The Automotive Adventures of Team Hall & Nass

Chapter One – Rent a Rally Racer

After some last minute changes, we had to plan to depart for the rally from our place in Dallas rather than from our home base in Las Vegas. When we came to this realization, we knew we would need to rent a ride versus bringing one of our own. C6 Corvettes are the vehicle of choice for Team Hall & Nass as we know the capabilities of them well. We rent a lot of cars from Hertz for business and could get a better deal than Joe Public. Plus, Hertz usually maintains their cars very well. So after some research, we decided that the Hertz ZHZ Corvette was our best rental option. However, this leads to the first lesson learned – Hertz performance rental cars are not as well maintained as they need to be!

We arrive at Hertz to discover that the two ZHZ Corvette coupes they have on hand are both what one might call NOT up to par. One has brake fluid blacker than the horribly old motor oil on the stick. Not driving that one! The other has obviously been wrecked in the front and not repaired properly. Alignment issues much?!? Both cars are missing part (or all) of the air dam, the cars look worse for wear and the tires are not the best looking. We’re not going down the road at speed in anything like that! Fortunately, sitting in the next row were three brand new ZHZ Corvette Convertibles that were not trashed (yet).

Here is where I’d like to say that Hertz is usually great to deal with and they really do a good job with their cars. However, if you’re reading this Hertz, if you can’t maintain the Corvettes any better than this, you really shouldn’t rent them out. That, or only rent them to people who already own them OR have sanctioned racing licenses who will (maybe) return them in a condition that you don’t have to do as much to maintain. Joe Public has no business driving one anyway, thus leading to many of them being trashed, I’m sure. Keep them for those of us who can drive and let the rest have a Camry. Just a thought.

Fortunately for our competitors, we had to select the convertible. Why? Without the hard roof and a lack of bolt in roll bars and harnesses, I wasn’t going to push it as hard. Also, you have to keep it under 167 MPH or the convertible top will structurally fail. I happen to know that the coupe is good for 190 and cruises along nicely in feel and on all the temps at a constant 170+. So fortunate is probably the right word.

Think we’re bragging? Well, ask other Dustballers we ran with. If they were near us at any point in the rally where we weren’t “behaving” specifically to avoid Hamthrax or deep into the twisties, then they likely know how lucky the field was we didn’t have the safety equipped coupe with us. That said, you can probably guess what we’re going to be bringing to the Dustball next year …! 😉