The weekend before Memorial Day, I took my customary road trip down to “The Vintage” in Asheville, North Carolina. This is the biggest vintage BMW event on the East Coast, with 600 cars in the village of Hot Springs nestled in the mountains north of the city, and the event hotel in Asheville is a non-stop, three-day hoopla where walking round the parking lot is as much fun as the official event itself. I’d missed it last year due to a family health issue, so I was looking forward to returning.

In addition, I decided to drive Hampton, my 49,000-mile survivor BMW 2002. I’ve written quite a bit about Hampton in these pages, describing how I’d bought the car from its original owner in 2019, how I revived it while taking care not to disturb its remarkable originality, how it didn’t sell on Bring a Trailer because people may say that they love survivor cars but what brings the money are shiny powder-coated vapor-honed mirages, and how I gradually warmed to the car’s survivor vibe. It’s not a quick 2002 like my 2002tii, but it’s an incredibly solid car, virtually free of the usual thunks, klunks, and rattles that haunt 50-year-old vehicles.

Even though it appeared that I would be keeping the car, the 50,000-mile rollover strongly affected how I used it. I know, it was stupid; it’s not like it was some ultra-low-mileage vehicle. It was already a survivor car, not some Cosmoline-coated hangar queen, but I still felt that the mileage was something to be hoarded like Bitcoin or virginity or something equally silly. But between one road trip to Vermont a few years ago and the required back-and-forth to the Monson warehouse on the MA/CT border where I store cars, the mileage had crept to 49,900. I had this epiphany: Do you want it to roll over on the way out to Monson, or do you want it to happen when you’re doing something big and fun?

So big and fun it was. Hampton was going to The Vintage. I took it for a shakedown drive, found a sticky front brake caliper, replaced it, drove it again, and by the time I got back, I was within 28 miles of the big rollover.

Then something unexpected happened. Two days before departure, one of my two road-trip companions called me saying that his BMW 2002 had problems and couldn’t make the trip. I thought about how I have these cars in the Monson warehouse gathering dust, and offered him my ’73 BMW Bavaria. After all, the Bavaria ran fine when I used it a few years ago for a mini-road trip to upstate New York to be used in a movie, and in my recent piece about how all my cars seemed to be rising in revolt, the only issues with the Bavaria were a dead battery from sitting and low-rpm buffeting from imperfectly synchronized Webers.

However, something occurred to me. I’m a big proponent of replacing convention mechanical ignition (points and condenser) with an electronic triggering unit such as a Pertronix (you can read about the debate here). The main reasons are A: points can wear down and close up, causing the car to die, and B: the quality of new points and condensers is absolute garbage these days. And yet I was about to head off on a 2,000-mile round trip in my only two vintage cars still running points. Why? Well, when I was trying to sell Hampton, I wanted to keep it original, and now there wasn’t time to order a Pertronix. With the Bavaria, after its first trip to The Vintage in 2014, I tried installing Pertronix, but for reasons unknown, the car didn’t want to rev over 4000 rpm with it installed, and I never figured out why (I’ve never had this happen on any other car), so I reversed back to points. So both of these cars were not only running points, but were still running the points that were in them when I bought them. (Spoiler alert: Point gap would figure prominently in repairs on this road trip, though not in the way I expected.)

So early on a Wednesday morning, my two companions met me at the Monson warehouse. We put a charged battery in the Bavaria and checked the fluids, then I checked the point gap in both cars with a dwell meter and adjusted it. Then we headed south for Asheville.

Oh, Hampton’s big mileage rollover? It happened 30 minutes into the trip. Over and done. I did my best impression of Paul McCartney singing “Let Me Roll It.” She’s a road trip car now.

We made it to the night’s destination Winchester, Virginia, a little over halfway, without incident. Hampton seemed genuinely happy to be free of its cloistered stored-in-a-barn-in-the-Hamptons-for-10-years-then-treated-like-a-wallflower existence.

When we were about to go to dinner, I got a phone call from a friend—professional vintage BMW mechanic Paul Wegweiser. He said that his friend and customer Mike was about 30 minutes south of me with a dead 2002, and asked if I could help. I called Mike and learned that he and the car were safe in a gas station parking lot with several hotels within walking distance. I said that it made the most sense for me to look at the car in the morning (daylight, it’s on my way to Asheville, auto parts stores are open, etc).

So the following morning I found Mike and his 2002. I’ve written over and over about the common things to strand a vintage car on a road trip (ignition, fuel delivery, charging, cooling, belts, and to a lesser extent clutch hydraulics). A car that goes from driving to dead is highly likely to be a victim of one of the first two. You can give a blast of starting fluid down the carb throat to test which it is (if doesn’t start, it’s ignition, but if it starts and runs for a few seconds, it’s fuel delivery), but for some reason I went right for the points—I yanked off the distributor cap and watched them while Mike cranked the engine. They clearly weren’t opening.

Setting the point gap is usually easy, as points usually have a notch that sits between two little bumps on the distributor plate that allows you to put a screwdriver in the notch and lever it against one of the bumps to increase or decrease the gap. However, the nylon block on these points was so badly worn that the slot wasn’t between the two bumps, and they didn’t really fit right on the plate. Plus, these were the unusual left-opening points used on 2002s with vacuum-retard distributors. I didn’t have a spare set of these with me, and the odds of any AutoZone having them was zero. It took quite a bit of fettling to get the point gap dialed in. When it was, Mike tried starting the car. The carb let out such a loud belch-and-backfire that it startled us all. I theorized that Mike had probably flooded it trying to get it to start with closed points. Eventually it started and idled, and a test drive verified that the car appeared happy. Mike joined our caravan, and we made it down to Asheville without further ignition-related issues.

It was a wonderful event. The organizers of The Vintage refer to it as “a gathering, not a car show.” It’s not a concours. There are no trophies. No one “wins” anything. While there certainly are some lovely restored high-dollar vintage BMWs there, it’s far more about shared passion and enthusiasm irrespective of budget. It’s the kind of event where, on the drive down or in the parking lot, if you need a part or expertise because your car is broken, there are hundreds of people who have your back, and that is a beautiful thing. My having helped Mike was part of the spirit that naturally flows out of the event.

There’s also a long history of my friend Paul Wegweiser pranking me at The Vintage. One year, he bombed my Bavaria with yellow chicken feathers that I’m still finding inside the car. Another year, he actually zip-tied burned-out wires under the dash of my 2002 and a burned-out fan motor under the front seat so I’d smell it on the drive home and wonder where the electrical fire is. He has threatened to put zip-ties on my driveshaft and half-axles so he can read about me going crazy trying to find the source of the noise. However, this year, he said that, since Hampton is such a lovely survivor example, he wasn’t going to screw with it. Like an idiot, I believed him.

The drive home hit a bump on our first stop in southern Virginia. Mike’s car had the good fortune of dying literally as we were heading into a gas station parking lot. Again, it was due to the points having closed up, but this time things were worse—the inside of the distributor cap was coated with soot, the points were noticeably more pitted than before, and I found that the thin braided wire grounding the distributor plate to its body had detached from its connector. And, to add insult to injury, we appeared to be parked near a leaking sewage line or septic tank.

My theory was that the detached ground strap was causing a much stronger spark across the points, which in turn caused both the pitting as well as the soot on the inside of the cap. I got everything buttoned back up, and we continued heading north. I rechecked the distributor on Mike’s car whenever we stopped, and it appeared to be soot-free with the point gap holding stable. One of my travel companions noted that another service area was also, uh, fragrant, but we were parked next to a drainage culvert at the time.

We arrived that night in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. While we were unloading our bags from our cars, someone noted that the smell of Virginia rest stops appeared to have followed us. While we were waiting in line to check into the hotel, the red light went on in my head: It was my “friend” Paul. After all, someone who zip-tied burned wiring into my car certainly wasn’t above putting something foul-smelling into my BMW. After I checked in, I went back outside and did the nose test under the hood, along the rocker panels, and at the tailpipe, but nothing jumped out at me. I thought that maybe, whatever he’d done, it was heat-activated. He’s a clever guy.

Before we headed off in the morning, I re-checked Mike’s car. I pulled off the distributor cap and was relieved to see both the absence of soot and that my repair of the little ground strap was holding.

Then I borrowed his key and went to start the car so I could check the dwell. It clicked but didn’t start. I pulled out my voltmeter and measured the battery voltage. It read 13.1 volts. Standard resting voltage of a fully-charged battery is 12.6 volts, so it had plenty of voltage.

To make testing easier and eliminate the car’s ignition switch as the source of the problem, I connected a jumper wire to the starter solenoid. I touched the other end of the jumper to battery positive. Again, click but no start.

The no-start decision tree is pretty easy to follow and usually quite definitive. This was beginning to look like a bad starter motor. Pulling the starter isn’t a 10-minute job like the alternator, and we didn’t have a spare one with us anyway, so I wanted to be sure. I was about to swing my car in front of Mike’s to jump it when one of my other companions said he had a new fully-charged lithium jump pack. We hooked it up, it buzzed, and still… click, but no start. Just in case there was a bad connection in Mike’s battery cables, I used my jumper cables to connect the battery directly to the starter. It made no difference. And Mike’s car is an automatic, so there was no way to push-start it.

I lit the Hack beacon and posted a the “2002 down, 2002 needs starter motor” message on the Facebook page for The Vintage, then began removing the starter. With it out, I did the on-the-asphalt test of connecting it directly to the battery. It did spin, but the spin-up time seemed unusually long. Two people quickly answered the post, one of whom had two used 2002 starters at his repair shop just 20 minutes north. He said that we’d actually met once in the parking lot of a Sheetz convenience store nearby. When I got home after the trip, I looked through my old trip photos to The Vintage and found pics of the meeting. Incredibly, it was 10 years almost to the day, and I was driving the same Bavaria.

I tested both used starters by jumping them with Mike’s car’s battery. They both seemed to spin up a bit slowly, but one was obviously faster than the other. Installation, however, was a bear. The solenoid on the replacement starter was fatter than on the original one, and it couldn’t get past the bracket for the kick-down cable for the automatic transmission. I had to loosen the bracket to move it out of the way. It was the kind of bent-over pulling-up-wrenches work that angers up my aging back, but I seem congenitally unable to say “Good luck with AAA” when there’s a problem I can diagnose and fix.

Finally, with one of the starter’s bolts holding it snug enough to the bell housing to verify the repair, I reconnected the battery cables and again touched the jumper wire to battery positive.

Click, but no crank.

No. NO. Not possible.

My first thought was that the engine was seized or otherwise prevented from turning. I chocked a rear wheel with one of the other starter motors, had Mike put it in neutral, and manually rotated the engine (it’s easy to do this on a BMW 2002 by just grabbing the cooling fan and leaning on the belt with the heel of your hand). It rotated easily.

Stumped, I jumped in my car and swung it nose-to-nose with Mike’s to jump it. Why? Don’t know. Just to try something, I guess.

It spun instantly.

Wait, what?

As I put the car back together, I began to accept the idea that I’d gotten the diagnosis wrong. It probably never needed a starter motor. If it started with a jump, the problem was likely the battery. Just because the battery had more than the necessary 12.6 volts, that doesn’t mean that it was able to deliver the cranking amperage to spin the engine. I hadn’t suspected the battery since it looked new (Mike said he’d installed it when he bought the car last year). But it was a mystery why it didn’t start with my friend’s jump pack.

With the starter fully secured and the ignition switch reconnected, the started instantly with a jump and a twist of the key. I re-checked the point gap using the dwell meter, and it was still fine. I verified with my voltmeter that, with the engine idling, there was about 13.5 volts at the battery, indicating that the alternator was charging it. Mike and I said our goodbyes as he was peeling off to drive home to Pittsburgh, about 250 miles. I advised that, as long as he didn’t shut it off the car, he’d likely be fine.

Does anyone get it? Anyone see what I missed? I’ll give you a hint: It’s as plain as the nose on your face.

A few hours later, this text appeared on my phone: “Update! The good news: I am safe at a rest stop off the turnpike. Bad news: I am kaput! Car puttered out and battery is fried. Smoking and a little stuff coming out. I am 96 miles from home, which puts me within the free 100-mile tow! P.S. I think that [expletive deleted] smell was ME!”

Oh. My. God.

The smell! I can’t believe I missed this.

An old-school voltage regulator is designed to to rapidly open and close (not unlike ignition points), bringing the alternator in and out of the charging circuit so that the average voltage to the battery with the engine running is about 13.5 to 14.2 volts. When a regulator fails, it can fail in two ways. They usual “fail open,” which means they never bring the alternator into the charging circuit, so the battery runs down and eventually the car dies (or won’t start). But if they “fail closed,” they cause the alternator to always feed the so-called full-field voltage (about 17 volts) to the battery. This over-charging boils the sulfuric acid in the battery and produces gaseous sulphur which smells like rotten eggs. THAT’s what we all were smelling. It wasn’t sewage. It was the battery being fried.

If someone had said “I smell sulphur,” or “I smell rotten eggs,” my voltage-regulator-stuck-closed neuron would’ve fired, but I missed it. This is why the car’s resting battery voltage read 13.1 volts instead of 12.6 (I can’t believe I missed this one too). And, most important, this is why the battery wouldn’t crank the starter in the car—it was ruined. It’s also why, when removed, the starter was slow to spin up. Had I dropped my own battery in Mike’s car, or used my battery to bench-test his starter, it would’ve spun fine. It was also likely a contributor to why the points were pitting and the distributor cap was coated with soot.

I think that part of the reason I got it wrong was that it was just a few months ago that I wrote about buying a new battery for Hampton when the problem turned out to be a bad starter motor, but I felt like an absolute idiot. The entire episode could’ve been avoided had I simply jump-started the car like anyone who doesn’t pretend to be a know-it-all would’ve done, and if, once it was running, I checked the battery with a voltmeter both while the engine was idling and while it was revved up. I would’ve seen the over-voltage. I had a spare regulator in my trunk. That and a trip to an auto parts store for a battery… it would’ve been so easy.

I still, though, didn’t understand why the car didn’t start off my friend’s lithium jump pack.

A day after we got home, my friend messaged me:

“So I figured out why the starter didn’t crank with the jump pack. It’s a ‘smart’ jump pack that sensed that the battery was at 13.1 volts. That’s the buzzing we heard when you hooked it up. Per the instructions: ‘HOMPOW [brand] car jump starter with intelligent clamps provides protection against over-charging, over-discharging, surge voltage, overload, over-voltage, short-circuit, reverse polarity, and high-temperature protection, making your devices jump faster in a safe way.’”

Oh, my two cars, with their decades-old points? Flawless. Absolutely flawless.

When you blow a diagnosis, all you can do is learn the lesson, and hope that the consequence of being wrong isn’t too painful in time, effort, money, and the degree to which you’ve caused yourself or someone else a pain in the butt. At least this one made for a good story, and two good arrows in the diagnostic quiver.

