Bill Caswell made history a year ago when his old, thrown-together $500 Craigslist BMW triumphed over $400K race cars to make the podium at the WRC Rally Mexico. For Caswell, our
story about his exploits changed his life and made him a semi-star.
A year later, Caswell returned to Rally Mexico a celebrity with an equally slapdash machine. Our original story was titled "How a $500 Craigslist car beat $400K rally racers." This year Caswell and his co-driver didn't podium, but somehow had a better time. So perhaps it's best to call this version "How a $500 Craigslist team got robbed, laid, drunk, and fast while being beaten by $400K rally racers."
In the style set forth by our original telling of the story, I'm just going to insert bits from Caswell's retelling with comments in between. But let me preface it this way: Bill Caswell is insane. The emails he sends are full of the kind of myopic energy few, other than perhaps coked-up cheerleaders, posses. And now, to the story�
Getting robbed by Mexican cops
The trip started out a lot like last year. I picked up Ron at his house in Missouri which is where I picked up Slocum last year and first met Ron Erickson. Ron is my kind of codriver. More of driver and mechanic than a codriver, someone who asks if its ok for him to go dancing with a hot Mexican girl Saturday night while I finish up the car. Sure man, just make it back to the service park by morning.
You dont need to read notes just strap in. Get back to the service park by any means necessary. He was home by 430 or so. Nice Job Ron! He is someone who picks up the welder asks no questions and just starts making repairs. My kind of guy.
I met him a year ago when I picked up Slocum at his house on the way to WRC Mexico 2010. He had his entire VW GTI in pieces on the floor and I was like wow that's a big project. His response, "it better not be, I am driving this to work in the morning." Hmmmm you need to stay in touch.
He came and crewed at STPR, so I offered him the Pikes Peak codrive as a thank you and it turns out he's pretty good. His grandfather actually raced there in the 1970's. Anyway, here is Ron and I rocking thru Mexico at night while I make pacenotes from last year's video.
In the end we didn't get through all the stages so we borrowed some notes from a fellow driver Yuji Otsuki who used Japanese characters here and there. Its actually pretty cool as it looks like you could have one symbol to describe a lot of stuff, but was very different from the notes we borrowed last year which were in Portuguese.
I wonder if I can get my notes in Finnish or something cool for next year.
We drove thru the night to the border. Swapped vans for one with Mexico paperwork just like last year and continued on our way. We were almost out of the Monterrey area when we missed and exit. Next thing we know we were crossing a speed bump at 65 mph and if you saw it from the outside it might have looked like a jump.
We get pulled over where we are told we will be spending the night in jail and seeing the judge in the morning. I've heard the stories and know its BS and say ok, do I follow you? He gets on his radio and another officer who speaks English shows up and explains we have to pay there on the spot. I explain that I only have $46 (I hid all my other cash knowing these things can happen).
They ask about Ron, but turns out on of the other cops already reached in and took all the cash in his wallet � maybe $100 or so, but didn't tell the others. So after a ton of back and forth, I'm finally like lets just to go this jail and we can explain all this to the judge in the morning. The guy realizes I get it and is like give us $100 and you can go. But I point to their friend, and explain he already took $100 from my friends wallet just didn't share with you guys and its all the money we have.
They insist on my $46 but I say no way, I need it for gas, so they start digging through the van as the guy asks if we have any TVs or stereos. I just start laughing. Right as they are about to uncover our portable radio which we need for our service stops to crank music I offer up this skibag I got for free a while back but here's the kicker: They all took a Caswell motorsport t-shirt as they left . One guy actually asked if he could exchange his for different size.
I really wish I had a picture of the three guys holding my shirts up to their chest. If you see three cops in Mexico with Caswell shirts, RUN.
Keep in mind the organizers provided safe travel from Texas but that meant having the car done early and transporting it down in advance and working from a small set of tools, spares, and supplies which wasn't an option for me. Also, the Mexican road trip is one of my favorite parts of both years. The cops weren't really dangerous, it just one of those things. Shit Happens. And the Mexican countryside and food is the best. I love it.
