA Regional Solo Development Manager Raleigh Boreen witnessed in 2014. “A fellow in Indianapolis named Dave Dusterberg, myself, and our wives were at a Goodguys event in Indianapolis and they were having an autocross,” Boreen says. “He said, how would we get those guys to come to SCCA events?”
The CAM category has thrived in an environment free from complex rules. Images by Perry Bennett
Around this time, Boreen and his wife Velma were searching for ways to assist in SCCA’s membership growth. “Velma and I had been tasked with how to bring some new members into the Club, so really what I did was take what Dave and I talked about at that Goodguys event and played off that,” Boreen explains. “We looked at what other groups were doing, and we thought we could do this. But I told then [SCCA Vice President of Rally/Solo] Howard Duncan that if the rules have to go on to more than one page, I don’t think we should do it. We want to make this thing as simple as possible and see what happens, and he agreed. The CAM rules have gone on to two pages because of safety equipment and things, but we have been able to keep the essence of the category very simple.”
The simple set of rules allows competitors from another series to easily transition into SCCA autocross competition, and vice versa. “You can have a car that can run in any of the three series,” Boreen points out. “You could run three weekends a month. You can run a Goodguys one weekend, Optima the next weekend, and SCCA the third. You might not have the ultimate car for any one of the three, but you have a car that can run with all of them. We tried to keep the rules open enough that someone could do that.”
This unique approach has paid dividends when it comes to finding new participants. “It is working as a recruitment tool,” he says. “We can track through SCCA’s membership department that we are getting new members to join and renew because of the CAM program. Right now, CAM is about 90-percent new people. In San Diego, CAM caught fire like crazy and lots of good things have happened down there. In the middle of the country it’s been huge. It’s brought a bunch of new people into the Club all over the country.”
A great measure of CAM’s success, beyond membership growth, is the CAM Invitational that takes place in Lincoln, Neb., during the Tire Rack ProSolo Finale in early September. “We worked with Speedway Motors the very first year – they came up with the idea for the logo,” says Boreen. “The first year [2014], the CAM Invitational had 24 cars in it, running early in the morning just one day on the ProSolo course, and it went over huge. It was like a car show, and everyone had a great time. In 2015, it grew to 32 cars. Now it’s so big we have our own course, and it’s run more like a Match Tour. We had over 60 cars in 2016.”