***

Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

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As the summer driving season approaches, Hagerty’s new Road of the Year award is meant to encourage Hagerty Drivers Club members and all automotive enthusiasts to get off the freeways and explore a great road in their own region. Our first annual Road of the Year winner: California’s Highway 33. This epic two-lane road is within easy reach of residents and visitors to the Los Angeles area. If you’d like to make your voice heard and discuss your favorite road, comment below and share the love of driving with fellow enthusiasts.

As important as what you drive and where you are going is how you get there. Because any wheel-driven vehicle cannot function without a surface upon which to exert its motive force, the road is as important to a car as oxygen is to the human body. OK, there are a few exceptions, including the lunar rover, but one characteristic shared by almost all automobiles built between the 1885 Benz Patent-Motorwagen and the 2024 Tesla Cybertruck is that they function to their full potential only on a prepared surface. Unlike the USS Enterprise, cars go best where others have gone before.

There are more than 4 million miles of road in the United States, from the Aleutian Islands to the Florida Keys. We’ve built roads over and under mountains, across sweeping spans of water, through the eastern forests and the western deserts, around nearly every island, and over the southern swamps. Picking one to single out as the best is impossible. The best for what? Since Roman times, roads have been engineered to do one thing and one thing only: link points on a map so that travelers may more easily journey between them.

However, as we all know, roads are capable of so much more. They can provoke delight and terror in equal doses. They can be vaults for our memories and incubators of our dreams. They can pay riches and serve as the best schools from which to get an education. Whether you press an accelerator or twist a grip, something is going to happen to you on a road, and there are a few worth recognizing for the extent to which they stir our spirits as much as get us to where we are going.

In our selection, the first of what we plan to make an annual feature, a few rules were necessarily applied to help winnow down the endless possibilities. First, the road had to be no more than a one-day round trip from a major urban center, the thinking being that anyone should be able to access the route easily as a day excursion and while perhaps visiting this urban center for work or vacation (we may change our mind on this point in future selections). Also, the pavement had to be in good condition. Plus, it had to have some dining amenities, and we leaned toward roads with outlets to other roads, such that they could be run in one direction rather than merely to a turnaround point.

The best roads tend to pass through majestic scenery, and majestic scenery tends to have extreme weather. Thus, always check the conditions before departing. It’s a living landscape in which rivers swell and mountains move, sometimes onto roads, making published routes suddenly impassible. Great roads often don’t have continuous cellphone coverage either, so best to bring some tools and an extra set of points if going in an older car. Hagerty Roadside is good, but they’re not psychic; they can’t find you if you can’t call them.

None of which should deter anyone from venturing out onto this or any other road, the one and only place our cars truly belong. “Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me,” wrote the poet Robert Louis Stevenson. “All I ask, the heaven above, and the road below me.”

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California is a fever dream that has been riling up folks since well before it became the 31st state back in 1850. Then, people didn’t worry too much about asking permission for stuff—they just went out and did it. Indeed, when the car came along, the state’s public works barons laid out the first highways that way, spreading maps of the still wild and remote state with its serial mountain ranges and yawning valleys and drawing arbitrary lines between the dots of settlements. Then they went out and slashed and dug and bored and dynamited their way through, confronting a rough and merciless terrain that does not give up its miles easily.

Those early road builders were pitted against a formidable foe: the ancient tectonic forces that lurk beneath California’s roiling landscape. The northbound Pacific Plate and the southbound North American Plate are experiencing a slow-motion crash, scraping against each other like two continent-size semis sideswiping over a double-yellow. The movement at their meeting point, the 750-mile-long San Andreas Fault, happens in famously rattling fits and starts, the bigger jerks making the national news.

The hills and granite peaks shoved skyward by this 30-million-year-old collision are like the wrinkles in a crumpled fender, and they are not easy to go under or around. So, California’s first road builders (as well as its current ones) mostly went over them, contouring their routes to the ridges and folds of this messy landscape and unwittingly creating thousands of apexes and on-camber thrillers for later generations to enjoy.

California State Route 33, about two hours’ drive north of Los Angeles (give or take, depending, as always, on traffic), is a perfect example. It squiggles and wiggles its way from the quaint village of Ojai up and over the Topatopa and Pine Mountains, rising to 5160 feet at the Pine Mountain Summit before plunging thrillingly into a gorge created by the Sespe Creek, eventually spilling out into the broad agricultural and ranching valley of Cuyama. If you don’t feel the need to immediately U-turn and run it backward, there’s an achingly beautiful option just to the east that recrosses the mountains to join up with Interstate 5 and the express route back to LA.

This road has everything: technical challenges, gob-smacking vistas, relatively light traffic, generally hospitable weather, a very tourist-friendly walking town as its jumping-off point, and the option of returning to the same bed in LA from which you arose that morning. And if you prefer to overnight in Ojai and make an early start, we can highly recommend it, with accommodation choices ranging from relatively inexpensive motor lodges such as the Casa Ojai and the Hummingbird Inn to the ultra-ritzy Ojai Valley Inn and Spa. There’s even a NAPA auto parts store and a tire shop in town if needs arise, and a main drag fronted by old Spanish-style colonnades and lined with pleasant eateries and shops.

Just west of town, State Route 33 branches off Ojai’s main drag, or State Route 150, and heads north. Take on fuel here or elsewhere in town before heading out, as you won’t see another petrol pump for a long time. After passing a few subdivisions and bar/restaurant establishments popular in summer with the biker crowd, you’ll enter Los Padres National Forest and civilization will disappear in your mirrors.

The view forward won’t look much different than it did a century ago when state planners envisioned a wagon trail to connect the seaside village of Ventura with the inland valleys of the San Joaquin and Cuyama. In 1891, when the first stakes were planted for the route, the obstacles must have seemed overwhelming as the route climbed inland from the coast. From the village of Nordhoff (which sounded too German after the outbreak of World War I and was changed to Ojai, or “Valley of the Moon” in the native Chumash language), the Topatopas tower like a wall, leering over this serene enclave of orchards and horse farms like the mossy ramparts of an ancient castle. Behind this wall lay a vast wilderness ruled by mountain lions and circling condors that was accessible only via pack mules on old Chumash trails. No doubt this is why it took 45 years for State Route 33 to go from planning to reality.

With the Great Depression on and California flush with a substantial share of a $400 million national road-building fund, the state got serious about completing the route. It spent $1.5 million to construct the Maricopa-Ventura Highway, aka U.S. Route 399, aka California State Route 33, finally completing it in 1935. The road’s most ardent supporters (and its primary economic benefactors) were the ranchers of the Cuyama Valley, and they threw an epic barbecue to which 25,000 came to feast on some 67 cattle slaughtered and roasted for the occasion.

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As the condor flies, it’s a mere 36 miles from Ojai to the T-junction with State Route 166 at Cuyama, but as the ’66 Mustang rolls, it’s about twice that distance, meaning you’re in for a lot of twists and turns over the next hour and a half. A series of tunnels bored and blasted through granite spurs welcomes you to Wheeler Gorge and the start of the rough country. One day in 1888, Wheeler Blumberg discovered the hot springs that burble from the rock here when he shot a buck that rolled down and parboiled itself in the warm waters. It’s believed the inhabitants of the nearby Chumash settlement may have cursed the invaders of their private spa, because after founding a successful resort in the canyon, Wheeler went mad, shooting 15 holes in the walls of his hotel before he was captured by a posse. He died in 1907 screaming in a padded cell. Successive owners of the resort have struggled through floods, falling trees, and repeated fires with limited success. After sitting abandoned for years, its latest incarnation is as a yoga retreat.

From Wheeler’s place, the road begins its climb up the long, spectacular valley, hugging the canyon walls and tracing each fold in the earth with lovely constant-radius corners that feed into short chutes that lead to more corners. A circular gravel turnoff 15 miles up from Ojai affords an excellent picnic spot with a stunning view out to the distant Pacific Ocean. Many a car-magazine spread, including photos from our five-generations-of-Corvette feature story back in 2020, has been shot here.

The unusually stormy winter of 2022 may have proved that the Chumash curse still has legs; parts of State Route 33 disappeared under rock slides or simply slid down the mountain, and the road was completely closed for almost a year. Last December, Caltrans, the state highway agency, finally reopened it with five one-way sections controlled by traffic signals. Work with heavy machinery was evidently in progress when we photographed this story, and it’s hoped that the one-way sections will be gone by the time you read this.

Near the top of the Topatopas, the Rose Valley Campground offers tenting and RV options for the hardy. And for the truly adventurous, a foot trail and primitive camping network spreads from here into the vast Sespe Wilderness. This whole untamed area shows that much of California, even with its 39 million people, crowded cities, and astronomical housing costs, remains in many places empty and undeveloped, even this close to Los Angeles.

A descent down into Sespe Canyon leads across some bridges and through the gorge cut by the Sespe Creek, which the road tracks with now gentler and faster curves. Another climb hauls you up to a sign announcing the 5160-foot Pine Mountain Summit, after which it’s all downhill from here. Big-sky views at the turnouts supply grand vistas over the mottled green and brown hills and sandy valleys that form the arid landscape, the single road sluicing through it the only real evidence of human hands.

Eventually the writhing road comes to the U.S. Forest Service Ozena Fire Station, and the option to short-circuit the loop back to Interstate 5 by hanging a right on Lockwood Valley Road. However, this narrow, sparsely trafficked ribbon can be in even worse shape due to ever-present sand in the corners and tire-slashing rock falls. And you may have to wade through Reyes Creek, as it tends to spill over the road during wetter months.

Continue north on State Route 33 through the widening valley and past the pistachio farms and new-age meditation centers and you’ll run into State Route 166. Hang a left and run the few miles into New Cuyama to a restored 1950s roadhouse and inn called the Cuyama Buckhorn for some of its locally famous barbecue. Be aware: Though the bar serves food until 8:30 Monday to Wednesday, the restaurant is closed on these days, as are many hospitality businesses up here owing to the utter lack of traffic on weekdays.

Tanks refueled, you can either return to Ojai or keep going via our optional route back to Interstate 5. If you choose the latter, continue heading east on 166, past the State Route 33 junction you just came from (166 and 33 actually merge here, 33 eventually turning north, at times merging with other roads to finally terminate near Stockton, east of the Bay Area). Just a few miles on, hook a right turn at Hudson Ranch Road. This rural byway romps through empty meadows and shoots along high ridges, then roller-coasters around the fringes of 8800-foot Mount Pinos. Lofty views of California’s Central Valley to the east are in the offing on clear days, and when you turn around, you’ll see the mountains to the west that you just drove through on State Route 33, now from a new perspective.

The road plunges into a pine forest and passes through the Pine Mountain Club, a cluster of week-end-getaway-type homes (though surely some are year-round residences) centered on a small commercial strip with a general store, some cafes, and a bed and breakfast. If you’re here in winter, carry tire chains and be prepared for icy conditions. The mountainous section of Interstate 5 known as the Grapevine isn’t too far ahead, but even that mighty and vital thorough-fare is subject to closure by the California Highway Patrol during snowstorms, lest the traffic be stalled on the black ice of its steep grades.

There’s no end of adventure on this route, even once you reach the freeway. Which is why we selected California State Route 33 as our 2024 Hagerty Road of the Year. Now it’s time to go find your own best road, and if you can beat this one, tell us all about it. We need some ideas for next year.

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For five months—6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week—Derek Drinkwater’s life was consumed by a race car that competed only once, in the 1950 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it finished a middling eleventh. Drinkwater could never own it: It’s worth too much money, and happily resides in a museum in Naples, Florida, while Drinkwater and his wife, Pat, live in Chiddingfold, England, where he wears several hats—a truck mechanic, a caterer, a race car driver, a popular television host.

The car he’s so taken with is called Le Monstre, French for “the monster,” so named by fans and the media at Le Mans, because the car’s styling is somewhere between cartoonish and hideous.

If Drinkwater couldn’t have the monster, he’d just build one. He told Pat that he’d be eating in the garage for a while. She begged him not to do it. “I have to get it out of my system,” he told her.

It’s all the fault of Briggs Swift Cunningham II, who was the sort of man who could make the average Joe feel good about millionaires. Born in 1907, family money funneled into Cunningham’s bank account from a variety of sources: A growing company named Procter and Gamble, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Citizen’s National Bank, the meat packing industry and multiple other businesses. And this was before he married Lucie Bedford, granddaughter of the founder of Standard Oil.

Cunningham didn’t smoke or drink or carry on like the rich people in The Great Gatsby. He preferred to spend his money in competition: He built a boat and sailed it to victory in the 1958 America’s Cup, and—along with college chums he met at Yale, brothers Miles and Sam Collier—he built and raced cars.

Cunningham was already an established racer when a pair of entries for the 1950 24 Hours of Le Mans fell into his lap. You’d think he would just buy a pair of Ferraris or Talbot-Lagos, but Cunningham was different: If he was going to France, he wanted to take something American.

But what? Cadillac was building a potent 5.4-liter, 160-horsepower V-8; stuff that into a short-wheelbase Cadillac Series 61 two-door, and at least you’d have something that might go the distance.

That wasn’t quite enough for Cunningham and his cohorts: Sure, they sent a stock-appearing Series 61 with an auxiliary 35-gallon fuel tank and twin carburetors as one entry, but for the second, Cunningham noticed the rule book said modifications to the body were allowed. He removed the steel body completely and had an engineer at Grumman Aircraft design something in aluminum that would be lighter and more aerodynamic. It looked like a bar of Procter and Gamble soap. The French dubbed it “Le Monstre.”

Technical inspectors at Le Mans scrutinized Le Monstre, rule book in one hand, fine-toothed comb in the other. No, the rules didn’t say you could replace the entire body, but they didn’t say you couldn’t. It was judged legal. Cunningham, along with tuner Phil Walters, drove Le Monstre. The Collier brothers drove the other Cadillac, which the French were calling “Petit Pataud,” which translates to “Little Clumsy.”

Little Clumsy finished tenth, while Le Monstre was 11th, a victim of Cunningham stuffing the car into a sand bank early on in the race. It took him about a half-hour to dig the car out by hand.

For some reason, all this resonated with Derek Drinkwater, who usually works on and sells Diamond T trucks, known mostly for the rugged six-wheel vehicles built for use by the military in World War II. He uses vintage trucks in his high-profile catering business, and he also appears on several auto-related TV shows.

This may not be the first time he has been obsessed with a famous vehicle: He was profiled in a documentary about director Steven Spielberg’s first film, the low-budget, made-for-TV Duel, about a sinister Peterbilt truck that chases a hapless traveling salesman (Dennis Weaver) driving a Plymouth Valiant. In the documentary, titled The Devil on Wheels, Drinkwater says he “fell in love” with the 1971 movie. He found a vintage Peterbilt attached to a tanker like the one in Duel, bought it on eBay, drove it 2700 miles from Portland to Houston, put it on a boat and had it sent on a four-week cruise to England.

