There are essentially two ways to react upon being told, "No, you can't do that."
The first is to accept that the odds are too great, the challenge too arduous. You can't sow a silk purse out of a sow's ear and you can't beat a ploughshare into a sword. So why try?
However, the second reaction is far more interesting. "Oh yeah?" it seems to say, "I'll show you." It takes fuel from the naysayers and uses it to fan a fire inside that has resulted in some of the greatest achievements of man: art, science, flight, adventure.
And that, dear friends, is how we've ended up with the Targa Truck, a 600 horsepower 1971 GMC long-box pickup truck that just kicked the bejesus out of Porsches, 'Vettes, Ferraris, and Lotuses at the gruelling Targa Newfoundland. It's the most improbable of racing vehicles, a weaponized shovel with a thundering seven-litre heart that's too long, too heavy, too old, and too ungainly to have any business being here. And yet it is here, and it's here to kick some serious butt.
For those of you who don't know, the Targa Newfoundland is probably this country's premiere tarmac endurance rally, and sits high on your humble author's personal to-do bucket list. Stretching over a full five days of racing, competitors rumble around the Rock on narrow, dangerous, winding roads, threading their way between the white-painted fishing villages and the rocky terrain. It's a rough-andtumble affair - just a few years back, somebody put a million-dollar Ferrari Enzo into the drink - with an attrition rate as high as a third.
So, you can't just show up in a pair of driving shoes with a track-day special. You need proper safety gear, a suspension built to take a constant pounding, oodles of speed and a mental constitution that's tough as nails. Enter Mark Bovey.
Bovey, a creative entrepreneur from Toronto, has had his truck for 26 years. He got the thing as a $100 beater when he was 14, a gift from his father, and it became a sort of rolling workbench. Father and son worked on it together for years, keeping the teenage Bovey out of mischief in the process, and letting Bovey Sr. pass along his skills in welding, metalwork and engine repair.
Getting it on the road took eight years, by which point the Targa Truck was still nothing like it is today. It had started life as a beat-up green farm truck, and now while the rust was gone and the paintwork refurbished, it was still just an old truck with a smallish V-8 engine.
Then, lightning struck. Bovey started messing around with speed runs, building up the powerplant in his truck with an LS engine with the heads off a 427. He had some moderate success, but the real breakthrough came when some friends goaded him into bringing along the big hoss to an autocross session. It was a joke at first: a 15-foot-long farm truck on the skidpad with Type-Rs and STIs? Ridiculous.
Day two of the course rolled around, and the big black truck started knocking down the times and taking scalps. The knowing grins faded. Damn. That thing is fast.
The next piece of the story comes via Facebook, with the official organizers of the Targa pointing out in a post dated Nov. 4, 2013 that no one had ever entered a truck in their dozen years of competition. There's nothing against it in the rules, they said. A friend forwarded the message to Bovey, who at that point had been autocrossing extensively, modifying the truck even further to make it a better, if unlikely, handling machine.
"I can scratch that itch," he wrote back. Gauntlet thrown down, and picked right up. A supportive spouse and a successful Kickstarter effort sealed the deal, and Bovey and his partner-incrime Miles Markovic began the long, arduous build. A piece of advice from an old racer was taken to heart: "The best way to build a car for the Targa is to make it so tough you don't need a crew." The pair would be contesting the race by themselves, without a team of mechanics on standby, as some of the other entrants have. They got to work.
Long nights with the welder and grinder ensued. Slowly, sponsorships rolled in: everyone, it seems, loved the idea and audacity of a truck taking this challenge on. Bovey accepted a phone call from a performance parts dealer in Texas, the same place he bought his crate motor in the first place.
"Tell us what you need to make this happen," they said. "We love it." When the build was done, the truck was shipped off to Newfoundland. With the 2014 race scheduled to start on a mid-September Sunday, the truck was supposed to arrive on the preceding Wednesday. But Wednesday came and went with no truck. Driver training was scheduled for Thursday but still no truck - it actually showed up Saturday just 10 minutes before the required technical inspection.
In the meantime, Bovey and Markovic were supposed to be doing their reconnaissance runs and learning the course. The solution? Call in a stunt double in the form of the fastest type of car in the world - a rental Toyota Corolla.
The poor Toyota never knew what hit it, but it did its duty and helped the team realize just how much they'd bitten off. This was going to be 1,800 kilometres of pure concentration, with no room for error. No time to worry though, with the truck arriving so late, Bovey was scrambling to get it passed and ready to race.
Then, the first morning. The line of competitors slowly shifted forward, until the Targa Truck was at the starting line for the first stage, ready to go. The pair strapped themselves into their racing harnesses, helmets on, pace notes at the ready. Bovey flexed his fingers on the wheel. The gathered crowd craned their necks to get a better look. Go.
Go, and the Targa Truck's sidepipes erupted with biblical growl and thunder; it lunged forward like a deranged musk-ox. It thundered down the main street, rocketed through a chicane, and chewed up the first stage like a shaggy black Newfoundland dog scarfing down beef jerky.
The days turned into a blur of speed and rumble and lateral G-forces. In the evenings, there was the warmth and hospitality of the Maritimes; in the daytime, it was straightup full steam ahead. The pounding was so severe, parts of the rear suspension came adrift, leading to a hurried roadside repair on the transmission.
But, in the end, they made it. Finishing second in the classic class ahead of a Corvette and a 911, the pair were exhausted and elated. What's more, they were hooked.
"I thought this would be a one-time thing," Bovey said. "But by the second day, I knew I'd have to come back here."
The naysayers, of course, would tell you that the Targa Truck should never have been there in the first place. What nonsense - thunder and lightning on the Rock? That's the way it's supposed to be.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and automotive enthusiast. Email: [email protected]
