Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame

Conceptual Vision
June, 2004

FORMATIVE CONDITIONS

Creation of the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame is a unique opportunity and a singular challenge. Clearly the overall project mission is a celebration of the sport and the individuals whose contribution to its growth and increased visibility has motivated their election to the Hall of Fame. This however is not your garden-variety sports hall of fame. In fact, the project stands apart from virtually all other sports halls of fame in several significant ways.

First, it represents not one sport, but a number of sports that while closely related by vehicle and terrain are distinctly different. For some it is flying across the desert track at surprisingly high speeds in competition with others; for some it is a four-wheel excursion for the adventurous family seeking solitude or escape from the urban clatter. For others it is navigating the desert washes, outcroppings, steep dunes and other elements of the desert landscape, the slow and often treacherous negotiating of rocky inclines and perilous leaps from high pinnacles to the floor of the desert below. Still others find their off-road rewards speeding across flat sandy beaches and wind-swept coastal dunes, discovering oases of peace and solitude among forested acres, or traveling vast stretches of snow-covered reaches far from conventional arterial highways.

The vehicles very with the demands of the sport and terrain, and the goals of the devotees are not always the same, but in all cases, they are bound together by the one overriding fact that their milieu is everything and anything other than the paved highway.

Second, while the vast majority of sports halls of fame represent a quickly recognized and widely followed sport, off-roading is less well-known, often misunderstood and in terms of media exposure, considerably beneath the national radar.

Third, the number of individuals enshrined in the Hall of Fame to date are few, compared with the major sports, and the inductees with on or two notable exceptions, are generally not house hold names.

Fourth, where most sports halls of fame are encompassed by buildings of their own, the ORMHOF is resident in a structure already well known as the National Automobile Museum. Although its presence in the Museum is a definite asset and mutually beneficial to both parties, the ORMHOF must be particularly proactive in establishing its "brand" both within the Museum and beyond, through corollary marketing/advertising/PR and event development strategies.

Finally, planning and design for the currently allocated three thousand square feet of space in Gallery Four, should be considered as Phase I of a long term master plan that would see the ORMHOF expand into the entire fifteen thousand square feet of Gallery 4 and perhaps ultimately into a building of its own.