So maybe spending five months building a replica of a car that raced once, years before Drinkwater was born, is not that out of character. After all, he had already built and raced a Cadillac like Little Clumsy, but that wasn’t enough.

It was Pat who actually got the ball rolling: She located a short-wheelbase 1950 Cadillac in Arizona. “We bought that and used its chassis,” Drinkwater said. It would not be easy. Le Monstre and Little Clumsy both remained in Cunningham’s considerable car collection, along with subsequent Cunningham-built cars, many with Cadillac engines. That collection fell into the hands of Miles C. Collier, son of Cunningham’s Yale friend and Le Mans team driver, who houses the collection at the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida. The Revs Institute was of great value to Drinkwater, supplying all sorts of photos and measurements of Le Monstre.

But what they didn’t have was any sort of blueprint. So Drinkwater built a big projector and a huge screen, on which he projected a life-sized side photograph of Le Monstre. He outlined the entire car on the screen, matching the appropriate measurements, and effectively made his own blueprint of the car he would build.

Gradually it took shape. Inside, it used the same Cadillac V-8 engine, down to Le Monstre’s odd five-carburetor fuel system with a Carter carb in the middle, surrounded by four Holleys. The same three-on-the-tree shifter and transmission that, incidentally, made downshifting for sharp turns at Daytona a challenge. The same drum brakes. Drinkwater resisted the urge to update the suspension.

Outside, Drinkwater formed the aluminum panels himself, which he admits is not his specialty. The panels were affixed to a tubing framework by airplane-style Dzus fasteners. Rear lights, like the original, come from a 1948 Ford. The factory Cadillac steering wheel was replaced. A small engraved plate placed on Le Monstre’s dashboard, just left of that steering wheel, read “Custom built by Frick-Tappet Motors Inc.,” of Long Island, New York. A nearly identical plate in Drinkwater’s car reads, “Custom built by Derek Drinkwater Motors Inc.” of Chiddingfold, England. The car was painted white with a big blue stripe down the middle, which was a Cunningham staple.

On Facebook, a growing number of people watched Drinkwater’s build take place. He let it be known that he was in search of a special gauge like one used on Le Monstre: Two people responded. The first guy had one he’d sell Drinkwater for $3000. The other guy also had one. He wrote, “I’ve been following you on Facebook. You can have it for what I paid for it 20-odd years ago: $200. I’m honored to be part of the build.”

Drinkwater finished his monster in 2018, and began driving it at some racetracks in Europe, including Brands Hatch and at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. He also raced it at Le Mans, in the Le Mans Classic, a series for vintage cars.

At Goodwood, both the original Le Monstre and Drinkwater’s tribute car showed up, and he had the opportunity to compare them side by side. The tunnel behind the driver’s head, containing the roll bar, is two inches taller and wider than the original, because, Drinkwater said, that’s what the rules require now. And the white on Le Monstre’s body has turned to more of a cream color, likely due to age. Otherwise, they appear to have emerged from the same factory.

Last November, he drove his car at the Classic 24 Hours at Daytona, an annual event patterned after the Le Mans Classic. The event was designed for cars raced in 1965 or newer, but Drinkwater asked the organizers, Historic Sportscar Racing, if they would allow him to come, “and they said, ‘Of course, we’d love to have you.’” His car hit 142 mph in practice, faster than Le Monstre went at Le Mans.

This month he returned to Daytona—his car wintered in Florida—and Drinkwater fabricated a trailer hitch for the car, hooked up a teardrop camper, and he and wife Pat hit the road, leaving Daytona and bound for California. He spoke to Hagerty during a quick stop, about 40 miles east of Austin.

“No roof, no windshield wipers, no heater—what could go wrong?” Drinkwater said, laughing.

“So far, the trip has been fantastic. We’re taking the scenic route.” He and Pat have basically taken a year off from work, so there’s no hurry to get home. Surprisingly, there’s no chase car full of parts and a mechanic following them—“We’re on our own, just me and Pat in the little camper. Tonight, though, we’re getting a hotel room. The camper is great, but a hot shower, you know…”

So far, only one thing has gone wrong: A couple of days before our conversation, Drinkwater said he received an email from the vaunted Monterey Historics, held at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca each August. Drinkwater had asked to race there, but he was turned down because his replica of Le Monstre wasn’t, well, Le Monstre.

“They said the car’s not original, and I know it’s not the original car, but underneath, everything is a 1950s short-wheelbase Cadillac. It’s still an historic car, there’s no new aftermarket parts or anything else.” He said there are multiple well-positioned automotive enthusiasts advocating for him, “So I hope we still have a shot.” After all, he said, the event’s first race is even called “The Briggs S. Cunningham Trophy.” Even if he’s refused an entry, he plans to park it in the spectator lot.

Drinkwater’s car is scheduled to return to England in November, and he and Pat have a lot of America to see between then and now. A couple of days ago, he checked in to their Instagram account from the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. It was colorful.

Taking a year off doesn’t mean they’ll be relaxing. On the morning we spoke, Drinkwater and Pat had spent nearly two hours using the free internet at McDonald’s updating their social media accounts and returning texts and emails.

“The response has been fabulous,” he said. “The way people slam on the brakes to take a video of us on the freeway, I’m sure there’s going to be an incident.”

***

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This is a little story about how, no matter how much you plan, something completely unexpected can mess you up, and the only thing that can save you is a simple act of kindness from a stranger. Such was the case 10 years ago.

In the spring of 2014, I took my 1972 BMW 2002tii on a road trip to “MidAmerica 02Fest” in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Although I’d taken road trips in my ’73 3.0CSi to other events, this was the first one I’d taken in a 2002 in 25 years.

Preparation-wise, it got off to a very rocky start. In a previous trip to “The Vintage” event in 2012, the head gasket in a friend’s BMW 2002tii blew. He and another professional mechanic-friend replaced it in the hotel parking lot, but it raised the question of whether a head gasket is a likely-to-fail part in what was then a 40-year-old car, and I became obsessed with the idea that it’d be better to replace the one in my car in the comfort of my own garage than risk roadside failure on the 3000-mile trip to MidAmerica 02Fest. So I did.

The wisdom of this can be debated. While there’s little doubt that a freshly-resurfaced and rebuilt head on a properly-installed fresh head gasket should all but eliminate the specter that said head gasket will fail in East Awfulgosh, you can usually get some degree of warning that a head gasket is failing by doing a leak-down test, looking for oil in the radiator, and checking for exhaust gasses in the coolant.

But I was a man on a preventive maintenance mission, and in I went. While I was in the process of decapitating the 2002tii, a professional wrench friend warned, “Never pull off a head unless you’re prepared to deal with what you find.” It was great advice that, unfortunately, came a little too late, because I found that the cylinder walls had some score marks on them, and what is seen cannot be unseen. I elected to do a block-in-car refresh—drop the oil pan, undo the rod end caps, pull the pistons and rods out, ball-hone the cylinders, re-ring the pistons, replace the rod bearings while you’re in there, put it all back together.

I did all that, but when I was revving up the engine to set the timing, heard an alarming knocking sound. I had little choice but to pull it all back apart. I found that I hadn’t torqued the #4 rod bearing cap down, and one of the nuts had come completely off. The #4 bearing had clearly gotten hammered, so I replaced it. I took the rod and cap into my regular machine shop to check for damage (they were fine).

In the middle of all this, I broke my left foot while walking down the two steps from my attached garage into the basement. I did it stone-cold sober with a spaz misplacement that caused a folding-under of the foot, resulting in a Jones fracture that looked like I had a golf ball surgically implanted under my skin. I didn’t include this in my recent piece about “when cars attack” because it had nothing to do with the car—it was my own clumsiness.

To secure the fracture, they put a little titanium screw in my left foot, but I still wore “das boot” on it to protect it from the pain that came whenever it was jostled. At this point, I had less than a week until I’d need to leave for MidAmerica 02Fest. Getting things together didn’t seem possible with me hobbling around, but I decided to try. I got the car running a few days before the must-depart date. The traditional rule of thumb for a new rebuild is to put 500 miles on it while varying the speed but laying off wide-open throttle, then change the oil, and then stand on it, but there wasn’t time. I needed to know now if my motor was going to grenade, so in the 270 miles I put on it, I got on it pretty good. And yes, fortunately I found that I could still operate the clutch pedal with “das boot” on.

I changed the oil the night before departure, adjusted the valves in the morning when they were dead cold, and hit the road.

OK, I’ll admit that none of the above really has anything directly to do with the act of grace that happened next, but as a trial lawyer will say, “It goes to frame of mind.”

So here’s what happened. The first day of the trip had a few small hiccups that required minor rest area intervention—a loose fan belt and a loud rumble that I traced to the A/C compressor bracket having loosened up. I stayed that night at a Motel 6 somewhere in Ohio, fueling up first so I wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. So far so good.

Mid-morning of the second day of the trip, I pulled into a convenience store to fuel up, and for the life of me I couldn’t find my wallet. I checked all the reasonable places—in my backpack, in the glovebox, on the floor, under the seats, between the seats and the transmission tunnel—and nothing. I found the receipt for the hotel room the night before and asked if I’d left it in the room, and they said they didn’t have it. I didn’t get a receipt for the gas station the night before, so there was no way to call and ask if I’d left it there. For someone who sweats the details on tools and spare parts for a road trip, I suddenly realized what a precarious situation I was in not having a spare credit card or spare cash located somewhere other than in the AWOL wallet.

My first thought was that I needed to drive to the closest Bank of America (where I have my main account), present my charming but identification-bereft self and say, “I’ll take any ID test you want, but please give me some of my money.” At the time, I think I still had an internet-connected flip phone, the kind where you had to hit a key three times to select a character to spell a word. Here in New England, you can’t throw a 10mm socket without hitting a Bank of America branch, but after I fumbled my way through the branch locator on this not-yet-a-real-smartphone, I found that the nearest one was 250 miles away in Cincinnati. And at present, I didn’t even have the gas to get there.

Well, crap.

I did, however, have my checkbook, as that was in my backpack. I took the checkbook and a copy of my book Memoirs of a Hack Mechanic as it showed me on the cover with the very car I had at the gas pump, went inside, talked with the girl at the register, and held up the book and pointed at the pump as if it was some kind of ID and asked if I could pay for the fill-up by check. (All ginned up on whatever drug the brain secretes when you lose your wallet and realize you’ve got a big problem, I probably said something very close to “Hi. My name’s Rob Siegel. I lost my wallet. But I’m a writer. See? This is me. And that’s the car. So you can trust me.”)

Not surprisingly, the girl looked at me like I was from Mars. Of course, I am from Mars, but there was no way she’d know that.

However, the other cashier—a woman a few years older—heard the near-desperation in my voice and asked, “Can I see the check?” She looked at me and the checkbook, and made a decision. “I can help you,” she said. “Come on outside with me.”

We went to the pump, she took out a credit card, swiped it, and I filled the tank with an even $50 of high-test. I thanked her profusely. I looked at the generic-sounding “Quik Mark” or whatever the sign in front of the building said, cocked my head at it, and asked her, “Do I make the check out to them?”

She surprised me when she said “No, Megan Smith.” [It’s not really Smith; the name has been changed to protect the innocent.]

Slowly the light bulb went on: She wasn’t swiping a business card for the convenience store. It was her credit card. She was personally trusting me and spotting me the tank of gas. I stumbled out a big emotional thank you, hugged her, and in the “For” field on the bottom of the check, wrote “Being a saint.”

We said our goodbyes, and I pulled the 2002tii away from the pump and into a parking spot. Before I drove 250 miles—which wasn’t directly on the way to Eureka Springs—I wanted to be absolutely certain the wallet wasn’t somewhere in the car. I tore everything apart again, probably the fourth time I’d done so. This time, I dumped the entire contents of every compartment of my backpack out onto the floor, and out dropped the wallet. I have no idea what crevice it had been hiding in, but clearly it was not part of the known universe.

With the wallet now in hand, I pulled out $50 in cash, ran back inside, found Megan, gave the universal “God I am such an idiot” eye roll and hand gesture, handed her the cash, and she handed me back the check. I thanked her for the third time, and headed off to Eureka Springs.

But not before taking one of the credit cards out of my wallet and putting it in my glove box, a habit I follow to this day on every road trip.

The rest of the trip, both the drive down, the event itself, and the trip back, were wonderful. If you’ve never attended a car event that’s entirely dedicated to your specific make and model, it’s a thing of beauty, both the snaking line of the cars themselves on a windy road, and a room full of like-minded wackos who all share your peculiar passion.

And, since I’d traveled farther than anyone else, I won the coveted “Iron Butt” trophy.

But the real prize, the thing I’ll remember my entire life, was the interaction at the convenience store. I’ve held onto the check, as it’s a keepsake, one of those lovely reminders of what a wonderful thing it is to the recipient of grace, generosity, kindness, and trust. I’d forgotten where I’d put it, but by utter coincidence, I ran across it this week while looking for … not my wallet, but an infrequently-used credit card that I’d removed from my wallet.

So, Ms. “Smith,” if you read this and recognize the story, and you’re ever in the Boston area and lose your wallet or run out of gas or, really, need anything, I’ve got your back.

***

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A sunny autumn day in Victoria, B.C., provides the ideal backdrop for open-topped motoring, British style. Crisp leaves crunch under skinny tires and swirl in the wake of this little blue 1967 MG Midget as everyone smiles at its cheery, cheeky face. It seems impossible that anyone could hate this car, with its drawn-by-Richard-Scarry looks and fizzy four-pot engine.

But Dave Hord did. In fact, this pint-sized Brit classic nearly broke his spirit of adventure.

Hord is Hagerty’s Director of Events for Canada and a route master for a large number of driving events. He racks up around 40,000 miles of driving each year, much of that in one of his own modified vintage VW Beetles. He is well used to roadside repairs, scrounging parts, and all the other setbacks a classic car can throw at you on a roadtrip. Even so, the Midget nearly killed him.

Our story begins on Facebook, font of many a bad idea. In October 2022, Andrew Comrie-Picard, a stunt driver, rally racer, adventurer, and entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, posted a photo of his Midget and Model T, asking if anyone with an enclosed trailer might be available to ship the former from Los Angeles up to the Seattle area. The Midget had been sold to an old friend in Victoria and it needed to be moved.

“I’ll drive it up,” posted Hord, adding later: “Will probably need to borrow a toque.”

Some of you are doing the math on this, and those of you who own old British machinery are possibly scratching your heads at the audacity of such a plan. October is lovely in southern California, but this is a car with no roof, 65-ish horsepower, and a four-speed gearbox. It’s a solid 1500 miles from Los Angeles to Vancouver Island, and have we mentioned that the car is more than half a century old? And British?