Yes, he just ended a story about getting robbed by saying "I love it." Also worth noting that Bill is a gearhead's gearhead and spend a lot of time — usually at the last minute — getting his car together. If you call him he's likely to be in his mom's garage outside Chicago welding his car.
Preparing for the race
We arrive right before tech and are told by the other teams that we are in trouble as none of the cars passed tech the first day due to cage issues and this is a last chance tech session. (I heard later the Focus was ok, but had some other issue).
I knew we were ok because we had passed last year and well, I welded my cage myself and personally know that every joint is welded properly. Sure enough the car passed but my old pair of shoes I was loaning Ron had a minor hole. I promised we would have new shoes by the start or wouldn't run.
Next stop, Ken Block. "Um Ken, any chance you have a spare pair of shoes? We'll pay for them, whatever it takes." It must be nice to be real team that even carries spare driver safety gear.
Ken had to ask the team manager which I also thought was kind of cool. I tried to get his card but he declined. I think he knew I would send him emails every week asking for a test in one of the Ford WRC cars. And he's right I would! I chatted with Rhys Millen a few months back and he now gets a text every month asking when I can test one of his cars. Someday, someone will give in.
Note, right after re-re-reading this I noticed an e-mail from Bill making more ridiculous requests. So, yeah, sorry Rhys. It happens.
Opening ceremony
On the way to opening ceremonies the car misfires so badly we can hardly maintain 40 mph and pull over. We play with a ton of stuff, call a friend Ben in Chicago, and eventually decide to disconnect the AFM and keep going in limp mode.
We were stopped at various points in the street with fans everywhere so you get out and sign autographs, well I had hundreds of Caswell stickers and when I started to hand them out the crowd went nuts so I quietly got on the roof and started throwing the stickers over Ron's head at the crowd who immediately went nuts, pushed past the cops and rammed Ron into the car as they fought for stickers.
I couldn't stop laughing and just kept throwing stickers from the safety of the roof. Here is a video of another section where the crowd was more contained. I heard Monster nearly started a riot handing out team gear at the jump El Brinco with a crowd of 20,000 or so.
I guess we were the only team that jumped on our roof at the opening ceremonies and they shot off some confetti, it was pretty awesome. They interviewed me about the police chase from 2010 that never shared with anyone after Mexico. As usual, buy me a beer and I'll tell you the story. It was pretty wild. Something about the highest speed ever recorded on a WRC stage, but it happened like miles off the stage according to the GPS. You know computers, they fail all the time.
We're going to eventually going to get Bill drunk enough to tell that story on camera. Whether he knows it or not.
A big leap
Anyway, I wanted to do well, I wanted to improve upon my finish from last year. But I went down there with a car that wouldn't run, had no brakes, and hasn't been driven since a legitimate crash in Maine at the end of the summer.
I kind of got it sorted out by the start and started pushing hard on the first stage where we caught the dust of the car ahead of us even with the 3 minute intervals. Then we came to a jump that didn't seem so bad. There was a nice VIP tent sitting next to it with a DJ and some people watching so I hit it fast in 5th gear. Easily 100MPH.
Best part, the jump wasn't in our notes because it was so obvious coming down the hill but Ron was still reading and not looking up. So I said into the mic, "Dude, are you ready to fly?" You have to listen carefully but you can hear it.
The moment we landed the car seemed to explode and dart to the right faster than any car can turn on its own. I was scared. We were headed off the road at good speed, and at a large enough angle that the roll was going to be bad. I focused on the road and where I wanted to go and steered out of it, but the car was clearly broken.
We did our best to measure the distance afterwards and believe we cleared 40-50 ft. The spectators told us someone could have stood in the road and we would have cleared them - I sort of doubt that, but we did fly.
