JVL - 206 431 9696

SYLLABICATION:pro·le·tar·i·an
PRONUNCIATION: prol-e-tār-n
ADJECTIVE:Of, relating to, or characteristic of the proletariat.
NOUN:A member of the proletariat; a worker.
ETYMOLOGY:From Latin proletarius, belonging to the lowest class of
Roman citizens (viewed as contributing to the state only through
having children), from proles, offspring. See al-2 in Appendix I.

As to what I _now_ do for a living, I build high performance cars with the main
emphasis being on good allround balance of performance and affordability. If I
have a motto it is "A Good Plan Today is Better than a Perfect Plan Tommorrow".
In building the cars I work on, I import some parts from UK, some from Sweden,
some from Denmark and now some from Finland. The UK,Sweden and Finland are as
you must know, are the biggest Gravel Rally markets, with approx 10,000;
17,000, and 10,000 rally licence holders repectively and as such have
knowledge, expertise and products proven in vastly harder competition than we
have here, and which I try to bring to the cars I build and the advice I give.

I have tradionally worked mainly on Saabs, especially the V4 engined versions,
and as icing on the cake, and to break the routine inhereant in any narrow
specialised work, I have supplied parts and built motors and bits for many of
my fellow NW rallyists. In the late 80s I had several Opels with my motors or
parts in them, A couple of 510s, a Vodge Dolt with all the important motor and
driveline bits built or supplied by me, even supplied all the junk for the best
RX3 around built by Dave Clark and Paul Morgan.  In the 90s I supplied all the
important bits for a string of Sam Bryan's Saabs: springs, shocks, clutchs, and
later sourced the complete 16v head and cams, cooked up the intake
manifold/throttle body arrangement, built the bottom end, sold him the last
Close ratio gearset I had and my own LSD and ring and pinion for the car which
he went on in 1995 Gp2 National title.

Currently working on cages in 3 XR4Tis, motors for several Cosworth powered
cars, rally and street, manufacturing suspension parts for these Fords, a
couple of Volvo motors, street and rally, 2 Misterbitchy Gaylant turbo motors,
1 Maz-dog GTX motor, getting powerplants over for a couple of more Cossie
projects and getting several more XRatty cages delivered, and 1 Focus cage, as
well as trying to organise affordable rally tires from the rally Paradise:
Finland.

Prior to beginning full time work on cars, I had worked in the US and as an
immigrant in Sweden, as a machinist, mostly lathe, some mill work. Also for a
while I worked as a welder-fabricator mostly in steel, but some aluminum and
some stainless, and all along working on European moto-cross bikes: Husqvarna
and KTM mainly.

I worked in 1977 and 1979 as a self sponsored Professional (professional of the
sort that _gets paid_ to start rather the the SCCA Professioals who pay to
start) Moto- cross racer in events mostly in France, but also Switzerland,
Belgium, Sweden, and South Africa. Learned what to concentrate on that gives
the most returns in terms of driving, preparing, maintenence which is the basis
of what I advise and do today.

So being firmly in the working class, specifically metal working which was
tradionally regarded as the vanguard of the Proletariat, and desiring to see
the sport grow in the direction I saw and see in the countries where it is a
Mass Participation sport, I push for an organisation and a sporting structure
which will facilitate that.

The term Prole-le-ralliat, or the American dialect spelling Pro-le-ralliat is a
humorous expression of class conciousness which as you may see is spreading. It
is intended to be a marker of where one's roots and sypathies lie.  If I can
hatch some embryonic ideas, like the Formula 2000 thing originally proposed in
1998*, then those will be my offspring.


So Jesse, for a computor boy like yourself, didn't it occur to you to check the
profile icon thingie?

And just curious, but what's your point?

*Posted to the old CRS board.
Derek Bottles and I have had long discussions on the direction of the sport and the problems of unrestrained spending, and his proposal is a result of these and some other talks with repect to his recent experiences.


John Vanlandingham
Seattle, WA. 98168

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat