’70s Terra Tackles 1000-Mile Desert Race, Backed by Rebooted Scout

Next weekend, a 1976 Scout Terra will attempt to conquer the vast Baja deserts of Mexico in the National Off Road Racing Association (NORRA)’s Mexican 1000. Sean and Owen Barber, a father-son team, are the wheelman and co-driver for this ambitious endeavor, which actually measures north of 1400 miles all-in, including several hundred miles of on-road driving between stages.

The race includes several categories of machinery—everything from full-fledged trophy trucks capable of floating across whooped sections at 100-plus mph, to motorcycles, to more vintage classes like the one the Barbers are running in.

And the Barbers know more about Scouts than most. In 2003, Sean and his wife Heather bought a small International Scout parts company called Anything Scout. The Barbers grew that business over the years and eventually started an adjacent company, New Legend 4×4, that is now regarded as one of the leading bespoke builders of International Scout off-road vehicles anywhere.

Three years ago, Sean and Owen decided to dip their toes into the desert racing scene. Scout Motors, the revived automaker now under the Volkswagen Umbrella, jumped aboard as a partner from the get-go. This year, it helped the Barbers come up with the period-correct Terra Cotta livery you see here.

We caught up with Sean ahead of next week’s race to hear a little bit more about the truck, affectionately called the “Race Terra 2.0” and what it’s like to pound a nearly 50-year-old 4×4 through the Baja desert.

Late in last year’s race, the Barbers suffered a crash that not only pulled them out of the race but forced their hand if they wanted to return this year: They would have to build a new truck. Per the rules for the Legends 4×4 class that they’ll be running in, much of the componentry for the running gear has to be stuff that was offered by that OEM in-period. For the Barbers, that meant finding stuff that International Harvester was putting in its vehicles back in 1976.

The resulting truck is epic in its own special way. Power comes not from some hopped-up period V-8, but from a 196 cubic-in four-cylinder, one of the more pedestrian engines that IH offered in the mid-seventies for the Terra. That four-pot pairs with a T19 wide-ratio four-speed manual and a pull-cable-actuated single-speed transfer case with two-high and four-high, but no four-low setting. Per Barber, International was one of the few manufacturers in the ’70s to manufacture their own transfer case, and using this one versus a more complex setup enabled some weight savings—the case in the Race Terra weighs just seven lbs.

“We’re for sure the tortoise of the bunch, with about 80 rear-wheel horsepower versus the [Legends] Broncos, which have like 400 rear-wheel horsepower,” quipped Barber. Lest you think the power gulf penalizes the Barbers, they managed a second-place class finish in 2023.

What’s more, power isn’t everything in this class. Legends cars are allowed to run 35-inch tires, but they must use driveline setups similar to those of period cars. For the Barbers, that means Dana 44 axles front and rear, and per regulations, the cars are only allowed two inches of lift over stock. “The beauty of it is that the factory suspension can only handle so much speed in really rough conditions,” explained Barber. “In those big trophy-truck whoops, we’re only doing a maximum of like 24 miles an hour, otherwise, your truck will just destroy itself. Our strategy is just consistency and reliability, because the faster you drive your truck, the more it’s gonna break. The basic principle is to drive it as fast as you can without breaking it.”

While that sounds logical, the attrition rate in this race is remarkably high; Barber was saying that of the 270 vehicles that began the race, roughly 50 of them broke down or crashed out before the end of day one.

“Probably 70 percent of the race is run in two-wheel drive,” explained Barber. “We can get about four to five miles an hour more top speed if we have the hubs unlocked.” (Yes, the Barber’s front axle still uses manual-locking hubs that the co-driver has to hop out and engage for the particularly gnarly stuff.) “It’s worth the three minutes to pull over and have our co-driver jump out and unlock the hubs,” he explained. “Then [we] just be real careful if we know that no mud or silt is coming up.”

When it comes to testing pre-race, the mileage is surprisingly low. Barber said that in 2023, when they had a fresh truck, the team only put about 120 miles of desert-race-speed testing on the rig. Last year, with the same truck, the team did far fewer miles because they already had all that data from the year before. This year, with a new truck, the testing regimen went back up, but was still well short of race distance.

“There’s such a thing as over-testing, and you don’t want to prematurely wear out parts,” explained Barber. “At the end of the race, the truck is worn out. It needs new leaf springs, new bushings, the shocks need to be rebuilt. It’s amazing the amount of wear and tear [these vehicles endure].”

Perhaps the most impressive bit of this whole effort? There’s no windscreen, and Barber and his co-driver run open-face helmets. “In the spirit of the pioneers of the whole thing,” explains Barber. Out in the open, when the Barbers are getting passed by high-spec UTVs and trophy trucks doing anywhere between 90-130 mph, that’s a lot of free exfoliation—and then some. “They’ll scream past us and you’ll get one-inch pieces of gravel shooting at your face, and you have to block your eyes when they run past you,” he explained. “It’s hard, but it’s a lot of fun.”

That last bit sounds like the perfect descriptor for the whole endeavor, really. The 2025 NORRA Mexican 1000 begins next Saturday, April 26, and runs through the following Friday, May 2.