It’s Now the Mint, as in Money : Dusty, Dirty Nevada Race Has Become High-Dollar Affair
Seventeen years ago, a small group of men--mostly deer hunters--gathered in front of Del Webb’s downtown Mint Hotel and drove off into the Nevada desert for a dusty, dirty race that became the Mint 400.
The winning car was a hunting buggy driven by Gene (Pappy) Hirst, a Volkswagen with a plastic body called a Meyers Manx. It cost about $800 and took 16 hours to get from Las Vegas to Ash Meadows and back.
Rod Hall finished second in that 1968 inaugural race. He drove a four-wheel-drive Jeep right off the showroom floor. It had cost $2,300.
Today, for his 18th consecutive Mint 400, Hall will be in another four-wheel-drive vehicle, a Dodge pickup truck, but it cost about $110,000. The engines alone, Chrysler V-8s rebuilt by Keith Black in South Gate, cost $12,000 each, and a factory driver needs at least two.
“I belonged to the Hemet Jeep Club back then, and all I did was take my new Jeep, put on dual shocks, seatbelts and a set of headers and drive up here for the race,” Hall reminisced Friday afternoon while his new Dodge was going through technical inspection for today’s $330,000 race. “Look around you. Some of these paint jobs cost as much as my whole operation 18 years ago. Off-roading has become as professional as NASCAR (stock cars) or Indy cars.”
Hall’s truck was being pushed slowly through a maze of spectators who turned Fremont Street into a cross between Coney Island on the Fourth of July and a marketplace for the most sophisticated off-road racing machinery in the world.
For two days, the busiest street in Las Vegas has been closed for two blocks while 400 cars and trucks were inching through tech inspection.
Walker Evans, a Riverside contractor turned full-time race driver, is the winningest driver in Mint 400 history. He has won seven truck championships and today is going for No. 8 in a two-wheel-drive Dodge pickup that is one step beyond the latest state of the art in racing trucks.
It has an air-conditioned, pressurized cab!
“This is the first off-road truck ever built that will give the two riders a clean atmosphere that should lessen the fatigue factor,” Evans said. “When you’re out in the desert beyond six hours, the dust and heat can begin to get to you. This should eliminate the problem.”
Today’s winning car will probably be in the desert for nine hours, and the stragglers will be drifting in all night and into Sunday.
To keep the dust and silt and heat out, and the cool air in, Evans has completely sealed the cab, using Lexan side windows.
“When you get past 40, you need to start thinking of comforts as well as how fast you can go,” Evans said.
More than just the equipment has changed since 1968.
That year, there was only one scheduled pit stop, at the halfway point, which happened to be Ash Meadows. It was a popular stopping place. Some of the pit stops were extraordinarily long ones, since Ash Meadows was also a red-light oasis.
“Doggone, we had a tough time explaining to our wives and girlfriends why it took so long to fix a tire, or refuel, that year,” recalled one 1968 driver who to this day prefers to remain anonymous. Maybe because of the wives and girlfriends, Ash Meadows has not been part of the Mint 400 route since that first year.
Crews in the early years were friends who carried a tire or two, a few cans of oil and some gasoline. Today, most of the cars and trucks will be supported logistically as if they were well-drilled military units.
“We had about 60 people out in the desert supporting us last year,” said Jim Wright, who has won the last two Mint 400s, driving a two-seater Raceco with his father, Billy, as his riding companion. “You need at least that many to take care of all the things that can happen out there.”
The Mint 400 is a love-hate relationship for the competitors. It is a torture chamber, but one no true off-roader would want to miss.
“I hate the race course, but I love the Mint 400,” Evans said. “I don’t know any other way to explain it. It’s rough and tough, and I hate it, but that’s just part of the Nevada desert. I guess, when you get down to it, that’s what off-road racing is all about.”
The most important aspect of the Fremont Street inspection did not seem to be checking on safety equipment--but checking on the number of decals that could be displayed.
Each decal represents cash if the car wins, or finishes high in its class--providing the car is using the product advertised and the decals are still showing at race’s end.
None of the nearly 400 entries will look tonight anything like they did when their owners showed them off Friday. After 400 miles, or even a small portion of that distance, the lovingly painted and manicured vehicles will show the strain of the Mint--a layer of brown silt and dust covering dented sides, punctured tires, battered rims and broken shocks.