We landed in a huge nose dive(the fisheye lens takes away some angle but you can pause it and see the slope of the hood) and smashed the oil pan into pieces. We also ripped the motor mounts(I use these cool ones from AKG Motorsport where the studs are chained together inside the mount which prevented the damage from being way worse), pulled the transmission brace clean from the car, tore the driver's side rear subframe out of the unibody, ripped the skid plate off, punctured a 6" hole in the oil pan, and ran the motor for 40+ seconds before seeing the oil light (I know, I know, I will make the light larger next time).
Still reading? Good, me too. We normally wouldn't print something this long. It's much, much longer than anything we regularly publish. But what can you do? It's Mexico. Someone in the comments is going to write "TL:DR" and, you know what. FUCK YOU.
Stickers, stickers, and more stickers
I thought our motor was done so we caught a ride on an ATV back up to the jump where there was a VIP bar with DJ under a tent. We sat out in the sun and crushed beers all afternoon as we watched the real rally cars come through. I got to ride around on a horse which was cool and a local cop rocked my stickers on his hat.
You can even see me in the tv replay wearing my firesuit and cheering a few feet from the car as they hit the jump. We tried to hold up our hood so our sponsors would make the broadcast but the camera guys FREAKED out.
We were smart to bring our hood with us (we took our carbon hood with us so it wouldn't get taken, — not stolen, taken — for the stickers and to hang on their wall. The sight of three people on an ATV with two in fire suits carrying a hood over their heads seemed to amuse people. ) as our mirrors had been torn off the car when we got back. They had Caswell stickers on them. I was sort of honored, I mean no one tries to take part of your car with you in the US.
Ken tried to hoonigan Mexico but I had him beat. I covered every WRC service vehicle and both tow trucks that took us home as well as a cop, AND Henning Solberg's WRC car! I went up to Henning before the rally and was like good to see you again, I am the BMW pilot.
He smiled and seemed to remember it all and I was like 'I am not doing more shots this year at the party, you and your brother messed me up last year' and he laughed and took the stickers. Well the next time his car pulled out he had them on both doors!!!!! And he kept them on for the weekend! SEE DOOR OF ORANGE WRC CAR IN THE PICTURES.
Well Henning loses his power steering (which I don't run as its one more thing I can break) and is forced to change it after the stage and
completes the repair in the mechanics typical service time. It's cool to see a pro rally driver wrench on his car - I like to think the Caswell stickers helped him repair the car on the side of the road. Rock on Henning!
We got back to the service park and I was too drunk to fix the car. So we went to the superspecial and cheered everyone on while sobering up on free Monster energy drink thanks to Mr. Block and his sponsors.
Finally we return to the service park to work on the car. I start cutting pieces of our skid plate out to use as patches for the oil pan. I had 5 things of 5 minute JB weld. I wish they sold it in a chicken bucket sized container but 5 was all I had, that and a bunch of RTV. So I made a 3 dimensional patch and glued it all together. We also had to deal with the transmission mount that was torn clean from the car's sheet metal.
So once again I borrowed a random generator (I had to trade the sweet generator Miller gave me to finish the baja project and they didn't feel like replacing it) and tried to weld the car back together. I simply jacked the trans as close the blown out unibody as possible and just welded it straight to the car, the slots for the bolts were effectively gone.
If you've skipped this entire thing now would be the time to start reading again. There are girls. Or, at least one girl a few times. I'm looking through the photos trying to determine just how many there are. Also, given Bill's engagement (is that still on?) they're all Ron's. Go Ron.
The Girls of Mexico
Although more difficult to measure, the chart over yonder helps to illustrate the average change in value for a three-year-old vehicle in April 2007 versus today. It clearly shows how much values have risen since 2007.
But there was still some left in the engine, so once again we started the car and made it to the awards ceremony. As we did at the opening, we jumped up on the roof, happy to finish, all while holding a Valvoline flag in honor of this special oil they sent us just prior to the rally that save our engine. We managed a 4th place finish but only because 4 cars out of 12 actually finished. We were last I guess. 