Murphy’s Law, that old adage proclaiming “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” certainly applies to a lot of vintage British cars. Battling such mishaps is part of the charm, however, knowing how to keep them soldiering along, mend-and-make-do. Every British-car tinkerer relishes the hard work that goes into making sure your old Lotus, MG, or Jaguar doesn’t stumble when out for a weekend canter.

Not so charming, however, the Midget’s front suspension collapsing in the first 30 miles. On a run to pickup motocross goggles to ward off hundreds of miles of no-roof blustery driving, Hord found himself calling for a flat-deck tow, without even having started his odyssey properly. Turns out, the Midget’s previous owner had bodged some suspension and it had come apart beneath Hord.

Foreshadowing of future travails. And there were even more hints before that. Andrew Comrie-Picard—whose friends often just call him ACP—and Hord have been friends for 20 years. However, Hord came from an appreciation of Volkswagens, and ACP from a love of Jags and the like. German vintage car enthusiasm and British vintage car enthusiasm do have a brotherly Venn diagram overlap, but each is its own discipline. Hord’s Beetles aren’t always bulletproof, but they are usually meticulously prepared before a journey. He is, after all, a professional route planner. ACP, on the other hand, has more of a rally driver’s approach, a patch-things-together-and-send-it kind of mentality.

Thus, the Midget was fine for driving around town, but it needed quite a bit of work before setting off. Having optimistically flown in on a Thursday, Hord didn’t end up hitting the road until late Saturday—and ended up camping on the side of the road that night.

Next morning, he was up early with plans to hit cars and coffee in Santa Cruz. But wait, what’s that noise? Just 45 minutes into the drive, it was time to spend several hours fiddling with the SU carburetors, which stubbornly resisted proper tuning. Having finally sorted them out, Hord was back on the road and … wait, now what’s that noise?

Oh, no. The generator.

Still, never say die. Hord coasted into San Francisco on his last few electrons, pulled the generator in a parking space, and dropped it off at a repair shop on Monday, October 31. Shout out to Rite-Way Electric on Sixth Street, which had the generator rebuilt and ready to go in just two hours.

Here we must pause to consider some looming deadlines. As a working man, Hord did have a job to get back to. He happened to be in the LA area doing early recce for the Hagerty California Mille, and the expectation was that he would be at his desk on Monday, ready for presentations and meetings on the entire plan for 2023. Which would be stressful enough on its own, let alone when you’re still trying to get an MG bolted back together some 1200 miles from home.

The other, unexpected deadline was the weather. October had been unseasonably warm, perfect for those last fall drives. The change came like a lightswitch, however, with monsoon-level wind and rain and bone-chilling cold. Up ahead, in Washington and in B.C., meteorologists were buzzing about a phenomenon they called an “atmospheric river.” This is not a fun term to learn when you are driving a car that has no roof.

Wrapped up in layers of wool and Gore-Tex, with a garbage bag around his waist for extra protection, Hord bravely soldiered out into the—oh, come on, what’s that noise now?

This time it was a mechanical show-stopper: a stuck valve in the head. With the little MG ostensibly stricken beyond mere roadside repair, Hord rented a U-Haul, hooked the Midget up behind, and kept heading north. Looking back, he said, “I had failed in my mission—but I was thinking, how can I turn that failure into opportunity?”

The U-Haul made time, and the rains eased up. Hord pulled into a parking lot, and there, as though accompanied by a chorus of angels, was the sign that is balm to the soul of many a broken-down vintage motorist: Harbor Freight. Hord bought the tools he needed to pull off the head, he fixed the stuck valve, returned the U-Haul, and then hit the road again. This time, the Midget was purring like a dream.

Hord spent the next day in online meetings in a hotel room, catching up on work while some last-minute importation paperwork came through. The final leg of the journey was tantalizingly close, but his phone kept lighting up with less than ideal weather updates. Rainfall Warning. Flood Watch.

Once more into the breach, Hord faced a three-hour delay at the U.S.-Canada border, then a soaking wet drive all the way to the ferry terminal, where, thanks to a series of mechanical and storm-related delays, he had to endure multiple missed sailings before getting on the last boat out, at 10 p.m. The crossing was incredibly choppy, with crashes and bangs below deck. Hord responded by posting the movie poster for Master and Commander on Facebook.

And at last, home. Hord tucked the Midget beside one of his Beetles and gratefully slunk off to bed. The MG relaxed by vomiting copious amounts of oil all over the shop floor.

But the adventure was not quite at an end. ACP and a couple of friends flew in at the tail end of November for a work party. They pulled the engine, sorted out the leaks, did the clutch, and got the Midget ready for its next driver. It was, of course, raining again, so Hord dug out some garbage bag skirts for the new owners to wear on the wet drive down to Victoria.

The Midget is now owned by Leigh Large, a longtime friend of ACP. In reality, it’s his daughter Ylva’s car; the pair fell in love with it on a trip to LA, when they borrowed the MG to drive around town. You can see why. In fact, this little car is so appealing, somebody stole it while the Larges were visiting Griffith Park. It was later recovered after being abandoned … due to fuel issues. Vintage cars often provide their own anti-theft systems.

Large says that his daughter drives the Midget all the time. Ylva’s still in high-school, and on her learner’s license, and the pair plan to do one of Hord’s local driving events together, maybe next year. One wonders if the sight of the little blue car might give Hord flashbacks.

“Honestly,” he says, weighing his thoughts carefully, “I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t even blink.”

A spirit of adventure. Occasionally bent to the limit, but unbroken.

The post How the Happiest Little Blue Car Nearly Broke the Will of a Professional Adventurer appeared first on Hagerty Media.

For a young California surfer, the gleaming walls of New York City were all kinds of wrong. Sure, they beckoned like a sparkling Pacific swell in a graceful sine curve of energy wrapping around a rocky point before jacking up and barreling onshore. But Midtown wasn’t Malibu, and in all fairness, I’d guessed the Big Apple would be a weird trip well before I moved there for work, coincidentally on the same day in December 1980 that John Lennon was shot. The city was fun—for a while. Eventually, though, the relentless traffic and sirens, a harsh business climate, and the seething, sweating masses packing every square foot of subways and sidewalks, elevators and offices blew my fuses. Homeward bound, I wished I was. But how? In the city, just one car merited an escape: a Checker cab.

Ernst the cabbie answered the door of his home in Queens. He invited me inside, where the bouquets of linen doilies, shag carpeting, waxed hardwood, and beef stew intertwined in an invisible olfactory waltz. Shortly, Mrs. Cabbie produced two cups of tea whitened with milk and sweeter than a box of Sugar Smacks. Advertised in a local paper, Ernst’s used-up 1976 Checker Taxicab was $800. It was also as large as a moving van, and, most important, it ran.

While we talked, the Checker sat curbside looking like a beached, sunburned rorqual awaiting rescue. Its enormous front bumper, which could easily double as a Darlington guardrail, was twisted down as if smashed by Cale Yarborough’s 427 Galaxie during his massive ’65 crash there. The precious “medallion,” New York’s operating permit for cabs, had been prised from the hood, and the roof light and taximeter were likewise switched to Ernst’s new ride. “Rates: $1 First 1/9th Mile,” read the chipped door signage. “10¢ Each Additional 1/9th Mile; 10¢ PER 45 SECONDS—TIME NOT IN MOTION.” Huh. As a passenger, NYC to LA penciled out to $2511.36—not including charges for any delays. Owning looked way better than renting.

Inside was purposefully banal decor, including black vinyl bench seats front and rear, shabby rubber floor mats, and a pair of swing-up jump seats. Separating the quarterdeck from steerage, a bully-proof, bulletproof, Life-Guard clear partition spanned the cabin, with a pass-through for cash located below. “For our families’ peace of mind,” promised a 1976 Checker brochure; in 1981, when this tale happened, New York City was rough. Elsewhere were signs of wear and tear, indicating relentless use over the car’s six years of servitude in America’s biggest burg. Ernst added that he had shared it with his son, each driving 12-hour shifts so the car literally had zero downtime.

The Checker Motors Model A-11 Taxicab debuted in 1961 and was built in Kalamazoo, Michigan, until production shuttered in 1982. This one listed for $5274.54 and featured the base 250-cubic-inch GM inline-six engine backed by a robust Turbo-Hydra-Matic 400, all nestled inside a cavernous engine bay and X-braced ladder frame with a breathy 120-inch wheelbase. It was equal parts Sherman tank and stagecoach and built for hard work. Get this: In 1999, the last New York City Checker Taxicab finally retired, a 1978 model with nearly a million miles on the clock from hacking through nearly 4000 miles of city traffic per month continuously for 21 straight years. Insanity.

Who knew how many times my new ride’s odometer had rolled over, but on November 24, 1981, it read 54,170 miles as the cab navigated toward the apartment of a young lass I’d met at an Upper East Side party. She needed a lift to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, and since that was reasonably en route to good surf, I’d offered her the right seat. Paula must’ve had a screw loose to trust what was heading her way on that cool, clear Tuesday. Rattling across Midtown, its suspension juddering and body shell booming whenever the tires slammed a pothole, the bandit cab must have been a sight.

Literally, because I’d stuffed all but one of my possessions inside, right up to the ceiling, while lashed to the roof with trucking bungees was my surfboard. To mess with folks, I lettered “AROUND THE WORLD…BY CAB” on the rear fenders and slapped an “I LOVE WHALES” sticker on the trunklid. I’d unwittingly created a freak show with me as the star, but I really didn’t care; this was the starting line for adventure.

Frankly, it made no sense to leave my highest paying and possibly best career-starting job yet for such a wretched, reckless, and temporary ride. I had been working as senior editor at Adventure Travel magazine, right next to offices for Car and Driver, Flying, Cycle, etc., in the old Ziff-Davis headquarters on Park Avenue. When I reconsider it now, the trip—and, moreover, my about-face to the West Coast—was purely instinctual, driven by youthful myopia, money in the bank, and a congenital disdain for authority. Broadly, Aesop’s “The Wolf and the House Dog” fable called it. In the fable, a fat house dog meets a scrawny wolf and extols his pampered life. Wistful, the hungry wolf nearly signs on, until he spies a worn patch on the dog’s neck where collar and chain attach. “‘What! A chain!’ cried the wolf. And away ran the wolf to the woods.”

Oh, and that last item not packed in the cab? It was my apartment’s telephone, which I discarded on the sidewalk nearby. Don’t call me, New York, I’ll call you.

The old Checker certainly did run well, so I didn’t worry about the powertrain. What troubled me was whether the bulging retreads could withstand nearly 3000 highway miles with the car loaded to capacity, and how it would all work on the open road. Luckily, Paula didn’t mind the creaky, shuffling gait; she even wanted to drive. Trading places in the afternoon, her smooth hands explored the wheel delicately, and her unfreckled complexion was softly backlit by the low sun, which refracted through a garnet ring into dozens of miniature green streaks. We made Cleveland by nightfall.

While hoofing west toward Lake Michigan, like a horse sensing its stable, the cab suddenly—well, OK, figuratively—pulled hard right into Kalamazoo, Michigan, its hometown. It was a gray Wednesday before Thanksgiving, dark and bleak as befitting the Midwest. Six miles off I-94, there stood the dingy water tower and headquarters of Checker Motors Corp., then winding down production of cars. “Checker Motors rises out of the murk like a dinosaur from a swamp forest,” I scrawled in the logbook. “Weeds choke the executives’ parking places, and across the road, multicolored shapes sit, awaiting sale or delivery.” I’d bought the car as a tool, but spontaneously visiting this troubled place was like seeing the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán, the impact point of the asteroid that doomed the Mesozoic era. Within a year, Checker would also be extinct as an automaker, except this time obsolescence was the asteroid. The old triceratops just couldn’t adapt to the times.

Even so, it was a good run for an independently owned specialty automaker. The company began in 1922, when Morris Markin, a Russian immigrant, merged struggling Commonwealth Motors with the Chicago taxi fleet. Postwar, Checker Motors’ forte was building taxis for New York City and, naturally, Chicago. The iconic quad-headlight design we all know launched in 1959 and flourished for over two decades.

An estimated 4000 to 5000 were manufactured annually, including the Marathon model for families, a station wagon, an executive limousine, and two extended “Aerobus” airport limos. A more upscale taxi, if you’ll pardon the term, was the A-11E, which featured a 9-inches-longer wheelbase and rear doors, a standard 350-cubic-inch GM V-8, and optional forward-facing auxiliary seats instead of the side-facing jump seats of this base A-11 model. Today, about 2000 Checker taxis are estimated to have survived.

What had been decent front tires 900 miles ago in New York were flat-out roached when I dropped off Paula and shot down to Chicago to pursue what was left of Route 66. At the time a smarter motorcycle guy than car guy, I didn’t quite know what to make of the tires’ odd wear pattern; mysteriously cupped and bald on the inside. But a Montgomery Ward store had a solution, sort of, and levered on a new G78-15 Runabout Belted and a used Vogue whitewall. Seemed like problem solved.

And then, as Kenneth Grahame wrote in The Wind in the Willows, “Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go.” Answering to nobody and desiring to make the escape from New York more meaningful, I found a hobby shop and bought some Testors model paint, a brush, and thinner. So equipped, I went to work on the Checker’s body sides, painting a globe featuring the Western Hemisphere on the left and another showing Australasia on the right. Intending to further spoof the general populace, I detailed these with lines showing cities where the cab had allegedly been—or would ultimately visit. “I’m such a clever Toad,” remarked Grahame’s protagonist with conceit.

For all my “cunning” at the time, today the artwork seems dumber than the worst cartoon storyline, but my clumsy choices were just beginning. This I was about to learn as I traded heaven for hell at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where I picked up high school friend Hunter for companionship on the Mother Road. To illustrate that a blind pig doesn’t always know a truffle when it finds one, consider this: Paula had been smart, sweet, agreeable, engaging, fun, pretty, and more. So naturally, I’d traded her in without cause. Forty years to the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, “Hunt” flew to Chicago to join the drive to LA. He’d come at my urgent request. “Old buds on the loose!” I’d enthused. “On Route 66! In a real taxi!” However, since graduating, he had become a grouch, a whiner, and an accomplished hypochondriac. Bluntly, Hunter was a boil on my backside from the moment he in his puffy orange Eddie Bauer parka with his battered American Tourister suitcase climbed into the cab—which, as if in retribution, still carried the last delicious traces of Paula’s perfume.

Despite his experience as a motorcycle desert racer and explorer, Hunter tired of the ride a mere day into our 10-day plan. “John, your cab is so f****** slow,” he complained from the passenger seat, valuables packed around him like gilded offerings in Tutankhamun’s tomb, including: a wrinkled bag containing a half-eat-en Filet-O-Fish; a Sanka coffee can full of prescription meds; and a formerly white handkerchief, now stained with who-knows-what. On the bridge of his nose perched wire-framed prescription glasses, their broken hinges soldered solid at the temples. “And the miles out here—they’re not normal miles, they’re country miles!”

