Lost Opportunity?

In the world of extreme sports, ESPN X-Gamer and off-road motorcycling maestro Travis Pastrana is big — Michael Jordan big.

The 20-year-old motocross racer has a high-profile video game named after him, he's inked high-dollar deals with Puma AG and American Suzuki Motor Corp., and has been competing in motorcycle “freestyle” stunt events funded by multimillion dollar corporate sponsorships since before he could drive.

So why is he lately spending his time in the U.S.'s decidedly low-profile Sports Car Club (SCCA) of America's ProRally series?

“Have you seen it?” Pastrana asks. “Who wouldn't want to be in a car flying through the air around blind corners? It's great!”

Great, or just downright reckless (ProRally cars routinely top 100 mph (161 km/h) on narrow trails through the woods), Pastrana's participation in this extreme motorsport comes as a new generation of race fans are becoming old enough to buy cars. The rip-roaring pace of rally — which sends drivers through timed wilderness stages with the help of a co-driver and all-wheel drive — is proving to appeal to the coveted Gen-Y crowd.

But the SCCA, known for its history of sanctioning grassroots U.S. racing leagues, isn't necessarily cultivating this new class of racing fans — even though its participants pour tens of thousands of dollars into the organization's 9-race season and manufacturers have sponsored with millions of dollars since 1998.

Strangely, though, manufacturers such as Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., both with lavishly funded programs in the much larger, internationally flavored World Rally Championship (Ford recently paid big-name driver Colin McRae $7 million annually to drive a Focus rally car), currently are ignoring ProRally. This despite their heavy reliance on sales in the U.S. market.

Those companies prefer the WRC, which is second only to Formula 1 (F1) open-wheel racing in terms of international popularity, according to the Federation Internationale de L'Automobile (FIA), which also oversees both series. The WRC does not host a U.S. event.

Like NASCAR stock car racing, which is wildly popular in the U.S., WRC programs sponsored by Ford, Mitsubishi, Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.'s Subaru brand, Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. and three European auto makers, legitimizes the performance, technical and durability claims of auto makers, says U.S. rally promoter Jin Takemura.

But most manufacturers see little return in ProRally, so, U.S. rally interest is being driven mostly by video games and televised overseas WRC events, he says.

“Kids are playing rally video games before they're old enough to see over the steering wheel of a real car,” Takemura says. He points to the success of such “gaming” hits as Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.'s best-selling PlayStation game called “Colin McRae Rally” and a host of other WRC-themed offshoots.

The game's U.K-based developer, Codemasters Software Co. Ltd., says it has sold 6 million copies of the McRae game and similar rally games sell with almost equal success, especially in the U.S.

Speed Channel, a cable network owned by News Corp., broadcasts highlights of all 16 of the WRC's 3-day events on Sunday nights during the season at 9:30 p.m. EST, which, according to Neilsen Media Research television ratings, is among the hottest-rated time slots available to programmers.

Although Speed Channel's reach pales in comparison to bigger cable networks such as Disney, ESPN and Fox News, WRC viewers in the U.S., on average, are 38-year-old males with a mean household income of $69,825, according to network data.

Couch potatoes and so-called gamers in the U.S. mirror a larger international following. As many as 12 million people attend WRC events on five continents throughout the year and another 550 million people watch them on television, according to the FIA.

Ian Beavis, Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc.'s senior vice president-marketing, says if not for video games, the company's popular AWD Lancer Evolution, a streetgoing knockoff of the company's WRC rally car, would never have come to the U.S.

“(The Evolution) probably never would have come to this country as quickly as it did if it wasn't for the fact it was on a video game and (consequently) we were getting people asking us to bring it here,” he says.

Mitsubishi followed Subaru of America Inc., which introduced a street-legal interpretation of its Impreza WRX rally car to the U.S. market in 2001 and followed it with the high-powered STi version in 2003.

Unlike its prime WRC rivals, however, Subaru long has sponsored ProRally and currently holds the greatest U.S. “mindshare” among U.S. rally fans, according to Takemura.

Beavis — a native Australian with a passion for the WRC, gaming and an understanding of the U.S. demand for rally-car knockoffs — defends Mitsubishi's decision not to invest in the American ProRally series sanctioned by the SCCA. After all, when Mitsubishi was involved in ProRally last year, spending around $2 million to run two cars, the company saw little return and decided to cut the program in light of its financial trouble.

“What we have not been able to do is (confirm) a direct connection to involvement in (U.S.) rally and people shopping our vehicles,” Beavis insists. “If someone could crack that case for me, we'd be having a completely different discussion.”

Instead, the discussion in ProRally currently is one of survival.

While WRC events attract as many as 1 million people over a 3-day period, many of whom occupy dangerous perches for days along backcountry blinds and narrow mountain passes just to be close to the racing cars as they pass — the most popular of ProRally events, such as the Rim of the World that takes place 70 miles (113 km) from Los Angeles, is lucky to attract 6,000 over the same time period, admits Takemura, who promotes the event.

The underlying problem, says longtime ProRally driver Cindy Krolikowski, is financial. WRC is funded by the multi-million dollar rally budgets of auto makers and backed by $4 million to $5 million promotional campaigns of the cities that host the rallies, such as Auckland, New Zealand.

