Monticello, New York - If you get a chance, take a close-up look at a rally car while they�re parked at the start, a service stop, or the finish. One of the first things that you will notice is that it�s a car; a carefully-modified car to be sure, but still a car. This is required by rally regulations. It�s NOT a specially-built track vehicle such as NASCAR and Indy car racing teams have. Nor is it a dune buggy, such as they use in desert races. It even has license plates.

A rally car is generally built from a compact sedan or a small sports car. The smaller products from Subaru, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Mazda, Dodge, and Ford all have their following among rally entrants. A large car, no matter how fast, will not be nimble enough to slalom down the twisty country roads which make up a rally route at competitive speeds.

Look a little closer and you will see some of the modifications which make the car suitable for sport. There is a steel roll cage inside, which protects the occupants in case of an accident, and stiffens the chassis.

There are two seats, not the single seat as in most track racers. Since a rally route is composed of a network of roads, a rally team has a co-driver (navigator) whose job it is to keep the driver on course and on time. The driver and co-driver wear helmets and fire-retardant suits, and are kept in their seats by full safety harnesses.

There is much more that you might not notice. In the prototype and modified classes, the engine is rebuilt for higher output and greater endurance. The most powerful cars, with turbochargers, put out over 300 horsepower. However, rules in the production classes are more restrictive, so an engine in one of those cars receives little more than careful preparation and a good tune-up.

The transmission has heavy-duty internals, and five or six forward speeds. In the faster classes, there is four-wheel-drive for better acceleration from the corners on slippery roads.

To cope with the bumps, dips and twists, a rally car gets heavy-duty springs and shock absorbers. A metal "skid plate" under the car keeps bumps and rocks from harming the engine or transmission.

There are faster competition cars than a rally car, in a straight line or on a very short course. But if the challenge is to run for a day or several days, on a set of twisty, bumpy roads, a rally car will leave all other cars in the dust.