This point, I had to concede. The Checker was acceptable in the city—coarse, clunky, and cumbersome, maybe, but dammit, the thing worked. At highway speeds, the game changed entirely. Sucking hard through its one-barrel downdraft carb, the thrifty overhead-valve six struggled to keep up with only 105 horsepower. The cab’s blocky shape, which excelled at ferrying passengers and luggage in urban environments, meant aero drag and noise—lots of it. The window seals proved nearly useless, letting the wintry, rushing air in like Jack Nicholson splitting the door open with an ax in The Shining and leering, “Heeere’s Johnny!”

Besides the wheezing engine and arctic blast, the cab also wandered all over the road. At 65 mph, it proved almost impossible to steer straight down its lane. Slowly but surely, over mile after grim, resolute mile, a theory emerged: In the slow lane, where thousands of heavily loaded truck tires had compressed the asphalt, these sunken tracks caught the tread and steered the cab in a drunken, meandering weave. Option A was to slow to 50 mph to lessen the weave; Option B was to merge into the flatter fast lane, which would block real drivers in real cars. Neither was attractive, given the nearly 2000 miles left to go.

After two days of battling adverse factors (including a stop for no license plate by the Illinois State Police, who released us after seeing the temporary permit), Hunt and I found ourselves nearing Kansas City. By late afternoon, the road, barren trees, and fallow farmland had melded into a dreary gray-brown mud. But above that, the sunset countered with an atomic blast of red, orange, and yellow that ignited the entire horizon. We were pissed at the situation and at each other and, as card-carrying nitwits, decided cocktails and calories would help. Which is why, I suppose, a bright green sign for Houlihan’s Old Place looked so attractive. Like a couple of punchy moths, we bumbled into the parking lot and flitted inside.

“Who’s a Houlihan’s girl? She could be you!” read a period want ad for hostesses there. Well, Marcy wasn’t a hostess, but she was hilarious, into kitsch, and dug the cab—which, gritty from the road, loomed out there in the gloom, like the antichrist of lighthouses. Somehow, she found her way into our booth, and somehow, a few hours later, we found our way into her apartment. Friendly local, check. Need a place to stay, double check. Largish beverage consumption, checkmate.

Hunt had the better instincts, curling up in a blanket on the dining room floor. But elsewhere—was I still heading to hell or already there? In the middle of the night came a loud crash. Hunt had rolled over in his sleep, knocking down a stack of closet doors leaning against the wall and gaining a huge knot on his head. In the morning, we were both happy to be alive and back in the same cab that had caused such misery the day before. Our headaches were the same, but different.

For Hunter the Adventurer, the damage was done. “I’m through,” he said later in Pratt, Kansas. That required only a quick (ahem) 200-mile detour south to Oklahoma City for him to catch a jet home. But hey, anything for a friend. Outside town, evoking Andrew Wyeth’s famous Christina’s World painting, stood an old farmhouse and barn set back from the two-lane, with a “bathtub” Nash Airflyte 600 in the grass nearby. I turned onto a dirt driveway, bounced past a weathered gate, and approached a farmer working near hewn oak doors. He was pushing 80, meaning that he’d been born around 1900. Emaciated, wearing dirty coveralls and smoking a grubby pipe, he meted out praise for Nash’s aerodynamic entry in the “lower-price field.” “Fifteen-hundred dollars,” he croaked. “Runs, too.” Tempting, but nope. (The same money, invested in Apple stock instead, would be worth $2.4 million now.)

After dispatching Hunter, the Crown Prince Sourpuss, the cab and I wandered up to Tulsa, scouting thrift stores for an imagined $75 Gibson 12-string guitar (no luck) before vectoring toward Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas. By now almost three weeks into this listless sojourn, I began thinking I’d also had nearly enough. My tail hurt from sitting on the bench seat all day, every day. The engine seemed to be losing power and the chassis’ dynamic hijinks were worsening. Indeed, by Clovis, New Mexico, one of the newly replaced tires had already worn to the cords. The local Ward store lacked replacements, but it had a fine mechanic, who immediately put the Checker on the alignment rack and found the settings to be way off. The old cab had driven toe-out most of the way across the country, causing the scary handling and wear. He worked all morning sorting it out and charged a paltry $13. Across town, a Firestone store had the right rubber, and with those mounted, why, the Checker drove almost like new.

Glen Campbell sang “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” in 1967 and probably had fun doing it. I fared worse, because by the time I got to Santa Fe, loneliness had crept inside the Checker and grabbed me by the gut. How needy can you get? So far, I’d enjoyed a cantankerous best friend, encountered several curious cops, chitchatted with gas jocks, clerks, and waitresses, been kicked off Pueblo tribal land, met some women, and forged deep bonds with tire shops in Illinois and New Mexico.

You might guess that was ample company. Nonetheless, in Santa Fe I went looking for one more soul to share the remaining push to the coast. Anyone with a pulse would do. Apparently, in the rush for personal freedom, I’d failed to consider the value of personal relationships. No luck, though I did wander into a dealership selling brand-new DeLoreans, next to which the Checker looked like a Super Chief locomotive beside tins of sardines.

Nearing Flagstaff, Arizona, the reddish tones and sinewy shapes of vaulted sedimentary rock formations, the hardy green junipers, and the clear, powder-blue skies offered a welcome change from the drab midwestern landscape as winter neared. And later, chugging up serpentine State Route 89A past the old mining town of Jerome, the laboring of the taxi—and, by extension, myself—felt heavy. “Above Jerome, a town destined for some cataclysmic event, the elevation is 6000 feet,” I scrawled in the log. “The car is being pursued by a Coors truck, and it is gaining. It’s a slow-motion, dreamlike race. Trying to run, but I can’t. Creeping, crawling, ever so slowly, with a beer truck closing in, the monster behind.” The alone time had germinated an inkling that I was running from something. But really, a Coors truck? That’s pretty poor paranoia.

After summiting at 7023 feet, the taxi began coasting toward Prescott, but even this glide path wasn’t exactly easy. “The left-front brake is surely worn out,” I added. “As I put on the brakes, sintered brake-pad dust flows freely through the Checker interior. I can hear the pad base wearing and tearing into the rotor on hard stops.” More resigned than concerned, I turned the cab onto a wide shoulder to look for smoke, flames—whatever this next drama held. Nothing. Just the utter quiet of the rocky terrain, a light breeze, and a wispy flight of cirrus clouds assembling to the north.

Per the odometer (highly optimistic, possibly to overcharge passengers?), the Checker had covered over 4000 miles since New York. It was tired and, at least emotionally, so was I. Luckily the Sanyo cassette deck installed before the trip still worked. I hit play and absorbed Glenn Frey and Don Henley’s masterpiece: “Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?/Come down from your fences, open the gate.” Alone, cold and vulnerable in the mountain air, the verses woke me up, and I reached in the window and spiked the volume to the 6×9 coaxials buried behind the Life-Guard partition. Within seconds, the end, “You better let somebody love you/Before it’s too late,” had me sobbing. At that moment, I decided to gather up my s***, and commit.

Epilogue

The erstwhile Checker Taxicab soldiered on to Route 66’s terminus in Santa Monica on December 18, 1981. The next morning, I jumped in it to run errands, but the transmission rebelled and the car would barely move. I sold it soon afterward, sharing the repair cost with buyer Eleanore, an artsy LA lady who loved the Big Apple. We remained friends, and three years later, the cab became the getaway car at my wedding; a much cheerier Hunter was the chauffeur. Eleanore enjoyed it for a decade before selling it for $400 to Villa Roma Sausage Company president Ed Lopes, who wanted a fun prize for his company’s annual golf tournament.

Lopes concealed it with a blue cover at the event. “Under the tarp, the cab looked like a Mercedes-Benz!” he said. (For added drama, Lopes hired Shannon Rae, a model and later star of the tribute band Rondstadt Revival, to reveal the taxi to the winner. No lie, the band’s song list includes “Desperado.”) The winning golfer was stunned to find that the cab started and could be driven home. He did so and later gifted it to his son’s high school auto shop class, where, after fixing it up, the school used it to carry the principal and dignitaries to football games.

That’s the last I heard of the Checker, and now three decades later, the trail is truly cold. But if you should ever find it rotting in some SoCal carport, approach with caution: I left my old demons inside.

***

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Flying with pilots from nations allied with the U.S. is always a bit of an adventure. They are highly capable and well-trained, but they do things differently than we Americans. Different doesn’t mean wrong, just different.

Perhaps one obvious difference is the facial hair their male pilots frequently sport. Mustaches are the limit of what we U.S. fighter pilots can grow while remaining within dress and grooming regulations, but even those make wearing an oxygen mask uncomfortable to me (no idea how Robin Olds did it!). I’ve seen foreign pilots’ facial hair ranging from a dainty soul patch to huge, mutton-chop sideburns that join with a goatee and everything in between. I applaud many of our partners’ training and flying skills, but it’s tough to take the mission briefer or leader seriously when he looks like an Elvis Presley impersonator.

In that vein, our family spent about two weeks in Iceland this summer and found that there are some things they do differently. With three kids out of the house, and soon to be four, we thought this was our last chance for a big family vacation—we hadn’t all been to Europe since we moved to South Korea from Germany over a decade ago. We decided that camping our way around Iceland was the trip for us.

As expected, the scenery was incredible. Volcanoes, black sand beaches, and so many waterfalls. Clouds hid the sun the first third of the trip and the wind made for some cold camping, but warm clothes, sleeping bags, and Iceland’s unique campground setup (each typically has kitchen facilities, where guests can cook and eat out of the wind) helped make the trip a success.

We drove more than 2500 kilometers (1500+ miles) during our trip. Sad fact: the highest speed limit anywhere in Iceland is 90 km/hr, or about 55 mph. After we had been in the country about a week, and had driven several hundred miles at 55 mph, a gentleman walked into our campsite and declared in excellent English that he had heard us speaking English and wanted to know where we were from. He was from Keflavik, Iceland, and we had a fun chat with him. Partway through the conversation—after learning his sister lived in the U.S. so I knew he’d experienced driving faster than the dreaded double nickel—I asked him what was up with the terribly low speed limit.

“Well, I’m a police officer,” he began. D’oh.

He proceeded to explain that the curvy, hilly nature of the roads warranted a lower speed limit.

And he told me not to speed.

I told him I wouldn’t—and I didn’t, largely because of all the speed cameras, which the internet rumor mill declares will ticket you even if you’re only 1 km/hr over the limit.

I think the real reason for the slower speed limit is because you spend the entire time staring out at the incredible, changing landscape and not looking at the road!

Unexpectedly, especially for a place where gas prices were in the $8.50-per-gallon range, there were so many awesome cars. I pretty much spent the entire time drooling over all the diesel Land Cruisers and the other extensively modified off-road vehicles. The time we spent in Iceland’s remote Highlands, and specifically in Landmannalaugar, was an off-road enthusiast’s dream. That’s even more the case if you just enjoy vehicles that aren’t found in the United States.

When planning the trip, we spent a lot of time learning about the road system in Iceland. The short summary is that you can drive any rental car on paved roads, but driving one on unpaved roads, known as F Roads, requires specific permission from the rental-car company; naturally, such rentals are more expensive due to the increased wear and tear when driving a vehicle off-road. Carrying full insurance is strongly recommended because of the potential for damage to windshields and body panels from kicked-up lava rock gravel, as well as the risks associated with driving off-road. In any case, F Roads or not, crossing rivers and streams in a rental car is strictly prohibited.

With seven people and 500 pounds of clothes, food, and camping gear, we needed to rent two cars. Since we initially balked at the price of renting two vehicles of Land Cruiser type and size, we only managed to lock in one rental before the prices at every rental agency simultaneously doubled. The higher prices meant that we chose a smaller SUV for the second vehicle. Once we arrived in the country, we were given a Toyota RAV4 and a diesel VW Touareg, both 100 percent stock (no lift kits, oversized tires, etc). The RAV4 carried three people and the clothes bags while the Touareg carried four people and our camping and cooking gear.

We paid for the extra insurance, but the agent stressed that it did not cover damage incurred at river crossings. They implored us not to drive in any water, especially when going into Landmannalaugar, then gave us the keys, and off we went.

Landmannalaugar is the central backcountry location. Situated in Iceland’s highlands in the Fjallabak Nature Preserve, the surprisingly well-appointed campground (flush toilets! hot showers!) is located on a soggy flood plain between a 30-foot-tall wall of the cooled Laugahraun lava field on the west, two smaller rivers to the north (with hot springs perfect for post-hike soaking), a larger river to the east, and the Rainbow Mountains all around. The scenery around the camp was incredible, but the hiking trails emanating from the camp are the real reason to visit.

There are a couple roads into Landmannalaugar, of varying degrees of difficulty. Should you choose to avoid river crossings there’s only one option, and it requires about an hour of driving on F Roads to reach the single campground in the area.

After a volcanic eruption changed our plans somewhat, we arrived at Landmannalaugar late on our second day of camping—or nearly arrived there. Rounding a bend after a long day of driving, we could see the campground in the distance. Strangely, as we continued to round the bend, we saw what seemed to be a parking lot full of cars clearly not co-located with the camp. The parking lot didn’t make sense until we were about 500 yards away: We crested one final rise, only to see two river crossings between us and our destination.

Now, despite all the warnings from the agency, I wasn’t totally opposed to crossing streams with our rental SUVs. However, what lay between us and camp was anything but a small stream. The parking lot was for vehicles whose drivers chose not to cross the rivers. We parked both cars in that lot and chose to investigate the crossings before deciding what to do next.

As we started walking on the well-trodden pedestrian path around and over the rivers, a small SUV arrived at the crossings and stopped. Clearly concerned about the depth, the brave husband/boyfriend/guy friend driving the car volunteered his female companion to investigate. She climbed out of the passenger seat, removed her shoes, rolled her jeans up to her knees, and waded across the cold, snowmelt-fed water. To me, she appeared to be average height, so when I saw the water go above her knees, I was totally out on us doing the crossings; it was just too deep. The couple, however, wasn’t scared.

She got back in the car and they proceeded to drive across, water easily above their bumper, without issue. For me, confident they were going to suck water into the air intake and kill the engine at any moment, it was like watching a slow-motion, single-car crash wherein the driver avoids disaster at the last moment. When they reached the second water crossing—the two rivers were only about 100-feet apart—the driver didn’t have his companion test the waters: I was surprised to see that the water level was higher at the second crossing than at the first, but they just cruised right on through, averting disaster once again.

My wife, in full agreement that we should not drive across the rivers, opined that we’d just have to carry all of our gear the 500 yards into camp. Our kids—being tough adventurers, or realizing that the next closest camping spot was over an hour away—agreed to carry the gear. And so we did, all the while watching vehicles of varying shapes and sizes, including other RAV4s and smaller vehicles with even less ground clearance, ford the streams without issue. The most surprising vehicle I saw parked in camp, having braved the crossings? A Lada.

