Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tooltime on June 10, 2011 at 3:27pm

Being a Nv native and life long desert racer and nowadays a spectator, I do realize Rg did not reinvent the wheel here. Like you Nikal, the two of us have been around a while in this game. The Hummer looks so cool in my opinion,and with the Rally configuration, i.e. fuel range, closed cab, and some of the Rally specific systems, I bet other teams might start sniffing around to find an edge too.

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Permalink Reply by mj on June 10, 2011 at 4:01pm

Hell wasnt it Ivan Stewart that started it all with this truck

If i remember right he started out in class 1 before there was even a TROPHY TRUCK class

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Permalink Reply by Tooltime on June 10, 2011 at 4:12pm

This truck became hp limited and didnt have the wheel travel to keep up with the newer style of tt's that were quickly emerging. But this truck here was a fabricators dream. This thing should have said NASA on the side. It was a pretty piece.

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Permalink Reply by mj on June 10, 2011 at 4:22pm

Better still if we really want to go old school and stay with Robby how bout the old La Victoria truck . That was pretty much on the same idea as Ivan's wasnt it ?

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Permalink Reply by mj on June 10, 2011 at 4:33pm

Or ( Tool you'll appreciate this 1 cause you know its my favorite ) this truck it was the same idea too i think

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Permalink Reply by Chupakabras on June 10, 2011 at 4:44pm

this is the riviera truck? either way that one is awsome, love how robby drove that

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Permalink Reply by mj on June 10, 2011 at 4:52pm

Not sure think the Riviera truck was the 1 after this . Tog , Tool do you guys know ?

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Permalink Reply by Mike Kenyon on June 10, 2011 at 5:07pm

Or Nikal,he's pretty good with the history.

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Permalink Reply by Ken on June 10, 2011 at 5:14pm

Riviera was after

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Permalink Reply by NIKAL on June 10, 2011 at 5:42pm

The La Victoria truck was RG first Class 1 or at the time two seater's were called class 2 truck. After that TT were born by Score and that truck ran TT. Then RG built the Valvoline TT shown above. That truck is now the Riviera TT. The next TT built was RG's first mid engine TT which started life as a Toyota TT and was later changed to a Ford. He had many sponsors like Turtle Wax, Menards and eventually Cingular on that TT. That truck was sold to the Coynes who currently own it. After that he built the TT he is currently racing today. During the current TT build he built a sister truck for Chet Huffman. By building two TT's it split the expense in R&D. Chet eventually sold that TT to McMillins and that truck is now RG's 4 door prerunner.

Also for those who did not know when Score built the "Trophy Truck" class it was designed to be a Manufacture class. The idea was that a team built and raced the truck. But the manufactures and tire companies payed Score and put money into a Championship Points Fund for each truck that ran their product. (Here is where my memory gets a bit cloudy) I believe is was $10,000 per truck for the season? So example is if I was wanting to race a TT with a Ford engine and body and BFG tires, Ford would have to put $5 and BFG would put $5 grand into a Score fund for my truck. If they did not then I was not able to race in the TT class. At the time their were maybe 10 to 12 Trophy Trucks racing.

I think what did away with this concept was the fact that more people were wanting to built TT's and the manufactures could not afford to pay for each truck, and the manufactures off-road budgets were getting smaller and smaller.

I believe this money also helped cover the ESPN coverage with Dave Dispain and Marty Reed back in the day. That was the best TV coverage off-road racing ever had IMO.

A course I could be making all this up! But it does sound pretty good.

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Permalink Reply by Ken on June 10, 2011 at 5:13pm

Ivans was a mid engine, A-arm rear suspension................not staight axle.

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Permalink Reply by NIKAL on June 10, 2011 at 6:13pm

Also the Cal Wells PPI Toyota TT pictured above I believe was Chassis #2 as the original Chassis was built when these trucks were running in class 1 and class 2. Here is what the original #1 chassis PPI built that Ivan Stewart drove looked like. Both chassis #1 and #2 ran V6 engines until the later years with the black paint job. It is not clear whether a #3 chassis was built, but it was only the last year or two of racing this truck did it get a V8 engine.

I believe this picture was around 1989 and this might be from the Mint 400?



Before that the Toyota Ivan was driving for Cal and PPI was more like an unlimited class 7 mini truck.

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