We’ve all seen the clip: chasing an X Games gold medal at the Home Depot Center, Colin McRae rolled his gold Subaru WRX STI, but continued on as eventual winner Travis Pastrana looked on in disbelief.

It’s a moment cemented in action sports and motorsport legend and is a huge part of Vermont SportsCar history. That was 20 years ago. And now that famous car, once driven by an even more famous driver, is back following a painstaking restoration.

The 2006 X Games was a seminal moment for VSC and rallying in the US. Not only was it the first time a motorsport competition had been part of the annual action sports festival, but it thrust American Rallying into the limelight in a way never seen before with live broadcasts on ABC and ESPN.

“It was so much more pressure than a rally, because this was our moment,” says VSC’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Yandell. “The format was unique because the first half was a normal rally, but then the stadium stage was new to us – there wasn’t much of that in the US.

“We just didn’t have a precedent to look at for that. We weren’t fully aware of what we were getting into, but we knew it was going to be really big, and we needed to make the most of it. This was our shot ~~when~~ – you get one chance at an introduction.”

To really make a splash, VSC founder Lance Smith wanted a big name in one of his cars. That’s where Colin McRae came in.

“I wanted a highline driver for the team,” Smith recalls. “This was our shot at live TV on a national network. It all happened because I knew Derek Dauncey. Derek was a friend of mine and he had the connection, so he asked Colin if he would be willing to drive, and he said yes.

“It actually worked out very well, because I didn’t have the money for Colin to drive, and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind – I wasn’t going to hold it to him, and he, and he wasn’t going to hold it to me – if he wouldn’t mind signing the contract, that way I could use his name to go out and find the money to run him and to pay his bill,” he adds. “It took me less than two weeks to find all the money to run him, once I could show people he was on board.”

Bringing in a big name was one thing, but McRae was a household name the world over thanks to his unrelenting driving style and the Colin McRae Rally video games which captured a generation. As Yandell puts it, “he embodied rally”.

“If we’re trying to explain or showcase rallying to a big, largely uneducated audience – there was some rally fans in US, but really we were tapping into a totally new audience in action sports and McRae was already an established name, had won with Subaru, so he was the connection of what makes rally special,” he says.

“He was the embodiment of what we were going to try to convey to the new audience, the action sports audience, of how gnarly rallying is. He is the poster boy for gnarliness of rallying.”

After winning the World Rally Championship in 1995 and driving for Subaru, Ford, Citroen, and Skoda’s factory programs, US Rallying and X Games was a whole different world for McRae, but he took everything in stride and immediately worked to move the whole team forward rather than just focusing on himself as you might expect for a WRC competitor.

“Other than working with Stig [Blomqvist], we had never worked with a world champion, and when Colin came to the team, he was extremely respectful,” Smith says. “He was really passionate about the team, in that we here in America, where they don’t do rallying, and we’re trying to raise the profile of rallying, and he knew that right away, so didn’t have too high of expectations, wasn’t over-demanding, and when he showed up, he really enjoyed the level we were at and helped us to get to the next level.

“It was more of a mentorship to the team as a whole. He shared everything, so the adjustments to the car and all of that. It wasn’t like there was any competition there… he wanted us all to win. That’s what it felt like, and that included Ken [Block], who was a complete novice at the time.

“We had to fly in radiators and intercoolers, all this stuff. We were trying to get these things to perform at a very high level, and it was very warm out there so there was a battle to keep everything running. He was completely patient and making good suggestions, but he wasn’t looking down at us, he was with us 100%.”

McRae became an immediate part of the team. One anecdote Smith remembers was the team meal before X Games. He was warned that McRae wasn’t a fan of such functions, but McRae ended up asking for the venue to remain open after hours, then asked for a repeat in his contract upon his return in 2007. A moment that resonated with McRae, but inspired VSC’s crew then, and still today.

“That night was really special,” Smith says. “And it wasn’t like we were partying, we were just enjoying each other’s company. He acknowledged who we were by doing that, the feel within the team.

“It was really good that it stuck with him. He’s one of the guys that inspired VSC to keep pushing.”

Driving VSC’s other Subarus at X Games were Pastrana and Block, who were both at the beginning of their rallying careers, and Tanner Foust in his fourth year in the American championship. McRae’s experience, however, was closer to 20 years, making him an ideal benchmark for the group that would go on to be the flag bearers for American rallying and Rallycross for the next two decades.