I felt a bit like a chicken, since so many vehicles shorter than our two had made it across. I couldn’t help but wonder, why not just drive the bigger Touareg over and leave the RAV4 in the parking lot? In the end, we decided the extra walk wasn’t too bad, especially when compared with the risk we would incur by driving across the streams.

We spent the next day hiking nearly seven miles through a steep and incredibly varied landscape. Ancient volcanoes and lava flows, hot springs, and alien landscapes filled our views. Returning to camp, we trekked back to our vehicles to get some clean clothes when we saw it: a RAV4, on its way out from camp, stuck on the rise between the two river crossings. Clearly, it had been disabled relatively recently and was blocking traffic in both directions.

As we approached our cars, I saw two gentlemen watching the proceedings with interest. When I heard them speaking German I joined the conversation (my German is a little rusty but not bad). The story they told was what I expected: The driver was going too fast, as evidenced by the fact that the front license plate had been washed away, and the engine ingested water. Unable to restart the car for obvious reasons, they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

As we gathered our things, a giant ranger truck roared out of camp, drove around the traffic, and stopped alongside the stricken RAV4, whereupon he helped the driver push it to the side of the rise so it wouldn’t block traffic. No sense in trying to fix anything; that engine was toast.

I’m not sure what the couple did, but I would guess that the rangers, having seen this clown act before, called a tow truck. The vehicle was there for hours but was gone when we awoke the following morning. I certainly hope things turned out alright for the couple in the vehicle, but presuming it was a rental they are on the hook for the damage and a very expensive tow. My quick search showed a tow truck from that area is well over $1000 and a new RAV4 in Iceland starts at $47,000 USD; it was a truly expensive mistake for the couple, as I would expect that whatever rental insurance they had would not cover the damage incurred by the river crossing.

On one trip to our vehicles to grab additional food, my youngest daughter and I stopped to talk to the owner of an incredible 6×6 conversion van with massive oversized tires typical of what I saw on many vehicles in and around Landmannalaugar. He said it was custom, clearly, and that he could drive all six wheels; a true 6×6. I wish I had asked him more questions about his transfer case setup; my guess is the rear four wheels all drive together, so he could run the front two, rear four, or all six together. I asked him about the massive tires, because I wasn’t aware of much sand in Iceland, and he said they’re primarily for driving on snow and ice. He lowers the pressure to an incredible 2–3 psi (in disbelief of what I had heard, I asked him again and he repeated the figure), and says he can drive anywhere. He does take it out during the summer but it’s primarily a winter vehicle.

That 6×6 van might have been my favorite vehicle in the entire country, but we saw stretched and jacked-up F-350s, lifted busses, and a variety of military vehicles converted to campers.

We saw Dacia Dusters everywhere, Suzuki Jimnys all decked out for overlanding with rooftop tents that seemed larger than the vehicle, Kias of all types, old-school Land Rovers, a Lada or two, and, while waiting to get on a ferry (and unable to take any pictures at that moment), a dozen-plus classic cars in concours condition. Not to mention the closed car museum in whose parking lot we ate lunch one day. It was awesome.

I’ve had the privilege of flying my fighter jet over more than a dozen countries. While I am always grateful to return to these United States after vacationing or working abroad, I’m confident that interacting with other nations, cultures, and people makes me a better person and broadens my horizons.

But the next time we go to Iceland, I gotta figure out how to rent something cooler than a Touareg or Rav4!

***

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Some stories are too good and too long to tell (or read) in just one installment, so here is the tale of this remarkable car’s three very different phases of life in my hands in three logical segments. Chapter I finds it hustling around a couple of famed European F1 racetracks and touring as far north as Stockholm, Sweden, and even into then-divided Berlin, Germany.

Chapter II sees it taking me faithfully through SCCA driving school and my first semi-successful season of amateur racing, book-ended by two unfortunate crashes, one on the road, the other in its season-ending race. Here below is the third and final chapter. —GW

Somewhere between mountain ranges way west of Denver, at 90 mph, my well-used but until-then reliable Triumph engine spun a bearing. There was no civilization in sight, and not much traffic on that lonely two-lane, two thousand miles away from Navy OCS in Newport, Rhode Island, where I had started my journey, and another thousand from San Diego, California, where I was headed for training.

Thankfully, a local in a pickup eventually stopped to help. He drove me back to the nearest tiny town, which had a mechanic well-versed in domestic iron but unfamiliar with British four-bangers. He got my car towed to his garage and said he could fix it but (obviously) would have to order and wait for parts. Damn! There went another pile of money I didn’t have and much of my leave time before I had to report for duty in San Diego.

I had no choice but to go back to my generous father for another loan—I was still paying off his original, co-signed bank loan to buy the car and still owed him for the body-damage repairs from my previous season-ending Mid-Ohio crash—and to trust that small-town mechanic to get the right parts and rebuild my Triumph’s engine. I found a room and stayed there one night but didn’t like the looks I got from local guys in the nearby restaurant/bar. They probably thought this East Coast–looking stranger was after their women, and they may have been right. The next day, I took a bus back to Denver, where the aunt whom I had just visited agreed to put me up for a few more days.

Navy OCS

If you are among those who have read Chapters I and II of this saga, you know that I picked up the car—a 1966 Triumph TR4A—at its plant in England, toured Europe (and a couple of famous Formula 1 tracks) in it for three weeks, then brought it back home with intent to race it. And you will know how its transition from daily driver to race car was hastened when I dozed at the wheel, spun, and rolled it into a ditch on a ski trip in Northern Ontario. You will also be familiar with its transition back to the road following a racing crash when I got sandwiched between two out-of-control competitors at an SCCA race at Mid-Ohio.

With that damage repaired and my old Chevy tow car sold, I had re-installed the windshield and top and prepped it for the trip east to Newport, Rhode Island, for Navy Officer Candidate School. I couldn’t afford new tires so mounted its two best OE Michelin X radials in front and my two best Dunlop “universal” racing tires in back. Mixing radial with bias-ply tires was not recommended, but the Triumph looked good with bigger tires in back and handled surprisingly well.

The car had spent most of that winter sitting in the parking lot at OCS, often under a coating of snow, but served me well for occasional trips into town on weekend leave. (Years later, famed fellow auto writer Ken Gross told me that he was also at Navy OCS that winter and thought my fat-rear-tired, roll bar–equipped, ex-racer Triumph was easily the “coolest car” in the lot.)

Because my degree was Mechanical Engineering, my orders out of OCS were to report to Engineering Officer Training School in San Diego, California, then to travel back east to a ship based in Mayport, Florida, that would be undergoing “dry dock” reconditioning in Charleston, South Carolina. Not the assignment I had hoped for, but I had no choice. At least, I thought, I would have time enough to tour some interesting country on my way west after stopping by Cleveland and Detroit for farewells to family and friends. Then I would head to southern California with a planned stop in Denver to visit that aunt.

The rest of the trip

I spent the better part of a week staying at my kind aunt’s apartment, with a rental car to get around. When my once-trusty TR4A was finally ready, I hopped a bus from Denver back to pay the man and pick it up. Once back on the road, I took it easy at first to break in the rebuilt engine and gain confidence that it would stay together, which it did. Nice job by that mechanic, as it turned out!

With no more planned stops, I headed west to San Francisco, a city I had always wanted to see, then south down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH, aka CA Highway 1) to Los Angeles, where I had more family to visit, then further south to the San Diego Naval Station.

Spending all that travel time in this sturdy, handsome sports car that had started as a road car, worked hard as a race car, then found itself back on the road—a car that had never let me down until that spun bearing, despite the two wrecks and all the thrashing I had put it through—provided me the opportunity to evaluate it again as a (hopefully) reliable daily driver. Its seats were decent both on the road and on the track. Its three-spoke, wood-rimmed, aluminum steering wheel and full set of gauges looked great and functioned well in its pretty, polished-wood dash. Handling was agile and the ride stiff but tolerable despite the racing shocks I had installed. The Triumph had definitely been the right choice vs. the (SCCA DP-class) competitors I had considered, and it was a car with which I had fallen deeply in love.

San Diego duty

By a happy accident of timing, I reported to San Diego two months before the next training class began so had all that time, living in the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOC), to enjoy the beach and explore the area by day and meet local women at night. It didn’t help that the city was overrun with sailors at the time, but I soon learned that driving across the bridge to the Naval Air Station Officers’ Club on Coronado Island improved my chances, since a fair number of women regularly visited there hoping to meet Navy aviators (hello Top Gun).

Besides some classroom time, my three months of training consisted mostly of going out very early in the morning on a WWII destroyer, learning all about its boilers, its engines, and its electrical, fresh water, fire, and emergency systems, then returning to port late afternoon. It was rigorous and tiring but left me free to party (though not very late) at night. One night on my way back to the base in the Triumph, I stood on the gas in second and shifted up to third—just for fun, and to hear my barely muffled exhaust roar one last time before turning in for the night—and was quickly pulled over by a waiting San Diego cop. I had been drinking (moderately, as always) but easily passed his roadside sobriety test, so he let me go. My only other encounter with San Diego enforcement was a ticket for loud exhaust, which I managed to beat without further muffling.

Back across country

When my training was done, I had to drive all the way back east to report to my ship in Charleston, South Carolina, and chose a southern route through El Paso, Texas, and New Orleans, Louisiana, another place I had always wanted to see. At the former, I risked a day trip to Juarez, Mexico, and got slightly hit in the rear while creeping in line to get back into the States. Following a brief conversation in his broken English and my marginal Spanish, the apologetic Mexican driver gave me a few bucks to replace the taillamp lens broken by his bump. In New Orleans, I talked a bar band into letting me sing (the Doors’ “Light My Fire”) with them, then embarrassed them and myself with a lousy performance. Thankfully, the rest of that trip was uneventful.

My ship was the USS Luce, DLG (Destroyer Leader Guided Missile) 7—a handsome, complex warship much bigger than a destroyer but smaller than a cruiser. It was in dry dock in Charleston undergoing extensive repair and renovation, and since a lot of that work involved its (fairly new and troublesome at the time) 1200-psi propulsion system, that kept me, as Main Propulsion Assistant to its Engineering Officer, very busy.

I soon decided that I needed a more practical car so ordered a new-for-1968 Chevrolet Nova coupe: V-8, four-speed floor shift, handling suspension. Since it was built—on Chevy’s sporty Camaro platform—at a plant where I had worked for a while, I knew people there who would ensure that mine was built right. Reluctantly, I put my Triumph up for sale. My initial ad in Competition Press showed it in race trim and hyped it as a “beautiful, fast, and dependable D-Production winner,” and my asking price was $2500. Then I cleaned and polished it top to bottom, took more photos of it for local ads, and eventually sold it to a young man who planned to take it racing, just as I had. I wished him well and wiped real tears from my eyes as I watched it disappear into the distance.

A final farewell

After serving for more than a year—including three hard-working, no-fun months of “refresher training” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a job I hated on the Luce—I decided to volunteer for Navy Flight Training. I had always wanted to fly and had done two years of Air Force ROTC at Duke before dropping out. One memorable but scary adventure during that time was a very risky, rushed, emergency trip through a major storm up the East Coast to join the search for the lost nuclear submarine USS Scorpion with two of our four propulsion-dependent boilers down for service. We got the order to join that search the very night we returned from Gitmo, with two-thirds of our officers and crew on shore leave, so we were severely understaffed even after Navy Shore Patrol had rounded up and returned a lot of them.

I passed all the tests and was waiting to be sent to Pensacola, Florida, for flight training when my ship set sail for a six-month deployment in the Middle East. However, when my orders finally came through en route, I was able to gratefully jump ship at Recife, Brazil, and catch a flight back to Florida. Why is this relevant to my then-long-gone Triumph? Because, driving back to my apartment one Friday afternoon after a long day of flight training in Pensacola, I noticed some race cars practicing on a parking-lot course just a block off the main road. One of them looked very familiar.

I stopped, turned around, and drove closer to get a look. Sure enough, there was my once-faithful red Triumph circulating around, looking very fine, in a practice session. When it came in, I found the nice young man to whom I had sold it getting out of the car. When he took off his helmet, he was as surprised to see me there as I was to see him. He was fulfilling his dream of going SCCA racing, just as I had, and was having a great time doing it.

I wished him well and headed home but was unable to come back and watch him race that weekend due to other commitments. And I never got his contact information to follow up. But that last, brief encounter with my much-loved TR4A made me feel very warm inside. And I’m sure that tough little Triumph was delighted to be back in racing trim and competing again.

***

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Some stories are too good and long to tell (or read) in just one installment, so here is the tale of this remarkable car’s three very different phases of life in my hands in three logical segments. You can find the first below. —GW

It was late and very dark on that chilly September night when I found the entrance to the Nürburgring’s front straight. The new German friends who had welcomed me to the ’Ring and shared their great German beer during (and well beyond) the day’s six-hour race had told me that, for a single deutsche mark, I could drive a lap of the track before it closed. As I recall, that was about 25¢.

As a just-out-of-school, 21-year-old, aspiring racecar driver in his brand-new 1966 Triumph TR4A, how could I resist that temptation? At the end of a long day of race-watching and partying, I was tired but (as far as I could tell) not drunk. Why not enjoy a lap or two of perhaps the world’s most challenging track?

As I waited in my red Triumph, I watched officials collecting money from a couple other cars. However, no one noticed me. I took off without paying. With no race training or experience, just high confidence and dim headlamps, I attacked that slow/fast, up/down, tricky/twisty, super-challenging track as I would any unfamiliar, hilly public two-lane—aggressively enough to explore the car’s agility but leaving margin for error, since I had no idea what to expect over each crest or around the next bend.

Mash the gas, squeeze the brakes, downshift, corner, exit, upshift through long, fast curves, tighter corners, swoopy esses, crest-topping yumps, a couple of tightly banked circles (one was the ‘Ring’s famed “Karussell”), and a long, long, flat-out straight heading back to the pits.

The TR4A had felt nimble and responsive on the road, and it further impressed on the track. With its engine upgraded from the 1965 TR4’s 100 hp to 104 hp and 132 lb-ft of torque, the car was not seriously fast but it accelerated eagerly through its slick four-speed manual. Steering was quick and responsive, the brakes strong and linear with no sign of fade, and its handling surprisingly good thanks partly to a set of Michelin radial tires. I encountered no other traffic and completed that 14.2-mile, 176-turn lap with a huge grin on my face and ready for another. Again, the officials didn’t notice me, and I took off for a second cost-free lap. Whoopee!

I negotiated that one intact as well, then was approached by an official on my return. Uh-oh. He explained in his best English that they were about to close the track but that I could do one more lap for one deutsche mark. I fished the coin out of my pocket, handed it over, and launched down the straight for a third thrilling lap.

It was not entirely incident-free. Sailing down a fast hill, then braking for a left-hander, my foot slipped off the brake. Entering the curve too fast, the Triumph slid sideways into the right-side berm—thankfully not a guardrail or a drop-off. I felt a bump and heard a crunch as it scraped the dirt bank, then steered myself back on course. I was keenly aware that the car had no seat belts, so any crash would likely have pitched me out.

I was the last car out of the gate before officials swung it closed. Then I drove most of the night over the mountains on my way to Holland, where I intended to find and (if possible) drive the Zandvoort track, the site of Formula 1’s Dutch Grands Prix. When I later stopped under a light to check the car for damage, I found just a slight dent and scrape low on its rocker.

I never repaired that minor Nürburgring damage. I saw it as a badge of honor: three thrilling night laps of the ’Ring for the price of one.

Genesis

This big adventure was mostly my father’s fault. A farm kid from Nebraska who had raced hot rods on dirt in his youth, he sometimes took our family to a local quarter-mile asphalt track south of our Cleveland, Ohio, suburb, where we watched some fender-banging “stock” car racing. I instantly fell in love with it and wanted to race as soon as I was old enough and financially able. Much later, after getting my driver’s license at 16, I discovered another, better local track and got a weekend job there selling beer out of a little red wagon. I pulled it around yelling, “Cold beer here!” during breaks in the action, made $1.00 per case ($5.00–7.00 a night), and enjoyed a few myself. (You had to be 18 to legally sell beer in Ohio, but they never checked my ID.)

When my freshman-year college roommate introduced me to sports-car road racing at the (now long-gone) Meadowdale track north of Chicago—which featured a treacherously rough, steeply banked, 180-degree “Monza Wall” curve—that instantly changed my plan. I saw Augie Pabst and other brave shoes compete in thundering SCCA C-Modified (think early Can Am) machines and watched future famous factory driver Bob Tullius win the D-Production class in a Triumph TR4. After that, I studied up on SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) racing and decided that D-Production would make a good starting point once I was out of school. The class seemed fast enough to be fun but relatively safe and, most importantly, the eligible cars were semi-affordable.

In my senior year at Duke in 1965, while plotting which DP car to buy, I talked a dealer into letting me test drive the three most common models competing in that class: Triumph TR4, MGB, and Austin Healey 3000. The six-cylinder Healey had the most power but felt heavy and somewhat clumsy, and its low-slung body was known for dragging off its exhaust system. The MGB was lighter and more agile but a bit down on power. So, partially influenced by that Tullius win I saw at Meadowdale, I settled on the TR4. Its 100-hp 2138-cc four felt strong and torquey, and, crucially, its slightly flared fenders would allow wider tires under SCCA rules.

Heading for the Nürburgring

My dad, bless his kind soul, co-signed a loan for me to buy the Triumph following graduation and arranged for me to pick it up at the UK factory. My plan was to tour Europe in it for three weeks before starting work at Chevrolet Engineering in Warren, Michigan. As I recall, I paid about $2400 for a red U.S.-spec TR4A roadster—the new, updated model with ride-smoothing independent rear suspension based upon that of the Triumph 2000 sedan—with an optional heater and (new at the time) Michelin X radial tires but without available overdrive, wire wheels, radio, or seatbelts. Beyond seeing what I could of Western Europe, one key trip objective was to visit as many Formula 1 tracks as I could find. My dad had no clue that I planned to race the car.

I took delivery at the plant near London on September 1, 1965, and headed to Dover to catch the ferry to Calais, France. It was my first time driving on the left side of the road; I had to constantly remind myself to stay left and drive clockwise around UK roundabouts. Once in France and back on the right side of the road, I aimed for Brussels, Belgium, on my way to Germany’s famed Nürburgring. I didn’t think to visit Le Mans, probably because it was not an F1 track. With very little traveling budget, I stayed in cheap (some free) youth “hostels” wherever I could.

Arriving at the ’Ring on a Sunday morning, I found that a six-hour FIA Group 1 race was about to start. So, I watched the start, which was done Le Mans–style, then settled on a convenient corner to take in the race. It wasn’t long before a group of friendly young Germans invited me to join them and share their excellent beer. After the race, they asked me to stick around for more partying at a local pub. I was planning to head for Amsterdam that night but couldn’t turn that invitation down. I played my guitar and entertained them with American folk songs, then, finally about to depart for the night’s trip, they informed me that I could drive the track for a small fee.

Hello, Woter!

I found Spa in Belgium but couldn’t lap it because it was mostly public roads. Only the pit-lane wall along the main highway revealed it as part of the famous F1 course. I spent a day and night in Amsterdam, a beautiful city with an eye-opening red-light district, where scantily clad women beckoned to passing tourists from apartment windows. I walked through the area and watched with interest but did not partake. The next day, I headed for Zandvoort.

Like the Nürburgring, that Dutch F1 track was open to anyone for a modest fee. Why did European racetracks do that? Probably to generate extra income between races by providing track-driving opportunities to European enthusiasts and, very importantly, because they didn’t have to deal with legal liability and avaricious lawyers as we did even then in the States. If you paid the fee to drive the track in your street or race car, you did so at your own risk. If you crashed your car and maybe injured yourself and/or others, too bad. Not the track officials’ problem. Lots of scary non-race crash videos from the Nürburgring show how often such unfortunate incidents still happen.

It was raining the day I drove Zandvoort. Since it was another challenging track, I was extra careful. My Michelins gave surprisingly good wet traction compared to the cheap bias-ply tires I had rolled on all my driving life. The only scary part was the one other car on course at the time: a very fast formula racer doing serious testing. I had to watch my mirrors constantly and be sure to make room every time he came around—at probably twice my speed.

Nearly six decades later, I don’t recall where I headed from there. But the next thing that happened dramatically changed my memorable tour in the best possible way. I was having a tough time communicating in most places in France, Belgium, and Germany; few people were able or willing to speak English, and my second language was Spanish. Holland was the exception, and I soon learned why. Hoping for some English-speaking conversation and company, I picked up a young hitchhiker who I took to be either British or American. He turned out to be a Dutch medical student named Woter, who was returning home after a summer of mandatory military service on the Mediterranean. He told me that most educated Dutch were quadrilingual—fluent in French, German, and English in addition to their own language.

After some miles of driving and chatting, Woter asked whether he could travel with me for the next two weeks before he was due back in school. He seemed a very likable guy and good company, and his multi-language capability would come in handy. Sure, why not?

Denmark and Sweden

Woter suggested that we drive to Stockholm, Sweden, where he knew a woman friend. With little understanding of how far that really was (nearly 900 miles), I agreed. The good news: the route took us through much of Denmark and its beautiful Copenhagen capital, where I met a lovely college student and spent the night with her in her girls’ dorm room. She insisted that it would be no problem, and it wasn’t. But I was a tad uncomfortable in the shared shower the next morning. The arrangement seemed highly enlightened compared to the conservative values I grew up with in the States. I was liking enlightenment.

The bad news: Sweden, like the UK but unlike the rest of continental Europe, still drove on the left. (It changed to the right side two years later, in September, 1967.) So, I was back on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road, and Woter became a very useful passenger as he leaned out of his right-side window to sight up the road and tell me when it was safe to pass a slower car on a two-lane highway. He even drove a bit when I needed a rest. He said he was an inexperienced driver, which made me nervous, but he did pretty well.

When we finally got to Stockholm, we met Woter’s lady friend and enjoyed a nice dinner with her and her friend, a sweet and lovely young Swede named Lena. But there was no alcohol consumption, due to Sweden’s extremely tough drunk-driving laws, and no hanky panky or overnight stay. The youth hostel down the street would have to do.

On to Berlin

I don’t recall whose idea it was or when we decided to risk it, but we headed next to Berlin, some 700 miles from Stockholm, which in those days was still surrounded by Communist East Germany and divided east/west by a heavily fortified wall. Twenty-four years before Reagan’s command to “Tear down this wall!” would be fulfilled, driving through oppressed East Germany to free West Berlin was a challenge that was definitely not recommended. But we were young and adventurous, and Woter spoke fluent German. What could go wrong? At least we would be back on the right side of the road once out of Sweden.

Well, we took a wrong exit off the autobahn while still in East Germany and immediately encountered uniformed guards with serious weapons. Woter patiently explained our mistake, the guards searched us and the car, then let us turn around and head back to the autobahn.

When we arrived at the border, we had to negotiate double checkpoints, one to exit East Germany, a second to enter West Berlin. At both were multiple long lines with no signs telling us which to stand in first, second, etc., but Woter’s German got us through fairly easily. Then first the East German, then the West Berlin, guards thoroughly searched our Triumph, even using mirrors to check underneath the car for people (or perhaps weapons).

Once safely inside the city, we explored a bit and took a good look at the famous wall that countless East Germans had attempted to cross, most of them quickly shot by guards in the towers that lined it. We did not hear of anyone ever trying to cross in the other direction. Then, after a restless night in a particularly barren youth hostel, we reversed the process, driving back through the double checkpoints and, eventually, out of East Germany.

Time was not our friend. We had just a couple days to get back to Calais, catch a ferry to Dover, and negotiate traffic to the London airport for me to catch my flight home. With just paper maps in various languages (no GPS those days), we faced some 600 miles of mostly two-lane driving, much of it through mountainous areas, to get to Calais. There would be no overnight stay and no time to explore any of England before I had to jump on the plane, and Woter would have to do his share of the driving while I caught brief rolling naps.

We made it … just barely. And I had to trust Woter, my new, inexperienced-driver Dutch friend whom I had known just a couple weeks, to drop me at the airport and get the Triumph (now back on the wrong side of UK roads) to its departure port for shipment to the States. Then he would have to hitchhike back across the Channel and to his school in the Netherlands.

I had his contact information, but if he didn’t deliver the car when and where it needed to be for whatever reason, how could I remotely track him down from back in the States and recover it? I did feel that I could trust him to get that done, but I worried about the car all the way home and for several more days until I got a letter from him and a notice from the shipping company that my now-well-broken-in new Triumph was on its way across the sea. Whew!

To read Chapter II, click here. 

***

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My husband and I got involved with vintage cars about six years ago with the mostly spontaneous purchase of a 1939 Ford, a Fordor Deluxe. We call it our first grandchild. The rest, as they say, is history. (Or, in my case, herstory.)

Since then, we’ve assembled an eclectic collection of 10 vehicles, from a 1930 Model A Ford to a 1994 Mazda Miata. I simply look for what appeals to me—and that I can drive. I can’t afford a top-tier show car and, although I appreciate them, they’re not my thing.

In the winter of 2018, I saw an ad for a 1924 Dodge Brothers roadster located in Gig Harbor, Washington. I saw it as an opportunity to drive an old car across the country. I bought the car and, after completing upholstery work and other incidentals that summer, I drove it from Oregon all the way back home to Illinois.

Car people, no matter their niche, are some of the nicest, friendliest, most helpful people you’ll ever meet. Many generously opened their homes to me and my traveling companion, Billy, who has old-school mechanical skills and executed numerous MacGyver fixes—several on the side of the road.

As a girl, I wasn’t allowed to take shop class in middle school, but the car community got me back in touch with some of my formative interests. I’ve taken classes in woodworking and metal forging, and I entered a welding program at the Jane Addams Resource Corporation in Chicago and am now a certified MIG welder.

After 25-plus years in higher education administration, I am now working as a metal fabricator and have become interested in encouraging our youth to look at the trades as an alternative to college.

Check out “Jody’s Travel Blog” on Facebook for more details on her 2018 cross-country drive in this Dodge and her work as an ambassador for the RPM Foundation.

***

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Come to St. Moritz and drive the Gullwing,” offered the guys who look after the classic fleet at Mercedes-Benz. “And as you’ll already be in Italy for the E 450 All-Terrain wagon launch, why don’t you drive from there to Switzerland through the Alps in our W124 300 TD 4Matic wagon?”

It was an invitation too good to refuse, and not just because the 300SL Gullwing is one of my all-time hero cars.  I’ve always regarded the W124-series Mercedes-Benz—built in sedan, wagon, coupe, and cabrio body styles between November 1984 and July 1997—as a touchstone model for the three-pointed star, a car whose brilliant Bauhausian rationality earned it a reputation as the engineers’ E-Class. The W124 was a Mercedes-Benz in which the engineering excellence was baked in but not shown off.

With 30 years gone since I lasted tested one, and I wanted to find out how well that notion had stood the test of time.

Sliding behind the wheel of the 1989 300 TD 4Matic wagon is like catching up with an old friend, instantly familiar and comforting. Behind the yacht-sized steering wheel is the analog dash that even today represents a model of clarity and readability. On the steering column is the single stalk that you can tug, push, flick, or twist actuating low and high beam, the turn signals, and the quirky single windshield that has a cam mechanism to maximize its cleaning area. In the center console sits the shifter for the four-speed automatic, with the wobbly gate that allows you to manually flick between fourth, third, and second gears.

It’s an unusual spec, this car, built in an era when customers were more able to mix and match all manner of options rather than tick the box on a pre-determined package of goodies. The front seats, resplendent in black MB-Tex (the hard-wearing vinyl that was standard issue even on an S-Class back then), must be adjusted manually, yet are fitted with the rare air cushion option, a precursor of today’s pneumatically adjustable seats. Windows wind up or down with manual cranks.

Like many German customers of the time, the 300 TD’s first owner opted to delete the model designation from the tailgate. The five horizontal slats in the right-hand front fender, just ahead of the front wheel, are the only clue to the diesel engine under the hood. The badge on the right-hand side of the tailgate, however, proudly proclaims this is an E-Class wagon fitted with 4Matic all-wheel drive, Mercedes-Benz’s first generation of the now-ubiquitous technology.

All-wheel drive was relatively rare on road cars in the 1980s. Audi’s all-wheel drive Coupe quattro, which introduced the concept to the mainstream 18 years after it had been pioneered by niche British automaker Jensen’s innovative FF, had been launched just five years before the first owner of this W124 wagon picked up his car. The first-generation 4Matic system featured a locking center differential with two clutches that under normal conditions sent 100 percent of torque to the rear wheels. If, based on inputs from the three-channel anti-lock brake system and the steering wheel angle sensor, the system detected a loss of traction, 35 percent or 50 percent of the torque could be sent to the front wheels.

This 1989 W124 wagon was acquired by the Mercedes-Benz Heritage fleet in 2009 and has covered the equivalent of 156,811 miles. That’s barely broken in for an old Mercedes diesel. Still, after the gentle rumble of the modern 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel in the European-specification E 220 d All-Terrain wagon I’d driven the day before, the clatter of the 300 TD 4Matic’s 3.0-liter straight-six at idle comes as something of a shock. Diesels have become a lot smoother and quieter over the past 40 years.

