St. Louis, MO -- The "world series" of performance rally is coming to the Ozark foothills of Missouri in the form of the Trespassers Wil and 100 Acre Wood ClubRallies. Sanctioned by Rally America, they will be held February 25 and 26, 2005. These events will crown the 2004 ClubRally National Championships (CRNC) winners in five different classes of competition vehicles. Friday's Trespassers Wil rally is headquartered in Ellington and will make a brief stop in Bunker. The longer 100 Acre Wood rally is held on Saturday, and is based in Salem. Teams will have service stops in Viburnum, Potosi, and Steelville during the 100 Acre Wood.

A ClubRally consists of "transit zones" and "special stages". A transit zone has the rally teams on the roads with the general public following the rules of the road and merely gets the competitors from one special stage to another. Special stages are temporarily closed-to-the-public sections of roads where competitors are allowed to travel as fast as they safely can, started one minute apart, between the start and the finish of the stage. Trained, expert volunteers ensure the safety of the public and the competitors and provide a timing mechanism to score the event on the heavily manned special stages. The total elapsed times for each team over all the special stages will determine both individual class and overall victories in the event. The composite times for both rallies will crown a 2004 ClubRally National Champion for five nationally recognized classes, plus a class for historic cars 30 or more years old.

Trespassers Wil is a Coefficient 2 ClubRally. (The Coefficient level is determined by the number of special stage miles in the event. A Coefficient 2 has 30 to 65 stage miles.) This event will begin on Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. on Main Street in downtown Ellington. The first car should arrive at the finish in Salem around 8:15 p.m. There are nine (9) special stages and three (3) spectator points along the course. The total length of this event, including the transit zones where no high-speed competition occurs, is 100 miles.

The 100 Acre Wood is a Coefficient 3 ClubRally (which has 65 to100 stage miles). Contestants, a driver and a co-driver per car, will start in downtown Salem on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and have service breaks in Viburnum, Potosi, and Steelville before returning to Salem that evening. The first car is expected to arrive back in Salem around 6:30 p.m. at the Eagles' Lodge. There are ten (10) special stages and eight (8) spectator points along the course. The total length of this event, including the transit zones, is over 200 miles.

Dennis Martin of Green Bay, WI and his co-driver Alan Perry of Bainbridge Island, WA were the overall winners of both the 2004 Trespassers Wil and 100 Acre Wood ClubRallies driving a 1997 Misubishi Lancer Evo 4. Winning the 2003 CRNC Championships were Steve Gingras of Minneapolis, MN and Bill Westrick of Royal Oak, MI in the Open Class in a 2002 Subaru WRX. The Production GT championship went to Todd and Ray Moberly of Colorado also in a 2002 Subaru WRX. Mike Hurst of Kirkwood, MO and Rod Bohn of Noblesville, IN won the Group 5 championship in a 1993 Ford Mustang for the third consecutive year. Championship honors in Group 2 went to Brian Scott of Phoenix, AZ and David Hackett of Reno, NV in a 2002 Ford SVT Focus. The husband and wife team of Jim and Kaari Cox of Hamel, MN won the Production Class Championship in their 1989 Chevy S-10 pick up truck.

The CRNC Chairman is Kim DeMotte, of Webster Groves, MO. "I'm delighted with this year's courses...they will give the contestant plenty of competition in a reasonable period of time, and allow the public to get a feel for the sport at seven different spectator venues (used 11 times) over the two days". He added, "these are some of the finest performance rally roads in the country, and the warm welcome we get every year from the cities and towns we visit and the counties we compete in is the key to a successful event...both from the rallyist's point of view and the public's."

Anyone interested in helping with this event may contact Curt Faigle at 314-839-2701 or [email protected] to volunteer. While a core committee of 30 have spent an entire year coordinating details and organizing these two events well over 200 volunteers will be needed to staff the courses February 25 and 26.

Additional information may be obtained by visiting the www.100aw.org website.

Media credentials may be obtained by contacting [email protected].

DeMotte and the organizing committee are aficionados of A. A. Milne's classic story Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh lived in the 100 Acre Wood and Piglet lived in an old tree with a broken sign that said "Trespassers Wil(l be prosecuted)...but the last letters were missing!