Nice Triple with some interesting matters arising

Got my Triple (the magazine!), along with the Edinburgh stuff and the Exeter regs over the weekend. Mine came on Saturday morning which was much better. I do hate it when it comes mid week and I am not around to fill in the entry form and get it to the local sorting office pdq.

 

I liked the new design of Triple and I thought the articles were pretty good. Lots of stuff from the committee quite a bit of which deserves discussion and comment less we get changes in the rules, or their interpretation, that is against the members wishes.

 

The MCC committee have been debating the suitability of cars, mainly it appears because of fear of adverse PR. It raise some interesting questions. My regular passenger has a rather special Escort that he trials occassionally and he has heard (2nd hand so it could be wrong!) that his car has been mentioned in despatches. It's an ex-Autocross machine with a roll cage, two fancy stripes but definately no advertising stickers!

 

Yes he could paint out the stripes, but what about the roll cage? We read that some of the commitee object to vehicles that look like rally cars "(roll cages, extra lights, non-standard paint schemes etc)" Now Mike Hayward could paint out the stripes but what does he do about the roll cage? Take it out because it would look less like a rally car or follow the Blue Book where under M 6.10.1 for Classic Trials it says "The fitting of a safety roll-over bar is recommended"."

 

Actually I agree with the spirit of what the committee are putting forward but I believe the Classic Trials community has to proceed with care in order not to alienate some of its loyal supporters. My view is that some of the extreme cars, mainly in class 8, are so good that organisers are making the sections harder and harder to stop them, encouraging more extreme cars, discouraging the more standard cars, making it more difficult to enter the sport and putting its long term future in jepordy just as much as adverse PR.

 

I sugggest that there needs to be considerable open discussion before the rules are changed in a way that gives some protection to existing cars but restricts the entry of new "un-suitable" cars and encourages more standard/newer/class one machines, not just with eligibility rules but the development of "class 0" type sections which don't wreck the machinery.

 

And I would of course ban trailers (sorry Stuart!)

 

Michael Leete