krazik

It's May and they have given up for the rest of the year?!

What happened?

pfb

Stick a fork in 'em for 2003...

[QUOTE] In an effort to bring the competitor the ultimate autocross experience, the Precision Racing Organization has pioneered live dynamic timing and scoring performed by full time, professional staff members, webcasting of statistics and live event audio, huge contingencies and countless other advancements never before seen in the sport of autocross. All of our efforts so far have been on building our

Ludedude

Translation: We burned all our cash already. Our bank turned us down for a loan. We tried knocking over a fruit stand but that didn't go well. We're broke. If we can beg, borrow or steal another $50, we'll be back.

krazik

pfb: yeah I read it. Just looking for the "real" story. Anyone here know what happened? I guess event turn-out had to be weak.

lude:

PedalFaster

Yes, very few people showed -- some of their events had fewer than forty participants.

PRO apparently had some really cool innovations, but in my opinion, they would have been more successful if they'd checked their egos at the door (and told the SCCA to do the same) and cooperated with the SCCA instead of trying to start a whole new series. I'm sure there were compelling reasons they did what they did, though.

Steve

krazik

I sorta like the idea that they were shrugging off the SCCA group and their (at times) stick in the mud approach to things.

Althought I never got my head around their rules. Too bad they never made it to norcal, I'd like to have checked them out.

PedalFaster

I think you nicely summarized two reasons why splitting off from the SCCA was problematic:

1. SCCA National Tours are as big as they are because people are willing to drive hundreds or even thousands of miles to attend. Most people are operating on both time and money budgets, though, and can only afford to go to a finite number of out of town events -- I know that, as opposed to any anti-PRO sentiment, was the reason I didn't attend any PRO events.

PRO doubled the number of available national-level events; it appears that, between the SCCA and PRO, the supply of national-level events may have exceeded the demand.

2. PRO's rules were different. Not very different, but anything new is scary, and changing the rules, while probably necessary to avoid issues with the SCCA, added to the newness factor.

Steve

S2KMyWay

except for the fruit stand part, that was probably the real story except you could probably add that two guys with limited experience didn't understand the market as well as they thought, which resulted in a flawed business plan. How else can you explain what was suppose to be a year long 30 event series going bellyup in only 5 events? They obviously lost cash way faster than was ever considered.

and generally people who view the SCCA as a stick in the mud organization simply fail to grasp/understand what the SCCA organization has been learned from their own hard-knock experiences over the past 20+ years in the sport. That's not intended as a slam against the person who made the statement, rather just like PRO there are a lot of people who really don't understand as much about the sport as they think they do. Teenagers think their parents are sticks in the mud too. The answer is always obvious until you actually have to implement it and deal with the consequences you are ignorant of.

Ludedude

It's always about the fruit stands, trust me.

Ludedude

It's actually too bad that they weren't able to pull it off. Competition is always a good thing...keeps things from getting stale. I guess they were underfunded from the start and their business plan was heavily vested in smoke and mirrors.