Bemidji, Minnesota -- The first ProRally win for the Cute Car/StudBug under the RealAutoSport, LLC banner came during the Sports Car Club of America's Ojibwe Forests ProRally in Bemidji, Minnesota on 16 - 17 August. The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based team's commanding, half-hour-plus win helped the championship-leading codriver, Houstonian Dave Weiman, increase his lead in the 2002 Production Class Codriver Championship to 30 points while giving Volkswagen automobiles their second win of the season.

Commenting after the rally, an exuberant Halley said, "The New Beetle ran flawlessly, Dave called a great rally, Crew Chief Trey Teegarden had nothing exciting to do, I kept the wheels on those beautiful Minnesota rally roads and I still feel like the KC HiLiTES High Intensity Discharge rally lights are a huge advantage for us. You know the team is having an awesome rally when leading the class by minutes and facing no bigger problem than a reluctant in-car video camera!"

Sharing his experiences, Weiman said, "Mike's eyes just lit up after his first exposure to stage notes (the new, fully descriptive route following instructions). He adapted to them quickly and we were working like a practiced team just a few miles into the rally. We finished Friday's stages leading both our class (Production) and the Production GT class (which features turbocharged, all-wheel-drive machines)! I am very pleased that my RealAutoSport, LLC Rallye Team involvement has yielded Performance Rally wins as both codriver and driver in just nine months."

Halley added, "The support from NewBeetle.org and its members means a lot to the team. It's great knowing there are so many StudBug fans taking an active interest and it's fun carrying the names of individual contributors on the car during our competitions. I'm sure more fans will join the 'StudBug Stage Support' fun as we finalize plans to tackle the 2002 Lake Superior SCCA ProRally on Michigan's upper peninsula in October."

The SCCA ProRally Championship is the nation’s only performance rally series with uniquely varied venues coast-to-coast. Teams compete flat-out for hundreds of miles over closed-to-the-public forestry roads separated into a series of special stages. A codriver keeps the driver apprised of jumps, turns, hazards and other obstacles on the route thanks to computer-generated "stage notes" and a hundredth-reading odometer. All events are televised on the Speed Channel (http://www.speedtv.com/).

The RealAutoSport, LLC Rallye Team is sponsored by NewBeetle.org (www.newbeetle.org), Mary Jane Halley, CPA, KC HiLiTES HID Racing Lamps (www.kchilites.com), Competition Graphics (www.competitiongraphics.com), Drummond Motorsport Shocks (www.dmshocks.com) and Gator Products (www.okgator.com). Information on performance rallying is available from the SCCA webpage (www.scca.org) while the entire RealAutoSport, LLC story is available in pictures, videos and print at the team's home page (www.realautosport.com), which is sponsored by VirtualTargetRacing.com and maintained by webmaster Sean Figgins.