Not a press release, but posted on the Michigan Short Track site
Twenty years of racing Sprint cars on dirt tracks did not prepare Ben Rutan for his crushing loss at the Canadian Nationals in September.
“It’s the toughest race for us all year,” said Rutan, 39, a building contractor who lives near Lake LeAnn. “Only the guys with good equipment get into it.”
Driving a car owned by a man from Ohio, Rutan did well in two days of preliminary racing at Ohsweken Speedway, near Brantford, Ontario.
“On the morning of the big race, we got up, went outside the motel, and everything was gone,” Rutan said.
His Ford F350 truck and an attached trailer containing the race car, tools and car parts were stolen. The loss totaled about $140,000, he said.
A motel clerk had a telling reaction when Rutan reported the brazen theft.
“You could tell in her eyes she was not surprised,” he said. “It was more like, ‘Here, we go again.’ ”
Until then, Rutan had no idea he stumbled into what is called the car-theft capital of Canada.
Brantford, a city of 125,000, reportedly had more than 900 stolen vehicles in 2009. Stripped cars are discovered abandoned in wooded areas of the nearby Six Nations Reserve at the rate of almost two a day.
“Car theft has the hallmarks of a small industry, with stolen vehicles being dumped in quantities that can only be described as startling,” the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper, reported in 2008.
Six Nations Chief Bill Montour was quoted in the Brantford newspaper as saying many tribe members were frightened by the rampant stripping, dumping and burning of stolen cars in their communities.
To Rutan, it all seemed a racket.
His stripped trailer turned up on the Six Nations Reserve about three weeks after the theft. It was towed to a holding area that charged almost $4,700 for 20 days of storage. He abandoned what remained of his truck after it was found.
“Everybody was making money off the deal,” Rutan said.
Rutan hopes his experience can be a warning to others traveling in Canada.
“It looks beautiful around there,” Rutan said, “with great big stores and nice streets. To find out the amount that is stolen was totally unreal.”
Rutan still has no truck capable of hauling a race car, and he is not sure he can race this year.
“It’s really iffy,” he said. “I raced for 20 years and lost 20 years’ worth of stuff.”
It’s a loss worse than any he experienced on a racetrack.
Linkback: https://www.canadianracingonline.com/smf/index.php?topic=14683.msg100026#msg100026