“It was really eye opening and encouraging to see the speed of Travis,” says Yandell. “We were trying to gauge where American rallying was, and the American rallying talent, like Travis – Travis was leading the championship that year. That was Travis’ first year rallying full-time. He had only done a few rallies in ‘05, and then ‘06 was his first full year under Subaru Rally Team USA.

“He was obviously one of the top guys that year, and so we were curious about how fast we were. He was right with Colin on stage times, so that was encouraging, and really helped us understand where American rallying was and could be, in that we weren’t getting destroyed by this world champion.”

After eight proper gravel rally stages north of Los Angeles on Wednesday August 2, McRae and co-driver Nicky Grist held a small lead ahead of Pastrana and co-driver Christian Edström going into the final super special stadium stage the next day in front of the crowds and live cameras.

McRae had a quick and precise run through the first part of the street stage ESPN constructed around the outside perimeter of the Home Depot Center stadium. McRae was up on the splits and he looked set to take Gold. McRae then entered into the stadium where he had just the large dirt jump and a few turns before the finish line. As he drove up the jump, he had begun to rotate the car for the next right-hand turn after the landing, but this rotation pitched the car’s front corner into the dirt upon landing, vaulting his Subaru into a spectacular roll. Never was McRae’s “if in doubt, flat out” mantra more fitting, as the car landed on its wheels he instantly hit the throttle and kept driving, with shattered glass and broken body panels hanging off the car. McRae was still able to salvage the silver medal, the gap to Pastrana was a mere 0.52 seconds.

With X Games, VSC set out to show a new audience just how cool rallying could be. With that one moment, it was mission accomplished.

“It happened so fast, but the fact that he was able to drive away and finish, you couldn’t have scripted that,” says Yandell. “This was like a Hollywood script for how to introduce rallying to Americans: have this crazy guy who’s a champion come over and roll the car and land on his wheels and still earn a medal.

“As a rally fan back then, you wanted to explain to new fans how cool rally cars are, that they roll and they continue. That’s a thing in rallying; They roll, they crash, and they will continue with bumpers hanging off, three wheels, whatever, that’s a thing you don’t see in other racing in the US and makes rally special.

“It was amazing that it all worked out in the end like that. It probably still would have been cool even if he didn’t finish, but the fact that he was able to continue was part of the rallying message that we were always trying to get across, it was a shining example of what makes rallying special.”

As the marketing man, Yandell was thinking of the positives. But what about the man signing the checks? Despite the incoming repair bill, Smith was just as excited.

“I didn’t think about that at all,” he beams. “No hesitation.

“Here’s a guy that not that many years ago was a world champion, one of the most looked at drivers in the world, and here he is working with this little tiny team out of Vermont. It was one of those things you can’t buy.”

The car was repaired, and ran again with McRae behind the wheel at X Games in 2007, his last competitive outing before his untimely passing later that year.

In 2011 Travis Pastrana briefly drove and crashed the car heavily at the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood.

“Travis wasn’t officially driving for Subaru that year, and I had that car fully restored, white, no markings on it, and I had it up for sale,” Smith explains. “Travis called me up and said, ‘Hey, I see 100 Acre Wood is this weekend? Do you have a car available?’ We put together a quick team, and we ran there with the McRae car.”

The outing didn’t last long. Pastrana had a major off on the second stage of the rally, heavily rolling the car into the trees less than a mile into the stage. That was it for the car as a competitive machine.

Now, 20 years on from that fateful X Games weekend back in 2006, the McRae car is a part of DirtFish owner and founder Steven Rimmer’s collection alongside Pastrana’s original 2006 X Games car – which had already been restored as well.

VSC fully restored the McRae Subaru, a comprehensive rebuild, breathing new life into one of VSC’s most iconic cars.

“It was a complete teardown and restoration,” explains Yandell. “Getting things right was a little tricky. Parts needed to either be remade or repaired, or we needed to figure out where we sourced it from back then.

“It was a very serious restoration. We got everything as if it was like a newly built car.”

The car will return to the public eye at the Wicked Big Meet at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway on June 7, with the possibility of displaying it at more Subaru events in the future. And, for the first time since 2006, there’s a plan to get the three cars – McRae’s, Pastrana’s, and Block’s – back together at VSC’s headquarters for a proper family reunion.

“We want to be able to display them,” says Smith. “After Wicked Big Meet we’ll get them all back together.

“20 years, a long time… it’s gone by very fast.”