The Great Race originally published this article on Feb 18, 2026
I’ve witnessed numerous changes to the Great Race over the years: vehicle vintages, length, days, checkpoint operations, allowed equipment, course instructions, and more. The availability of the Timewise Speedometer was one of the more significant changes and did much to level the playing field.
Back in the early 1980s, I was learning how to navigate in SCCA national and regional events under the tutelage of Clark Thorpe. In 1983, the first year of the Great American Race, Clark was tapped to run the checkpoint in Salado, Texas, and I was his assistant. We would clock and log the cars as they passed the checkpoint sign in front of our table. The competing vehicles would then have to pull off the road and stop. On small slips of paper, we would write the car number, the time they crossed the checkpoint, and then assign an out time (typically two minutes after they arrived). Runners would take these slips up to the competing vehicle. There would be another sign about 100 yards down the road, marking the starting point of the next leg.
Checkpoints were entirely manual, and checkpoint crews did not move. There were probably 40 or more individual crews spread across the route from Los Angeles to Indianapolis. Clark was a former SCCA National Rally Champion, and after that first year, he was recruited to be a navigator. He did that for a couple of years and then joined the Great Race staff.
1986 – My first time navigating in the Great American Race
I received a telephone call in June of 1986. It was Clark Thorpe, he asked, “What are you doing the next two weeks? I’m out in Los Angeles for the start of the Great American Race, and there’s a guy out here looking for a navigator.” I replied, “I don’t know how to navigate without an odometer.” He said, “You’ll figure it out.” The next day, I was on an airplane and on my way to becoming the navigator for Ted Holden in his 1935 Chrysler Airflow.
The Airflow was equipped with its stock speedometer, and the odometer was taped over. It was 6 inches in diameter and had individual MPH markings from 0 to 120. With the race having a top assigned speed of 50 MPH, only 140° of the face was usable.
On our first day of competition, running with the speedometer needle on 50, all of our times were early. The next day, we tried running at the 49 mark on the dial when the assigned speed was 50 MPH. All of our times were late. Next, we tried running at 49.5 MPH for an assigned speed of 50. At the end of the speedometer check, we were only off by a few seconds, and could adjust for that every 10-15 minutes when on the clock.
Looking at the face of the Airflow’s speedometer, you can see that maintaining 49.5 MPH would be a difficult task. Then, what do you do for an assigned speed of 25? Try to maintain 24.75? What about 35 MPH? The finish line was New York City, and somehow, we managed to pull off a 16th-place finish.
During the 1986 race, I met a few people who are still involved with the Great Race today. Director of Competition John Classen was a competitor that year, navigating for Curtis Graf. Curtis is still competing, and now I’m navigating for him. In 1986, Vickie and Steve Atkinson handed me the day’s course instructions every morning, and they will be doing it again this year. Be sure to read Vickie’s account of their 1986 experience in “Murphy’s Law.”
I also met Kyle Martin in 1986. Kyle and I quickly became inseparable in the vintage rally world, and he was the only person I rallied with throughout the remainder of the 20th century. In some of our first discussions, we realized that having an accurate speedometer would be crucial to our success. It was time to build a custom speedometer.
1987 – Building a custom speedometer
We looked at many options and settled on using a speedometer from a Datsun 240Z, although I don’t recall the reasons why. Its dial read from 0 to 160 in 10 MPH increments, so we knew it would require different gearing and a new face. We ended up with gearing that would provide a 0-60 range for the usable sweep, and a faceplate 6 inches in diameter (the maximum allowable size at the time).
Our first task was to determine where the needle would be at 50 MPH. Once we knew the angle between 0 and 50, we could then divide it by 50 to determine the angle between each 1 MPH increment. Using this information, I designed and printed a new face. Yes, there was spreadsheet software in 1987.
One of the first things we discovered was that the speedometer movement was not linear. While we had it fairly well dialed in at 50 MPH, traveling the same course at 40, 30, and 20 MPH did not produce the expected times. In fact, they produced some surprising results, such as being too fast at the 20 MPH mark (21.6 MPH measured) while being too slow at 40 (39.8 MPH measured). See the image at the top of this article.
At that point, we realized our task of building a custom speedometer was far from over. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were fighting the non-linear characteristics of the spring inside the speedometer.
We spent many days testing, analyzing the data, printing a new face, and testing again. Our customized MPH markings eventually produced consistent results at speeds from 15 to 50. On the final face, the angular distance between the MPH markings was different at each speed.
However, we were not getting repeatable results on subsequent days, and even between morning and afternoon runs. We suspected it was probably heat differences from tire expansion. We didn’t know how to find the root cause, let alone adjust for it. Figuring we had done all we could do, we entered the 1987 Great America Race from Disneyland (California) to Disney World (Florida). We ended up taking 4th place overall and winning the Goodyear Most Improved Award.
1988 – Adapting to an open vehicle
Kyle built a new car for the 1988 Great America Race, a 1932 Ford Dirt Track Racer, dubbed “The Spirit of America.” This car is still competing today, and you may recognize it as the “Stars & Stripes” vehicle of Team Stahls. Since we were now comfortable with our custom speedometer, Kyle adapted it to work in our new car. To make sure it was properly aligned with the driver’s field of vision, a mounting hole was cut right into the windshield.
When in an open vehicle, waterproofing becomes another item to deal with. You can see in the accompanying photo that our waterproofing concerns were alleviated by encasing the unit in a toilet plunger and securing it with duct tape.
This setup provided us with several top-10 finishes, but we never made it to the winner’s circle. We were still experiencing day-to-day inconsistencies and variations we could not account for. By 1990, some of the more competitive teams were heating their speedometers. Seeing their success, we added a small light bulb to supply heat to our speedometer.
It helped some, but it was not enough. We later learned that to mitigate the non-linear thermal effects of the speedometer spring, the temperature needed to be maintained to ±2°F. Eventually, the Great Race put an end to these thermal gymnastics. Starting in 1994, speedometers were not allowed to have heaters or temperature-measuring devices.
2023 – Back in the saddle
After the 1991 race from Norfolk to Seattle, I took a 32-year break. Life got in the way, and the demands of family and business kept me out of the navigator’s seat. Living in Texas, I was able to participate in a handful of Great Race Texas events, which were similar to what we now know as the Spring Rally.
Returning to the Great Race in 2023, after a 32-year break, was shocking. It took me a while to grasp all of the changes that transpired while I was away. As previously stated, the introduction of the Timewise speedometer in 1999 is among the most significant of these changes (I will probably write an additional article describing all the other changes).
In my opinion, the Timewise 825 Electric Speedometer levels the playing field. The Great Race is no longer a matter of which team can build the best mechanical speedometer. The Timewise speedometer is a fully digital unit with a vintage-looking analog dial. It provides highly accurate and repeatable readings independent of temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. Plus, it has a 4-digit factor adjustment, allowing racers to fine-tune the speedometer’s accuracy to within 2 seconds per hour. Features we could only dream about in the 1980s.