Bruce Hodgins, Greg Schmittgens, John Weber and Kathy Stroh take the latest Wallce hit out for a spin.	Eric Engelmann and Matt Calkins adjust their assembly lines for the new fall models.

36 players played 11 games in the two qualifying heats for this hard-to-locate Martin Wallace design leaving one to wonder where the ceiling for this game might be once it is more widely available here. Bruce Hodgins (4660), Chris Skuce (4460), Mike Backstrom (4410), Aaron Fuegi (4370), Joshua Cooper (4080) and Mike Gentile (4010) won their first heat games. Andy Maly cracked 5000 in his second try (5020), followed by Raphael Lehrer (4920); Bruce Hodgins (4570), the only winner in both heats, although his second was a close shave over Romain Jacques; Rod Spade (4460); and Bob Sohn (4160), recovering from a below-2500 last place finish in the first heat.

A very convenient 16 returned for the sem-ifinal, so we had four 4-player semies followed by a 4-player Final. Andy Maly repeated his 5000+ performance and continued to improve upon his earlier scores(5040), while John Weber (3900) prevailed in the tightest game of the tournament with a scant 110 points separating first and last place. Matt Calkins (4430) and John Dextraze (4270) rounded out the Final Four.

The two Johns had some trouble getting out of the blocks in the Final. Weber started with Durant and built the Duryea. He couldn't close the factory until Turn 3, resulting in several loss cubes. Dextraze, after two solid 4000+ games, decided to push the envelope, building two factories for the EMF 30 on Turn 1. He had to take two early loans and, by his own admission, got a little overextended.

The real race was between Maly and Calkins. Andy played a (relatively) conservative game, alternating between Howard (sell an extra couple cars) and Chrysler (manage losses), placing four distributors during the game (versus Matt's eight). Matt, on the other hand, played more aggressively, taking Durant on half the turns. He got several more loss cubes for obsolete locations, forcing a Sloan character on Turn 4. At the end, loss cubes told the story. Andy had one loss cube at the end of Turns 3 and 4, while Matt had nine at the end of Turn 3 and four at the end of the game. Final scores: Andy 4070, Matt 3820, John W 3640, and John D 1030. A more detailed action-by-action writeup is in work.

Some statistical info: Chrysler was the most preferred character (33% more selections than any other character; others were within one choice over the games); game winners preferred Sloan on the last turn (half of the recorded winners picked Sloan on Turn 4); no significant scoring difference between 4- and 5-player games (4480 average high score in 4-player games; 4440 in 5-player games); 70% of the games advanced to the fourth side of the board (half of these games ended at the Ford Model A; one game got to the Chevy 6; one game ended at the Overland 4-90).

Mike Gentile, Jacques Romain and Andy Maly take a test drive.	GM Schmittgens records the action by his finalists.