Cornfield Maze for Cars
“IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME…”
We are all familiar with the Field of Dreams quotation, but what if someone cut an octagon-shaped maze in an Ohio cornfield and asked MG drivers to take their cars through it? Well, they built it and they came! Nearly 50 MG cars, mostly T-types attempted to solve the puzzle as part of the Glasgow Green Trials, a daylong driving skills event and funkhana sponsored by the Ohio Chapter of the NEMGTR (New England MG T Register).
John Olman, an MG enthusiast from Cincinnati and owner of the farm began, planning the maze over a your ago. He enlisted the help of Adrian Fisher, a noted English maze designer and when completed the maze measured 315 feet across, in corn eight feet high! Covering over two acres there were over 2300 feet of nine-foot wide trails. Only a single car was allowed in the maze at any time and it required seven turns to exit the puzzle correctly, for which a bogey time of eight minutes was allowed. The winners were Doug and Spencer White in a ’59 MGA, and we’re delighted to report that only one entrant got lost and needed assistance!
Certainly a challenge, as our photos by John Olman show. Congratulations to all involved for something just a little different!
(From Moss Motoring Magazine, Winter issue, 1997.)
Maze rules
Encountering a dead-end roadblock is the bane of maze participants. In a traditional pedestrian maze, one simply turns around and retraces the path walking in a forward direction to continue searching for the exit. Not so for cars, even small British roadsters. Since the paths through the corn maze were only 9-feet wide, drivers had to drive backwards to the previous turn and choose another direction. The length of a side on the outer octagon of the maze was 120 feet, so you can just imagine how frustratingly fun it was for both driver and navigator.
The fastest time of the day was a remarkable one minute and 18 seconds by Doug and Spencer White in a 1959 MGA. Close behind was the fastest T-type MG, a 1955 MG TF belonging to Dick and Phyllis Hall. At the bottom of the list, only one car reached the maximum time of 8 minutes and was ceremoniously extricated from the corn by 9-year-old Scott Olman, riding a bicycle.
A road block (above) meant having to back up and a team failing to complete the maze within 8 minutes received a bicycle escort to freedom (below).
