I guess I'll fill in my side of the story- Brian's account of the rally itself is pretty accurate, and it was a fun and laid back time for us. Spectating is incredibly easy compared to crewing, volunteering, or racing, and my main takeaway was that this is a fantastically well attended rally given how cold and remote it is.
Friday- I spent all day doing important top secret work related things around Detroit. Then my coworkers dropped me off at the rental car place, where I was informed by the attendant that I could pick any small car. "There's a Camaro over there, is that small enough?" I asked, doing a poor job of feigning innocence, and was met with "Dude, you want the Camaro?! I'll give you the Camaro, it's 20 degrees and snowing nobody's gonna rent that thing!"
So. Here's my review of a V6 Camaro in the snow:
Tires- Goodyear all season somethingorother. Not good, but I've driven on worse.
Traction control- Slow to respond and downright intrusive when cornering. With the open diff it's best to leave it on for parking, though. The rest of the time I had it off, and had to hold the button for 10sec to disable the stability management along with it, otherwise it would kick in constantly and try to put the car in a snowbank for me.
Drive mode- The car has Touring, Sport, and Snow modes available. Touring is fine on the highway but the laggy shifts make it very difficult to tell if the wheels are spinning, and at what speed. Snow mode is unmitigated garbage and should not be used by anybody who actually knows what they're doing. Sport mode, traction and stability control off, and the shifter in manual was surprisingly good and kept things controllable despite the annoying amounts of single wheelspin produced by the open diff.
Suspension/steering- Remarkably good. Sufficient travel, good feel, the stock suspension could actually be a solid snow rally setup.
General feeling- A new Camaro is a perfectly viable snow car up to about 6" of coverage, at which point it begins forming an iceberg on the front bumper. Replace the OEM tires unless you like having to maintain a 1/4 mile following distance.
I made my way up to meet Brian, missing most of day one, then had a fun time keeping up with his Subaru through zero-visibility whiteout conditions back to the hotel. The hotel itself was really something, a relic of the 80s with much wood paneling, a stuffed bear, and an enclosed courtyard area containing a pool, hot tub, sauna, arcade cabinets, and a grand piano. The majority of the hotel's other guests were somewhat rowdy snowmobilers who seemed to be having a pretty good time. Actually, snowmobiles were everywhere throughout the entire weekend- every spectating point had a group parked nearby, and every road had either snowmobile tracks next to it or directly on it. Neat.
Saturday- Late start, some spectating, lots of sliding the Camaro around on the spectator roads. Laid back, good time, very cold though. At one point had to bump into a couple snowbanks to get turned around on a road only as wide as the car's length. Again, amazed by the amount of turnout for this event. Guy at the BBQ place that night told us all about a number of his interesting theories, including how Zoolander is actually about the differences between rally and Nascar (!) and how only certain parts of the moon landing were faked but the rest was real. Back at the hotel, one of the other guests is wandering around drunk singing Bohemian Rhapsody- his performance was just barely good enough to make up for how much noise he was making.
Sunday- Back to Detroit to fly home. The first hour on the highway was quite snowy, making for an interesting time since I was intent on being on time for my flight and therefore did some passing. Returned the Camaro with a large amount of snow still packed into the grille and frozen to the wheelwells and bumper, which got a bit of a reaction from the attendant but he noted no damage. Mission success!
