Customs asks rattletrap car owners: 'Planning to leave that in Canada?' (22 photos)

When life gives you one of history's most reviled automobiles, what do you do?

You load that that sucker with tools and spare parts and food and drive it to the Canadian border and then proudly continue around the Great Lakes with 18 other pathetic hooptie owners who've promised not to behave like douchenozzles.

The Great Lakes Mistake Lemons Rally clunked through the Sault Thursday on a 5,467-kilometre course that will end Saturday in South Haven, Michigan. 

"My run's been pretty clean," Brian Gomez of Exton, Pennsylvania, told SooToday.

Gomez is piloting a fiberglass dune buggy grafted onto the floor pan of a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, a Sears kit car so despised he gets 300 bonus rally points for daring to be seen in it. 

"My windshield wipers have stopped working," he moans. "My horn now works when I turn to the right. I'm not really sure why, exactly. When I push on the wheel and turn it slightly, the horn goes off, for some odd reason."

Gomez and his balky Beetle were in the Number 1 position with 1,440 points as they left the Sault today for Peterborough.

Points are awarded for finishing the day, visiting checkpoints along the route, for special challenges and for misadventures such as creative repair jobs.

Bonus points go to vehicles of exemplary hooptiness, with pre-1950 cars manufactured in Warsaw Pact nations designated hooptiest of all.

Drivers showing up in Piloti racing shoes are docked points for blatant douchenozzlery.

Thursday's designated checkpoints included the Echo Bay loonie, the big red chair in Thessalon, Blind River's logging memorial and Sudbury's Big Nickel.

The Great Lakes Mistake Lemons Rally isn't a race. Everyone's expected to abide by relevant traffic laws.

But special points are bestowed or taken away from those drivers who get tickets, depending on the quality of the yarns they spin about their infractions.

Gomez picked up his VW beater two or three years ago,

"It was built sometime in the early 70s and continues to go today."

What did Canada Border Services Agency say when he and other rally drivers showed up in their lousy lemons?

"They seemed pretty entertained that we're bringing these things cross the border, but they had plenty of good questions."

Such as?

"Such as, do you plan on leaving it here?"

"For me, it's just a love of the road," Gomez says. "I love driving around and seeing new things and I've never been to this part of America, or Canada. It's been an adventure to compete in something that is silly and ridiculous, and at the same time, so full of camaraderie with good friends."