Honor-System Anarchy

As you’ve hopefully noticed, we are in the midst of a project car series focused largely on the SCCA’s relatively new Classic American Muscle autocross class. The rules of the CAM class are simple in that there are almost none.

The entire rules package for CAM fits on one side of a single sheet of letter-size paper—even in rather large type. And most of the text is concerned with classing, not preparation.

At first blush, you’d think this would make the average autocrosser extremely happy. Finally, they can escape from the totalitarian arbitration of the overly complex SCCA Solo rules and build what they want, how they want. They even get to compete with like-minded individuals.

But a funny thing happens when you unleash freedom on people. See, as much as we huddled masses yearn to breathe free, our brains are also comforted by structure and standardization. Our hearts crave freedom, but our heads demand order. It’s why all of our stop signs are red, and why the gas is always on the right and the brake is always on the left (or in the middle if you’re cool).

So it’s no surprise that there’s been some backlash recently in the CAM community over the rules and their future.

Actually, maybe backlash is too strong a word. It implies there’s resistance to change, but there’s been very little expressed or implied change forthcoming to lash back against.

So let’s just call it externalized internal conflict over our drive for freedom and our existential fear that somehow all fun things eventually get screwed up when someone pokes their eye out.

For its entire short existence, CAM has been governed by two sets of rules: the one on that single sheet of paper, and the one competitors follow as part of an unspoken social contract about the spirit of the class. The reality is that, if you go by the official rules, no one has really built a “maxed out” CAM car yet.

Our own project car, although it competes in the “anything goes” realm of CAM, would still be eligible for far more restrictive classes as of this writing, yet it’s somewhat typical of many current CAM builds.

It’s really quite fascinating to watch. When stripped of all restrictions, we still retreat to the comfort of familiar structures. There are plenty of theoretical CAM builds being floated around out there, but as yet, no one has brought a gun to the knife fight.

All this is to say that people don’t continue to bring sharper and sharper knives. The “state of the art” in CAM continues to evolve as cars are developed further and further at the chosen pace of the individual builders, which is suspiciously constant across the class.

I guess that’s not completely surprising. The autocross competitor demographic, while somewhat diverse, still devotes a relatively consistent amount of time and financial resources to their hobby. These real-life constraints, more than any arbitrary sanctioning body rule set, seem to have been the limiting factor in CAM development since its infancy.

So what’s this all mean?

Well, I’m not a social scientist, but if I were pretending to be one, I’d say that when confronted with the prospect of anarchy, our order-craving human brains find a way to create some structure from the chaos. If no overt structures exist–like thick rulebooks and governing boards–we’ll create implied and covert structures. Poll the paddock at a typical CAM event as to what the average CAM car should look like, and I’d wager you’d get a surprisingly consistent answer.

But the social sciences are sciences, too. And the CAM hive mind will inevitably evolve. Ask the same question five years from now, and I suspect the answers will be rather different–although broad similarity still wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Mutant creations will enter the scene and become the new alphas. The unevolved herd will be forced to adapt or lag behind.

The real question for me is this: How long can the CAM organism sustain itself and evolve along a natural path without the guiding forces of a thick rulebook directing its progress? The answer, hopefully, is for a while.

Hopefully CAM is on a successful trajectory, one that can be emulated in the future by other emerging classes and scenes. At the moment, it appears to be growing in popularity and performance at an organic, manageable pace for both the competitors and the organizers.

Although, as I write this, someone very well could be building their own giant meteoroid in their garage, ready to unleash an extinction-level event on CAM’s rules-free party.

But so far, the meteors have been avoided. Much like how the Wild West wasn’t in fact all that wild, CAM seems to be doing just fine with as few rules as possible. And that’s partially because everyone is afraid of being the one who pushes too far, too fast, and makes it so we can’t have nice things anymore.

Sooner or later CAM will gain more rules, as does every form of human competition. That’s fine, though. Once the giant meteor hits, GRM will run a nice, pretty feature on it for everyone to enjoy.

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