It's known that if you own a 4x4 shop, then you most likely drive a 4x4, and what better way to find more customers than to take some of your shop's best-built rigs and go compete against other shops from your area? The folks at the Rockport Off-Road Park, outside of Rockport, Illinois (the same place we visited in our 2004 Ultimate Adventure trip), decided that some friendly challenges and trash talking by owners of local shops were reasons enough to set up a competition.
Four shops were invited-TNT 4x4, John Toumbs Repair, Axleboy Enterprises, and Asshoggers (AH) Off Road. Each could bring three vehicles built by their shops-either employee's or customer's rigs-and they would compete as a team against the other shops. Each team has seven members, three drivers, three spotters, and one team captain who could help spot or repair vehicles during each stage.
Rockport got five local 4x4 clubs to manage and judge each section of the competition, which consisted of a mud bog, a high-speed trail section, a dump-truck tow test, a technical trail section, and a rockcrawl. To keep everything moving during this one-day event each shop was required to have all three vehicles compete in two of the five stages. As for the three remaining stages, the shop only had to field one vehicle. The teams also had to decide which vehicles would run in each section at the start of the event, without any preview of what the courses looked like. They were gambling on which rig they thought would do best in a certain type of course. It came down to figuring out how many rigs to field in each event to get the strongest results with the least amount of damage to each.
To make everyone feel even better about thrashing their rigs, Rockport got five different businesses to sponsor each section. Each shop came to the event with a chosen charity, which would get a percentage of the sponsored money, plus the money raised by a raffle. The winning team would get an extra $1,000 from the other teams' $250 entry fee for their charity. So in the end, nearly $8,000 was raised, and one team, AH Off Road, got to go home with bragging rights as the Midwest Off-Road Shop Challenge Champs.
Think your local shop is up to the challenge? Well, they are planning more events and hope to have a National Shop Challenge eventually. For more information, contact Rockport Off Road Park, 217.437.JEEP (5337), www.rorp.com.