In twenty-five years of Targa Newfoundland, no one had entered an electric car. In September 2026 we did — and we finished all four legs.
Targa Newfoundland closes public roads across the island and runs cars flat out between them. It has done so for twenty-five years. Every entry in that time has burned fuel.
John Gordon and Doug Ottenheimer ran a 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E as car 4-04 in the Targa Tour division — the event's first electric entry. Both registered to drive, swapping seats between legs. Four days, from the Southern Shore to the Cape Shore to Clarenville, on closed roads, with no charging infrastructure built for any of it.
We finished. Not without incident — the front drive unit dropped out under load on the Cape Shore stages, and a failing 12 volt battery threw half the car's electronics into fault on day two. We diagnosed both at the roadside and kept going.
That is the interesting part. Anyone can put a fast car on a closed road. Running an EV across rural Newfoundland for four days, to a schedule, on a charging network that was never designed for it, is a different problem — and we now have the only real data that exists on solving it.
Leg 2 was the hard one: 405 km around the Cape Shore, 156 km of it flat out on closed stages, with the nearest fast charger 317 km from the start line.
Modelled from consumption measured on the car across the event, then confirmed against the readings on the day. The margin at Whitbourne was nine percent — about thirty-six kilometres. There was no second charger within reach.
Nobody else has these numbers, because nobody else has run an EV here. They are what let us plan 2027 properly instead of hoping — and they are the reason the next car is a different one.
The single charge that made Leg 2 possible happened in a community hall garage, on the socket behind a kitchen range.
There is no public charger on the Cape Shore. The lunch halt at the Point Lance Community Centre was the only place on a 405 kilometre leg where car 4-04 could take on energy, and it worked because people there opened a garage door and let us plug into a 240 volt outlet for an hour.
We left them a charger. An Autel MaxiCharger wall box, handed over before we drove out, so the next electric car through Point Lance — Targa or otherwise — finds something better than an extension cord and a favour.
That is the pattern for 2027. Six days is six of these problems, and every one of them gets solved the same way: work out where the energy has to come from, then leave the place better supplied than we found it.
The Duemila. Half again as long as the event we just finished, on a car chosen for the one thing that nearly stopped us.
Six legs is not fifty percent more driving. It is fifty percent more charging logistics, overnight planning and consecutive hard days on one car — which is exactly the problem worth solving in public.
We are building the 2027 programme now. Positions are limited by what fits on one car — the amount is not.
This is advertising, not sponsorship in the charitable sense. Targa Newfoundland went out live for the first time in 2026 — free on YouTube, produced remotely over satellite, and screened at IBC in Amsterdam. Your name travels with a story people actually want to follow: the first electric car to race the Rock.
There are no fixed amounts. Pick the position that fits what you want out of it, tell us what it is worth to you, and we will tell you honestly whether we can deliver it at that number.
The team runs as Auto X Racing presented by you. Both flanks of the car, top billing on the suits, the site, every post and the season film. First refusal on 2028.
Named panel on the car and on the crew suits. In the season film, in the race reports, in the posts from the road across all six days.
Decal on the car for the event, named on this site and in coverage through the season.
Every contribution goes on the wall here and gets thanked publicly. Whatever the amount, it all goes into the same car.
Where it goes: entry fees, safety equipment, suspension and brakes, tires, the charging kit that makes six days possible, and getting the car to the start line in the condition it needs to be in. We are a two-person team running one car. There is no overhead to swallow it.
A conversation, not a pitch deck. Tell us what you want out of it and we will tell you honestly whether we can deliver it.