Subaru driver, David Higgins, Defeats Mother Nature and Rivals to take Victory at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood.

Salem, Mo. Feb. 25, 2013 – Subaru Rally Team USA driver David Higgins overcame the mud, snow, and ice that saturated the 2013 Rally in the 100 Acre Wood to take a dominating win in his 2013 Subaru WRX STI rally car. Set in Missouri’s Ozark Foothills, the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood is the second round of the 2013 Rally America National Championship and is regarded as the fastest rally in the USA. However, this year a winter storm blanketed the region in a layer of ice and snow, making conditions treacherous at best. With maximum traction delivered by Subaru’s Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive over the difficult terrain, Higgins drove faultlessly, while his key rivals hit trouble early, to win by nearly nine minutes, and vault to the lead of the Driver’s Championship standings.

Higgins took the rally lead early on the first day of competition when his two key rivals faltered due to driving mistakes and mechanical trouble. Higgins and his co-driver Craig Drew steadily increased their lead throughout the event while driving fast and mistake-free on the difficult road conditions. The 2013 Vermont SportsCar prepared Subaru WRX STI ran trouble free throughout the weekend; Higgins and Drew were fastest on 12 of the event’s 16 stages.

“I started the rally a little slow but upped the pace from stage two and was just trying to keep close to the lead to be ready for an attack on day one’s night stages. As it turned out though our rivals fell into deep trouble before that and from there onwards it was just a case of keeping my focus and driving mistake free,” explained Higgins. “The conditions were very difficult but we had the right car and setup to deal with it.”

What If They Gave Oscars To The Best Car Movies?

Oscar-Winning Car Movies

 

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Back to the Future (1985)

Perhaps the original DeLorean DMC-12 would have sold better if, as in Doc Brown’s version, it came equipped with a plutonium-powered flux capacitor that enabled it to achieve time travel at precisely 88 mph. With unpainted aluminum bodywork and still-futuristic styling capped by vertical-opening gull-wing doors, the DeLorean featured in the film became a cultural icon. Real-life circumstances might have turned out differently if instead of visiting 1950’s Hill Valley, Marty McFly went back in time to convince auto mogul John DeLorean that drug trafficking wasn’t such a good way to prop up a struggling auto company. The film was awarded an Oscar for Sound Effects Editing.

The history of the automobile and motion pictures are inexorably intertwined, with the first car-centric movie – Runaway Match – dating back to 1903, and early Hollywood showing both fascination with and affection for the so-called horseless carriage. Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops’ popularized the car chase when they hit the screen running in 1912, while Laurel and Hardy were among the first to consider the unnerving effects of traffic jams in 1928’s Two Tars (with the boys gradually dismantling a line of cars in festering acts of frustration with their ill-tempered motorists).

Since then, some of Hollywood’s most memorable moments have taken place behind the wheel, from mobsters hanging from running boards with Tommy guns blazing throughout the 1930’s, to hot-rodding juvenile delinquents terrorizing innocent citizens in 1950’s pulp cinema and undercover detectives pursuing mob bosses and drug dealers in harrowing car chases through crowded city streets in the 1960’s and 70’s.

We scoured the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences database and found 14 car-centric films, highlighted in the accompanying slide show, that were awarded Oscars in assorted categories. These include escapist gems likeGoldfinger (1964), Back to the Future (1985) and no less than two Batmanmovies, as well as certifiable cinematic classics including Grand Prix (1966),The Graduate (1967) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989).

In Pictures: Oscar-Winning Car Movies.

Still, the cars themselves remain un-credited co-stars, and the Academy has yet to recognize “Best Car Chase” or “Best Automobile in a Supporting Role” as an Oscar-winning category. Seriously, would Thelma and Louise (1991) have been the same film had they taken a Greyhound bus to escape their troubles instead of hitting the road in a vintage Thunderbird convertible? Or if Doc Brown had strapped a flux capacitor to the back of a comfy chair in Back to the Future (1985) instead of that iconic DeLorean? To that end we offer the following recommendations for retroactive Oscars for Best Car Movies, should the Academy ever decide to recognize the automobile’s contribution to American culture in general and the cinema in particular:

• The Absent-Minded Professor (1961): A 1914 Ford Model T takes to the skies and steals the show after being “Flubberized” by one of cinema’s most-lovable techno-geeks, played by pre-My Three Sons Fred McMurray.
• American Graffitti (1973): George Lucas’ cinematic ode to 1950’s cars and cruising was a smash hit and made stars out of most of its cast members; its success enabled Lucas to follow up with a little picture called Star Wars (1977).
• The Blues Brothers (1980): Jake and Elwood are on a mission from God with a killer soundtrack, myriad car crashes and that inimitable police pursuit – and ensuing path of destruction – through a crowded shopping mall. BTW: The Bluesmobile was a 1974 Dodge Monaco with “ a cop motor – a 440-cubic-inch plant – cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks; it’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas…”
• Bullitt (1968): Arguably the best car-chase scene ever filmed highlights this Steve McQueen cop film. Not only has it been selected for preservation by the Library of Congress, McQueen’s green 1968 Mustang spawned several special production editions in its honor.
• Cars (2006): Pixar’s vehicular tour de force reminds us of the innocence and romance of the open road lost after interstate superhighways displaced two-lane blacktop roads across America.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968): One of the few movies with a car as its central character, in this case a 1910 Grand Prix racer that’s been reinvented with extraordinary powers with the inimitable Dick Van Dyke behind the wheel.
• Christine (1983): Steven King’s classic yarn about a possessed 1958 Plymouth – think Chuckie with tires or Bette Davis’ psycho character in Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964) reincarnated as My Mother the Car.
• Days of Thunder (1990): This was the automotive alternative to Top Gun, likewise starring Tom Cruise – here a NASCAR driver – with plenty of high-speed race footage to go around (and around, and around…).
• Death Race 2000 (1975): David Carradine and Sly Stallone run down and run over pedestrians for bonus points in a nihilistic cross-country race; we consider it the anti-hero among car flicks.
• The French Connection (1971): Another classic action sequence involves Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle character racing an elevated train running through Brooklyn in pursuit of a mob hit man.
• Goldfinger (1964): One of the best James Bond films ever made begins the series’ love affair with fast tricked-out cars, with the starring vehicle here being the iconic Aston Martin DB5 (a car that sporadically appears in subsequent 007 adventures, including last year’s Skyfall). We’ve always hoped an automaker would one day offer that car’s passenger-ejection seat as optional equipment.
• Grand Prix (1966): This homage to the 1960′s Formula One circuit starred real-life racer James Garner and is required viewing among both motorsports fans and aficionados of classic Italian sports cars.
• The Love Bug (1968): A VW Beetle named Herbie has a mind to be a racecar; in a way, don’t we all.
• It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963): Essentially one long car chase, this is a must-see for fans of classic 1950’s and early 60’s cars.
• Rebel Without A Cause (1955): James Dean tore up the screen in a 1949 Mercury Coupe in this classic tale of teen angst, but never lived to see the release of what became his signature film. 
• Thunder Road (1958): Robert Mitchum plays a moonshine runner, escaping the clutches of small-town cops and big-city gangsters alike in a hot-rod Ford; we’d like to think it inspired the classic Bruce Springsteen song.
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988): Francis Ford Coppola’s epic biopic about maverick (and visionary) car designer Preston Tucker, played by pre-Dude (turned Hyundai commercial voice-over) Jeff Bridges.

Subaru – A White House Secret!

In Ronald Reagan’s day, it wasn’t smart for an American politician to be seen in a Japanese vehicle, but the soon-to-be-President quietly kept a quirky Subaru BRAT at his ranch in California under an agreement that the automaker would get progress reports from Reagan on the little truck’s performance. Read about how this strange arrangement came to be in this report from Benjamin Prestonexclusively for Jalopnik —Ed.

Subaru Logo

Subaru’s distinctive Logo – a blue oval with six stars – comes from the star cluster Pleiades, which is translated into Japanese as Subaru. The large star is said to be that of Fuji Heavy Industries, while the five smaller stars represent the smaller companies it presides over. Subaru was chosen as the name by FHI CEO Kenji Kata, as he had liked it as a child.

Plans for Nemo