1992: The Simon Brothers' Ford Beat Every Bike but One

It was 1:31 in the morning in La Paz, and hundreds of people were still waiting at the finish of the 25th Baja 1000. Out of the dark came a heavily modified Ford pickup with a bank of lights so bright that Paul Simon later joked the motorcycles ahead of him "probably thought they were being followed by a baseball stadium."

Paul, 31, and his brother David, 35, came from Fallbrook, California. They raced under the Ford and BFGoodrich Rough Riders banner, a factory backed superteam Ford had put together the year before. That November the race went all the way down the peninsula again, about 1,030 miles of desert crisscrossing Highway 1, and it drew a record field: 197 four wheel vehicles and 132 motorcycles.

On a course that long, the bikes usually win. A good rider on a light machine floats over ground that beats a truck to pieces, and the motorcycle times at Baja had been running ahead of the cars for years.

David took the first half. The desert was torn up. "I've never seen so many washouts," he said. He figured he passed about 40 motorcycles on his stint.

Paul took the second half. The only real worry was the engine, which was running hot, around 270 degrees. "But it never missed a beat," David said.

When the pickup crossed the line its time was 16 hours, 53 minutes and 2 seconds, an average of about 61 miles an hour. No car or truck in the field was faster. Neither was any motorcycle, except one.

A Kawasaki entered by 20 year old Danny Hamel of Boulder City, Nevada, had come in less than three minutes earlier. Hamel started it, Paul Ostbo rode in the middle, and Garth Sweetland brought it home. Three riders and a 500cc bike, barely ahead of two brothers in a Ford pickup.

Behind the Simons, Rough Riders teams took three more of the top five four wheel spots, and four of the team's entries won their classes. For one night in La Paz, the Ford colors were everywhere.

The bikes still got there first. But in a race built for motorcycles, two brothers in a pickup finished less than three minutes behind the fastest bike in the race.