To Targa and Back Again: A Multipla's Tale

It began the way every terrible-but-perfect idea begins: with four passengers, a trunk full of camera gear, sleeping bags, and enough snacks to power us through 2,200km to the North Sydney Ferry terminal. That and all of the side quests & shenanigans that come up along the way.

The mission was simple: get to Targa Newfoundland 2025, shoot some video, have the time of our lives and come home in one piece! Along for the ride was myself, my hetero life-mate Corey, our esteemed photographer Larry and my son, Charlie. 

Obviously nothing on one of our Road Trips is a straight shot; the first detour was off to visit the ORO offices in, well, Oro, then hit up Ottawa to see the Big Cat Garage. It's a favourite stop of ours, home to a collection of Pantera's, Mangusta's, and one surly Mark Charlton who has suffered through one too many of our panicked emergency GET IT ON THE HOIST WE NEED HELP detours. Oddly enough this was I believe the first time we had stopped by without:

• Leaving an oil slick
• Talking Mark into doing work on a vehicle belonging to Corey, Namely the 'But it never breaks down' 60 something VW Beetle Corey is always dragging along like a perpetual boat anchor.
• Turning around and going back home because my god that's a lot of oil loss

Leaving our good acquaintance behind we aimed towards Montreal and into New Brunswick, and off to North Sydney, NS. to board the mighty Marine Atlantic ferry. 1800kms to go!

I can't say driving through New Brunswick is particularly thrilling (unless it's done at 2am at speed white knuckling your way through the rampant Moose scares). The underwhelming nature of this drive can only be matched by the grossly disappointing Grand Falls Gorge.

Breaking up the sheer monotony of NB into small detours the Multipla chugged along like a champ! Other than settling in at 4,000rpm while cruising on the highway it was a treat. Excellent fuel economy and the passenger seat is roomy as hell! Enough room to stretch your legs and visibility for days. 

I love the ferry. I feel like half the draw of Targa for me is the Ferry. It's probably the first time you'll meet a Newfoundlander on the way there. Usually it's the person at the gate who is so overwhelmingly friendly and not terribly fussed about you actually showing ID to get on the boat. Forget arriving 3+ hours early to get Irradiated and searched at the airport. Just wave a ticket or two and flash some ID and you're on! The only real snag is waiting in line to get on the boat, but here's the fun part: Searching for the other Targa competitors and fans among the rows of cars and you start to develop a quasi-tailgate party. 

The trip on the boat is about 16 hours or so. This time it was quite foggy, very North Atlantic vibes. Since you have to be a pretty cool human being to want to load your car onto a ship and float it over places, you'll find the ferry is a good time all around. Lots of people to meet and stories to tell. Especially when you run into a guy just casually leaning on a railing, checking on his goat he's got stashed in the bed of a truck way down on the deck. Welcome to Newfoundland, folks. We also learned that modern German cars will start to set off their alarm if they're moving while parked; no idea what the rationale is there.

We disembarked from the Ferry and didn't have any Targa duties... So the natural course of action was instead of going straight to St. Johns, we turned southwards toward Cape St. Mary's (Which happens to be one of the roads on the Targa closed course). This is where the first cracks started to appear in the Multipla's facade. 

You see, the Cape shore road isn't what you would call smooth. In fact it was covered with holes, cuts, all sorts of ridiculousness designed to shred tires and suspensions. Now, this would all be avoidable if you could see more than 10 feet in front of you. It also wouldn't be all that much of a problem if your car had a suspension that behaved like anything more than a 2 inch tall sponge. However we learned quickly that any change in the elevation of the road nevermind a HOLE IN THE GROUND would slam the rear suspension against the bump stops hard enough I was sure whoever was in the back would get a spinal injury. 

My blood pressure rose and general demeanour sank as there was a sudden WHAM every single time we went over anything larger than an anthill. It was excruciating. It wasn't an issue in Ontario, Quebec, NB, but in Newfoundland?? Turns out some of these roads are prostate pounding monsters in the Multipla.

Somewhere around the third near-concussion the low-oil-pressure light started chiming in for fun. Carry on.

One of the best aspects of Targa is the people. Meeting new competitors, re-connecting with old friends, all of it. There are teams that have driven across Canada to be there. There are teams from across the U.S., overseas and from here on in the stories start flowing, the hands start shaking, the hugs are given out in droves.... In short, it's the BEST time. The plan wasn't to drive the poor beleagured Multipla for the week and a bit of Targa, that's what rental cars are for! On our first night in St. John's we came across a stranded Studebaker that had just packed it in on the side of the road. Multipla to the rescue! Since everyone knows everyone else and somewhere down the chain there's a tow truck, we got the Studebaker on its way to gettting sorted. 

We had T-Shirts made up for the opportunity to show up to the rental place and proceed to rent the exact car we had on our T-Shirts all liveried up the way we would be rocking it through the week. Our plan was to act as the 'media' vehicle throughout the week of Targa. We had a wild stallion in the form of an Elantra which was completely disposable thanks to comprehensive insurance. Compared to actually competing in Targa, it was nice change of pace to simply enjoy the scenery take amazing pictures (thanks Larry!) and make some great videos of the action. The Multipla patiently waited for us in St. John's, lowering the property value of the neighbourhood while it rested. 

For some unexplained reason..... The Ferry broke before we could board it for the return trip. Now I can quite frankly think of worse things than being stuck in St. John's. Other people had more pressing schedules; such as Dr. Ryan Burrill who had to leave his brand new GT4RS behind and fly back to Nova Scotia for pressing work matters. Sure we'd be happy to ferry it back!

The Multipla was back to being the Targa taxi for us all and it rewarded us with starting to throw low oil pressure warnings and loud beeps every time the RPM's sank below 1,500. For a seasoned veteran of a fleet of deferred maintenance vehicles I barely noticed this. Corey on the other hand was driven to near insanity by the incessant beeping.

Solution: yank the sensor, screw in a blanking plug. Fixed.

I would like to point out that the Multipla's short footprint makes it such a good car for navigating the narrow windy streets of St. John's and its environs. Easy 3 point turns, lots of visibility, all round wonderful.

The Voyage Home

The Voyage from North Sydney is roughly 2,000kms and I was dammed if we didn't do it one shot. I love incredibly long distance shots like this; it feels like such an accomplishment to make it back in record time. As we had plugged the weeping Oil pressure sensor that problem was out of sight, out of mind. I had knocked a gap into the exhaust flex pipe while looking for a parking spot in what seemed like a rock quarry in St. John's so I figured if there was an issue with the oil pressure the new loud exhaust note would warn me ahead of time. 

I had the misfortune of having the 11pm-5am shift on the way home which was the Quebec stretch of the return journey. Larry our esteemed cameraman had told me in no uncertain terms that we were not to take the 401 home, that he will only travel on backroads and he was SERIOUS. Now I'm not one to be pushed around by a boomer, and I was determined to take the faster way home, it's just how I roll. Larry was sleeping anyway, what's he going to do? 

Well it turns out God had other plans; I had fallen asleep (more of a series of micro sleeps, lots of them, strung together) and turned North asleep at the wheel instead of west. Guess Larry got his scenic drive through Gravenhurst after all.