Among SCCA’s disciplines, perhaps the most accessible to many just beginning their motorsports journey is SCCA® RoadRally. All that’s needed is a properly licensed and insured vehicle in good working order, a rally partner, an inclination to explore the countryside, and along the way, a desire to have fun.
For Charles and Cullen Cowap, the 2025 United States RoadRally Challenge® (USRRC) hosted Oct. 10-12 by Neohio Region, their beloved Triumph TR6, and the opportunity to explore parts of the Buckeye State checked all the required boxes for a weekend motorsports adventure. The USRRC even provided the opportunity to mark an automotive transition in the family.
Neither, by the way, had ever run a RoadRally, and their knowledge of the SCCA was limited, they add, to occasional encounters at Mid-Ohio and when CART and IndyCar raced in Cleveland.
For RoadRallying, “this was our very first time,” explains Charles, “My son, Cullen, was the one who dug it up. We were looking for something to do with our TR6, and he said, ‘Hey, there’s some road rallies nearby.’”
“I knew in passing about RoadRallies as a category of event,” Cullen explains, “and I thought it would be a fun way of getting out and competing in our car. I looked on the SCCA’s website under RoadRallies in our area and saw that three rallies together were being held not too far from where we lived, so we made plans to compete.”
And how did it go? (Spoiler alert: the Cowaps earned the weekend’s Novice award.)
“It was super fun,” Charles says. “It was a beautiful area we had never explored before. It was fun to hang out together and spend seven hours in a car together. That the weather cooperated, and we were able to keep the roof down was awesome.”
As for the automotive transition noted earlier, the USRRC marked the transfer of the TR6 from father to son, Charles explains.
“It was my father’s car. When he passed on, he left it to me. This is sort of the handoff to my son, Cullen, so this was my last hurrah with it.”
His father acquired the car in 1975, Charles adds, and for many years it became his everyday driver. Now with almost 100,000 miles on it, it remains mostly original. “There’s nothing really that’s been changed at all,” he says.
And how did the TR6 handle the event, especially the unpaved roads found on two of the three events, Johnny Appleseed and the Ohio Milk Run?
“It did pretty well,” Cullen offers. “At certain points, trying to match the average speed, we were putting the car, not on its limit, but past its cruising pace. On gravel, it did pretty well, too. There were some moments going downhill when the tires did not have a lot of braking traction. You had to anticipate corners at the bottoms of hills and make sure your pace was reasonable.”
They did keep an eye on a leaking heater valve, Charles adds, but the only real problem during the weekend was the lack of a cigarette lighter to keep their cell phones charged and their Richta GPS Competitor App functioning. “The car was steady,” he reports.
Down the road, will they consider upgrading their SCCA weekend membership to an annual one?
“Absolutely,” says Charles. “This idea of a rally …. you can bring a car, you don’t really have to do much to it, if anything, and you’re ready to compete. You’re competing at a level where it’s fun but not scary. We’ve had a great time with that, and being able to do this in the future would be wonderful. So, we’ll look for more of these.”
Sounds fun, right? Lean more about SCCA RoadRally by clicking here, then you’re one click away from finding a RoadRally near you.
Photo courtesy the Cowaps
