I was with one of the original computer nerds, though I doubt he knew what that meant and I certainly didn't. It was the 1960s and we were competing in the Canadian International Winter Rally in a factory-backed Volkswagen Beetle; me as driver, my friend as navigator. In those years the Winter Rally was the toughest event of its kind in North America. Precise navigation was crucial even though the route between checkpoints was more like a bobsled run. Keeping us "on the road" was my job. Arriving at the checkpoints within split-seconds was his.

I wish I could remember his name but I can't. All I can recall is that this quiet-spoken IBM employee had designed a device that would be superior to the Halda calculators and Swiss watches our competitors were using. He was looking for a driver willing to try it and I was eager to team with a navigator to keep us on track and on time. The start, from a ramp in front of Rootes Motors in a Toronto suburb, would have done Hollywood proud. Searchlights probing the sky; media pressing in with cameras and microphones; a brief wheel-spinning acceleration before joining local traffic on Eglinton Avenue. It would be a half-hour before we escaped the suburbs and tackled the backroads of Ontario on a frigid February night. Meanwhile I was glancing at my co-driver's odd-looking device, a series of levers and dials set into a portable wooden platform.

Conceptually it was brilliant, functionally it was a disaster. On the second day of the Rally, with only a few hours of sleep in the North Bay stopover, I noticed that some of our quickest competitors were going in the opposite direction, complete with spectacular slides on snow-covered roads. My navigator, lost in the mysteries of his computer, had no answer. As a VW public relations assistant I was embarrassed and suggested we retire, with me pretending to be overcome by car sickness. Bad decision. My VW boss preferred defeat to retirement. Better to be late than not to show up at all.

The following year, convinced of the need for a proven navigator, I had rally champion Robin Edwardes in the passenger's seat. This time the mistakes were all mine. Having trained in rear-engine, oversteering racers, I wasn't prepared for the understeer of a front-wheel-drive Austin 1100. Three times I put us off the road on downhill turns. Not even a decent performance on the one closed road was enough to save us as once again I suffered a dismal arrival at the finish line. Still, my rally with the computer guy was a ride into history. If only I'd known.

Note: I have no photographic records of the rally car. The photo above is of me driving my modified Beetle to a class win in a hillclimb. No navigators needed.