Auckland reckons it's the beneficiary of a $21 million influx during the 3-day WRC event.

Drivers like Krolikowski have to spend about $4,000 of their own money in order to participate in ProRally in cities that do virtually nothing to promote the events.

In the U.S., although SCCA rallying has existed more than 20 years, there is little understanding of the sport outside of television and video games, according to Lance Smith, whose Subaru-backed Vermont SportsCar in Burlington, VT, is the closest facsimile of a factory-sponsored “works” team in ProRally.

Rally races, which typically take place in remote areas such as the California desert, Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Maine's deep forests, are overshadowed by the high-horsepower, oval racing tastes of U.S. racing fans visiting easy-to-access venues.

“America likes cubic inches and high horsepower. It is hard to get our word out there, because everyone's used to 700-hp NASCAR race cars,” says Smith.

In contrast, high-revving U.S. rally cars, ranging from Dodge Neons to Mitsubishi Evolutions — rarely turn out more than 300 hp.

Mitsubishi's Beavis agrees: “You've got so much inertia in NASCAR and so much investment, it swallows up everything else.”

Ford, whose NASCAR budget rivals its WRC budget, is equally down on the U.S. rally scene, mostly because U.S. race fans are averse to the spread-out nature of rally. Deep-pocketed sponsors are likewise averse to the limited coverage their logos will get as a result.

“The thing about rallying in the U.S. (is) you've got in Europe an infrastructure that has grown up over many, many years that is tolerant of the disruption having a rally in their local community,” says Tom Scarpello, marketing and sales manager-Ford Special Vehicles Team. “I just don't think we have the tolerance for (rally) because it is such a niche sport.

“And really, at Ford, our racing strategy has been to focus on the major series and get the maximum exposure, maximum amount of eyeballs. In this country, SCCA ProRally is not that series and we had really not allocated any resources against it.”

Ford SVT's only stake in U.S. rally came in 2003 when it gave “goodwill” technical guidance to an Air Force-sponsored ProRally driver and his $500,000 AWD Ford Focus in the series. That driver retired and Ford's nominal involvement was phased out.

Ford never tried to assess U.S. awareness of its ProRally car.

Many say the SCCA is to blame for rally's place at the bottom of the U.S. motorsports barrel. Although nobody will on record criticize the organization for mismanagement, Vermont Sports Cars' Smith says there has always been a rift between auto makers who spend millions to participate in ProRally and the sanctioning body that does little to help maximize the investment.

Beavis says that while Mitsubishi spent some $2 million on its ProRally program last year, it probably had to double that in order to effectively market its involvement. Even then, there was no correlation between participation and actual car sales, mostly because there was no awareness of ProRally.

A spokesman for Subaru says the SCCA needs to strengthen its rally business plan if auto makers are to participate in ProRally in full, WRC-like force.

“I think it will probably take a little more coordinating between the SCCA and manufacturers. It also needs to find out what spectators want.”

Despite its current disarray here, Beavis, like Smith and Subaru, believes it is just a matter of time until rally's popularity as a motorsport catches up to rally's popularity as a video game.

“My take on it is, because you've got people through the system in gaming and playing rally games and all those sorts of things, I think there can be some growth in the sport (among) the tuner crowd,” says Beavis. “There's a lot of things going on with that young group.”

Mitsubishi promises it will return to ProRally when, and if, its financials are sorted.

Ford, much like Subaru — which continues to sponsor SCCA ProRally and Vermont SportsCar despite its having pulled its $2 million factory program after Mitsubishi left — continues to market to the “tuners” attracted to rally, although Scarpello says the company will not get involved in ProRally.

Ford in April launched a Focus performance catalog designed to market genuine rally parts backed by Ford Racing. DaimlerChrysler AG's Dodge Mopar parts division has a similar program and it does spend some money on a ProRally team made up of Dodge engineers that competes in the 2-wheel-drive class.

Scarpello says parts sales satisfy a tuner's appetite for rally parts without the NASCAR-type of overkill and hype that often turns off the young buyer. For Ford, that's involvement enough.

“(Tuners) really covet what is not available here in the States. That, I think, is kind of what adds to the mystery and desire. The fact that professional WRC is not in the States in some ways helps fuel the mystery and helps fuel the people who want to put stuff on their cars,” says Scarpello.

Jamie Allison, manager-Ford Racing Performance Parts, says parts sales make more sense for the company than bringing a rally-inspired Focus production car to the U.S. market because it finds most rally fans are too young to buy a new vehicle.

Subaru also is in the parts game, encouraging its dealers to inform customers about rally and other grassroots racing programs in which — unlike NASCAR or open-wheel events — the average customer can actively participate with a vehicle bought from a dealer.

The strategy is paying off, according to Ferdie Ang, who is performance parts manager at South Coast Subaru, which has been open less than one year.

South Coast, he says, makes as much money selling rally-oriented parts such as turbo kits and exhaust systems as it does selling new cars. He says it's common for a customer to spend as much as $12,000 outfitting a $30,000 WRX STi with aftermarket parts. Takemura says that while parts sales will sustain the relatively modest rally following currently in the U.S., eventually those tuners will define the heart of the market. “The motorsport that they choose today will be the motorsport that everyone chooses down the road.”

The question is, will ProRally be that motorsport?