Happiness may be a warm puppy, but when it comes to rallies, The Jersey Devil from South Jersey Sports Car Club is still 100 shares of General Motors, Tiffany’s, Laurence Olivier, and Joe Namath all rolled into one. The Devil is, in a word, the greatest. This year’s version differed from previous years only in content, not in quallty. While previous Devils have featured 4 simultaneous starts in round-robin fashion for early results, this year’s model fashioned by Mac Cornforth and Don Stackhouse was a wild potpourri of loops designed to catch you for anything from 50 cents to over 2 minutes per mistake. No matter how sloppy you were, it was almost impossible to miss a checkpoint since the route instructions told you where they were, in some cases giving you official mileages and/or times to get there.
The afternoon section required an automatic U-turn at a sign ‘NJDR,” with mileage stopping at the sign and resuming at the same sign after you’d made your turn and come back. These signs were used on a long have-faith section where you were to make consecutive right turns until you came to a sign “BACON’S HIDEAWAY.” Four times you were brought down lonely, twisting paved roads that butted up against Jersey’s marshes only to end and four times you turned back to keep with the course for a 23-mile run before finding the sign you were looking for.
In the morning section, the special override was an automatic left turn whenever the last digit of the instruction you were working on matched the last digit of the route you were on, i. e. if you were turned onto Rt. 34 and your next instruction was numbered 14, you would make the first left off of Rt.34. It so happened that on the event you were on Rt. 551, working on a speed change at “COLONIAL” (instruction 40). As soon as you hit the sign you were working on Inst. 41 and had to make an automatic left turn. Those who failed to catch the automatic still turned down the same road by executing the next numbered instruction but were then working one instruction ahead of the correct one and got all balled up at the checkpoint.
The Ford Rally Team took the measure of Team Renault on this event, a switch from the Old Indian results. Roger and Kathy Bohl in the yellow and black Mach I took First Overall and First Equipped with 60 points, while Second Overall and Second Equipped went to the Bohl’s Ford Teammates, Al White and John Bain, who scored 83 for the day. Third Overall and Third in Equipped was the Renault 16 of Ted Rehman and Pete Fischer (147 points). McKeefe and Hauman in the other Renault finished 4th Equipped , Fifth Overall at 221.
Harry and Lynne McCall of Lakes SCC were best in the Unequipped Class with a very impressive 154 for Fourth Overall. J. White and B. Mendello were Second at 250, while the Krineys, Bob and Sandra, finished Third in Class at 337. Bob and Sue Hoffman took 4th with 585 while Joe and Eleanor Glaab won the Fifth Unequipped trophy with 784.
In SOP (Seat of Pants), all the marbles went to Boyd Spencer and Joan Mareski with 418 but not without a spirited challenge from Al and Betsy Jones, who were a scant six points behind at 424 for the Devil’s 15 checkpoints. Third went to Jim Wakeman and Bill Pitt at 460, while Fred Sayers and Mike Matter took fourth at 484. In Fifth spot were Dave and Maureen Landry, also trophy winners.
The only protest of the day involved an instruction: L at “BATTLEFIELD”; L after “BATTLEFIELD”; L, which was to be executed in its entirety once started and treated as three separate instructions. At least two cars took the turn toward “BATTLEFIELD” and once having done so, considered using the same sign as the reference for the next part, the after clue. The protest was disallowed for obvious reasons (though it’s possible to see how an over-wary rallyist might see a trap in this instruction). Had the control been discarded Mel Leeds and Jerry Greitzer would have finished the rally with 24 points instead of the 524 they took by missing a sign at least thirty feet wide and with letters four feet high. Well, sometimes the race is to the swift.
Click here to read the original article from Sports Car News – July 1969!
