To make a long story short, Jeff found a Chrysler dealership in town (miracle) that had a new key blank for a Chrysler 300 in stock. The dealer couldn't reprogram the key, or cut it to work with the Jeep, but agreed to sell it to Jeff for $185. We drove Jeff to a local locksmith in a grocery store parking lot to get the new key cut, using the two pieces of the original key as the master. When we got back to the Commander, Jeff taped what was left of the broken Jeep key to the new Chrysler key and fired the Commander up. The Commander was back in business, as long as Jeff kept the factory theft deterrent systems happy by stashing the old Jeep key in close proximity to the dash.
CATCHING THE TROPHY TRUCKS
Our diesel-powered '08 Jeep Grand Cherokee lead the way and Jeff nasi, Steve vonseggern (publisher of Diesel Power, four Wheeler, and 8-Lug), and Jeff Dahlin (publisher of Off-Road and 4-Wheel Drive & Sport Utility) all followed us in 4-Wheel & Off-Road's Jeep Commander. The buddy system is critical down in baja, so our plan was to take both Jeeps and head south out of Ensenada on Highway 1.
Over the race radio came reports that a helicopter had crashed outside of Ojos negros after hitting a power line. Many of the highdollar race teams use helicopters as support vehicles to follow their race trucks, and it sounded as though one of the teams had suffered a terrible loss. Days later we read in the local paper that the helicopter may have been a drug trafficker using the baja 1000 race as a cover story for his operations. We know that sounds crazy but the rest of the story reads like a Hollywood movie script and involves an armed militia stealing one of the bodies recovered from the local morgue!