More power-dense, too. The 300 TD’s turbocharged diesel has 50 percent more capacity than the E 220 d All-Terrain’s engine but makes just 75 percent the power and 62 percent the torque – 145 hp at 4600 rpm and 201 lb-ft at 2400 rpm, compared with 195 hp at 3600 rpm and 324 lb-ft from 1800 rpm.

That, plus the helping hand from the 23-hp, 151-lb-ft electric motor of the mild hybrid system in the All-Terrain, means the 300 TD 4Matic feels decidedly languid in comparison when you press the accelerator pedal. Contemporary road tests suggest the 300 TD 4 Matic would amble from 0 to 60 mph in about 12.7 seconds en route to a top speed of 117 mph. Despite weighing at least 400 pounds more than its ancestor, the E 220 d All-Terrain will hustle to 60 mph in just 7.9 seconds and hit a top speed of 136 mph.

No, the 300 TD 4Matic won’t set your pulse racing as you accelerate away from the lights. But after a few miles behind the wheel, I was reminded why that doesn’t particularly matter. Such is the fundamental excellence of the chassis and the suspension: I could maintain surprising momentum on the Alpine roads, guiding the car through the corners with my fingertips, feeling it work through the compliance in the bushings and the bulbous 195/65 R15 Dunlop tires as the lateral forces increased. Once the wagon took a set, it felt as if almost nothing would kick it off line.

The relative paucity of power and torque was apparent only on the steepest and most serpentine climbs. After a while I figured the optimum moment to flick the shifter back into a lower gear on corner entry, allowing enough time for the four-speed automatic’s hydraulics to process the command and the turbocharger to build boost in response to the growly diesel’s increased crank speed before I needed to go to power. Once more I remembered why driving a classic car is such an involving experience.

The steering weight is heavier than in a modern Benz and has that on-center dead spot that was once so characteristic of post-war cars from Mercedes. As always, though, once you are through the dead spot the steering is quite accurate, and the tight turning circle proves useful in sharp corners. The relative narrowness of the W124—at 68.5in from side to side, it’s slimmer than today’s C-Class—gave me more road to play with when confronted with the occasional oncoming truck and bus, not to mention the seemingly never-ending stream of motorcycles and supercars on the more popular passes.

I made good use of engine braking on the faster downhill stretches, flicking the shifter into third and second gear and leaning on the old diesel’s 22:1 compression ratio as I brushed the brakes through the faster corners. It might be a diesel station wagon, but the 300 TD 4Matic was enjoyable to drive on the faster, more flowing roads, settling into a lovely, comfortable cadence. The sublime multi-link rear axle—its layout originally developed for the 190E compact, the precursor to the C-Class, and still covered by a Mercedes-Benz patent when this car was built—still feels world-class, utterly unfazed by gnarly mid-corner lumps and bumps.

Later, on the autobahn back to Stuttgart after my drive in the Gullwing, the 300 TD 4Matic cruised happily at 100 mph, the old diesel’s clatter a subdued growl at 3600 rpm. Even at that pace, wind and road noise levels were remarkably low. The biggest annoyance was slower traffic pulling out into the lane ahead, especially on uphill sections; lost momentum takes time to recover in this machine.

By the time I had pulled into my hotel in Stuttgart, I’d covered almost 480 miles through some of Europe’s most stunning scenery and on some of its fastest roads. All in a car built when hair metal was a thing, the Apple Macintosh was the coolest home computer on the market, and a teenaged Elon Musk was working at a lumber mill in Saskatchewan. Is the W124 still the engineers’ E-Class? Absolutely. My run in the 300 TD 4Matic proved you can still see and feel the intellectual rigor behind its design and execution.

***

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It is early afternoon on day two of a four-day adventure-bike ride across the upper peninsula of Michigan. My friend and I have just finished setting up camp. The only thing louder than the lightly crackling fire is the scurry of chipmunks preparing for the fast-approaching winter. Red is in the trees, orange soon to follow. Fall happens fast up here.

There are only five of us taking up provisional residence in this 18-spot campground. The camp host in his medium-sized fifth-wheel, someone in a nice conversion van a couple spots over, and a mountain biker with a nice tent set up in the back of a suspiciously clean Jeep Gladiator. Then our motorcycles, my friend’s as-yet unscratched Tenere 700 and my KTM, which leaves blue paint chips wherever I go, like a molting snake.

My friend left me to start the fire—he wanted to ride about a mile down the road to attempt to catch fish from the nearby river. His exact words as he rode off: “I’m so excited to not catch any fish.”

At our site, a pair of heavy riding pants hangs off a low tree branch. Another pair is folded over the handlebars of my KTM 950 Adventure S, which sits between my slim one-person tent and the small horseshoe road that circles the private campground. A mountain-bike trail establishes the back side of our temporary plot of land. Sipping beer while seated in my spindly camp chair, I recall something I once read years ago, in which the author argued that you can’t own land. I’ve never agreed more. How could I possibly claim this spot as mine? It’s best shared.

The soft thump of tennis shoes draws my mind back to the present. It’s mountain bike guy, complete with local IPA in hand. No coozy, just to make sure you know it’s something brewed right here in the 906. My single 25-ounce can of Budweiser sits next to me like a sign on a stake saying I’ve all but given up on craft brews. These big single cans are the easiest thing to grab and carry from a gas station when traveling by motorcycle. One can—you don’t even have to drink it all—and you’re good all night. Less waste, easier transport. Win-win.

He asks where we are from. I love a good opportunity for a “from under the bridge” joke, and so do the locals. Conversation starts.

I’m only here on a motorcycle because a bicycle takes more effort, literally and theoretically. The KTM can transport itself the 5.5 hours required to get here from home in Traverse City. To get to the Upper Peninsula with a mountain bike would mean 5.5 hours in the big red penalty box of my Express van. Not the worst situation, but the thrill needs to be worth the punishment. When traveling by motorcycle, the punishment becomes part of the adventure. Our adventure included some punishment, don’t get me wrong: The quarter-mile sand section that buried one of our motorcycles yesterday proved that most people who say “journey is the destination” likely wear rose-colored glasses.

After my “under the bridge joke,” and the standard pleasantries about the weather, mountain bike guy asks, “So what do you guys do?”

Before my brain realizes he is referring to our jobs, I blurt out, “Fun stuff.” As we chat about my KTM and the mountain biking trails my friend’s Tenere 700 idles into the campground. No fish, as he expected—but we weren’t really prepared to dress and cook a fish anyway.

Mountain bike guy’s question sticks with me long after he returns to his Jeep. It was a legitimate question: It was 3 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. Two 30-somethings sitting around a middle-of-nowhere campground during business hours reeks of startup money, Daddy’s money, some type of money that is something other than hard-earned.

We were two friends who threw a dart at a calendar, packed some luggage, and rode north. Vacation time exists for a reason, and I had been banking it, waiting for something worthwhile. Turns out that time didn’t need to be spent in some grand manner. The destination is not special. Just somewhere there rather than here, transported by something interesting and engaging, with friends, stories, and brats around a fire.

During that UP trip, my friend and I rode around more or less aimlessly for two more days, picking destinations by a range of fuel and time to ensure we would always arrive somewhere with cold beverages. Wake up, find a spot for coffee and breakfast an hour away, then find lunch within a three-hour range. No terrain was off limits: We followed snowmobile trails marked with a translucent green highlighter on the pages of the outdated atlas which is near-permanently installed in the right pannier of the KTM. We arrived home tired, yet recharged.

After hours of time alone in a helmet with my thoughts, that question at the campground still hadn’t left my mind. What am I into? What makes me happy?

Not everything needs to be epic. A weekend ride or drive is time doing what we love—near or far. We can dream of the cross-country trip all day but in reality a humble drive is the easiest route to finding something epic. It requires doing the thing we love more often. I would rather drive my Corvair once a week to get coffee I could have made at home rather than take it out only once a year for a big road trip. Every trip creates a memory, and they all are valuable.

If we never get out the door for the humble trip, we will likely never have the confidence or preparation to go out and do the big thing. The most fun stories are ones when things go better or worse than expected, right? Go out and do something, anything, and you’ll likely have a story to tell.

***

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This story is a bit old, but it deserves telling. That’s partly because it involves the kind of crapcan vehicles many of us love, and for me personally, it told me a lot about my future. Operating in my general orbit means friends and family are subjected to decrepit cars, hare-brained (mis)adventures, and occasional bodily injury. Some moments herein set the tone for what my then-girlfriend-now-wife Dana’s family could expect from me.

Now, please, join me in 2016…

*

My buddy David and I met while I was working as an engineer in Detroit. Nearly that whole time, he had an 1985 Plymouth Voyager painted the color of raw tofu. It was shockingly clean, especially for being from rust-prone Michigan. (The rockers were, unavoidably, trashed.) The appeal of this van was, however, not related to its uncommon intactness, or even in its pristine velour interior. The gem was its turbine whistle, audible via the straight-piped exhaust and triple-pedal setup. Yes, this beige beauty was both turbocharged and equipped with a manual gearbox.

When David decided to move to the U.K., the van was left to rot at his father’s home and cry viscous hydrocarbon tears all over the driveway. Ultimately, his father took pity on the thing and auctioned it off to the highest bidder on his Facebook friend list.

A few hundred of my very own dollars was all it took. Though I had left Detroit and since moved to Charleston, South Carolina, the whole idea seemed bad enough to actually work out.

And thus, we a plan was hatched. David’s father, Chuck, would drive the van from Detroit to Washington, D.C., where he would visit family, spend the night in a hotel airport, and take a return flight to DTW the next morning. I would meanwhile fly in to Dulles, take the hotel courtesy shuttle to the van, unload my tools and camping gear, and start the drive home to Charleston via a stop to meet my now-wife’s parents at a vacation cabin in Luray, Virginia. If all were to go well (ha!) it would be logistical perfection.

Chuck launched into the trip with an optimistic assessment of the van’s reliability. By mile 100, however, his outlook changed. It become apparent that although the Voyager was cruising along the highway at reasonable speed, consumption of both fuel and oil were enough to sustain a government coup in certain countries. Despite the need for a steady influx of cash per mile, the Voyager’s voyaging was still fairly smooth, if a little sleepy with its side-dump exhaust. Spewing plumes of blue smoke, with no help from the turbo, the van climbed through the mountains … until the crossover shift cable snapped, leaving only third and fourth gear. That was a pretty sustainable setup for mountain driving, really, save for the clutch-melting hill starts.

As this all went down, Chuck and I maintained close contact via phone. With each voicemail, it sounded more and more likely that I would land in D.C. and have to ride-share from Dulles to Luray, then take a long Amtrak ride home completely van-less. Upon touching down, the hotel shuttle operator watched me disembark the courtesy van, drag my bag full of clothes and tools to the decrepit Voyager—itself the color of shame—and fire it up to produce a large cloud of milky-blue exhaust. Not through with embarrassing myself, I tried and failed to get the Plymouth into reverse, which meant getting out and pushing the heap backwards out of the parking spot under the confused gaze of hotel staff and lobby guests.

Following a drive that lasted approximately 2-3 quarts of oil, a riverside campground in the hills of the Commonwealth served as refuge for my tent and hammock for the night. Sitting there with a six-pack of Natty Boh and some rudimentary tools, I produced a to-do list on the hood, in Sharpie, adorning the car with vague-yet-daunting tasks like “oil pressure light” and “wipers.” Tomorrow was going to be a long day, so I hit the hammock early.

The next morning, as I was packing up my literal van-down-by-the-river camp site, two grade-school girls crept over silently from their camp site across the gravel road. “Mister, are you hungry?” they asked, their proud parents beaming from the picnic table as they handed me a plate of sausage scramble. I was actually a bit famished, and after saying thanks I soon wolfed down the plate’s contents.

The dad sauntered over next: “So, buddy. What’s your story? How long have you been living like this?”

Apparently my answer of “Oh, I guess about a day or so now, I’m a motorsport engineer on a stupid road trip,” wasn’t exactly what this guy was expected. He didn’t say so, but his face made it pretty clear he would have preferred I give him back his goddamn sausage. Not wanting to spoil the lesson for the girls, I loudly reiterated how satiated and thankful I was, while cautiously backing away.

A parking lot in the small mountain town of Luray was my home base the next day. It was a Voyager’s oasis, by comparison, complete with an auto parts store, a Wal-Mart, and a Taco Bell. Even better, I was crossing items off the fender list with impressive efficiency. That JB Weld holding the wiper linkage to the motor? I replaced it with actual bushings. The up-pipe from the intercooler that kept popping off, due to being lubricated by blow-by? Fixed with a beer bottle cap under a hose clamp. Pesky oil lamp? Nothing a jug of Rotella 20W-50 couldn’t handle. And, with some light wiring work, the gauges zinged back to life one by one.

One piece of the puzzle, however, seemed unsolvable. That crossover cable, which would ordinarily control lateral movement of the shifter was broken in a very bad way. As you may imagine, the local parts house doesn’t get a lot of requests for five-speed transmission bits for mid-’80s Caravan derivatives, so I was S.O.L.

But then, the five-pointed stars aligned; a truck full of welders pulled in for lunch, taking a break from brazing I-beams together for a new Circle K across the street. I offered them $20 but it soon turned into a competition among competitive steel workers for who got the chance to work on this thrilling project. Before I knew it, my broken linkage eyelet was welded up and ground to fit. Alas, five gears and reverse were available for the choosing.

I couldn’t wait to tell my girlfriend’s parents just how thrifty and resourceful I was!

After about seven hours and $74.26 lost to the parts store, plus whatever a plate of Nachos Bell Grande cost in 2016, my then-girlfriend Dana and her mother, whom I’d met briefly under much different circumstances, showed up in Luray at the parking lot to do the week’s shopping. There I stood, future son-in-law, with two greasy hands full of Food Lion grocery bags for our week in the mountains, ready to give out gear-oil-scented hugs to any other willing relatives.

The rest of the week was incredibly relaxing. Of course, up until the day before I left the Luray cabin to return home, during which I remembered that this Voyager still had to make it 400 or so more miles without falling apart. Luckily, the return trip was less eventful thanks to my efforts. I didn’t even have to stretch pee breaks due to that hourly reminder from the flickering oil lamp, and all I suffered was one flat tire and a few blown-off boost hoses from overzealous third-gear pulls.

Over the next couple months I fixed most of the annoyances on the van, though eventually I traded it off for something else. My wife and her family though? They put up with me, relished in the adventures, and loved the stories. Total keepers, the lot of them.

The post Against All Oddities: My van down by the river appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As you may have in Part 1 of this road-trip story, my wife, Romanian street dog, Fiat camper, and I trekked three-fifths the way across the country from our home in North Carolina to the town of Wishek, North Dakota. Why? Not in order of significance: family, junkyard, and a few 125th-anniversary-of-German-settlement festivities, namely a pair of parades. With the glorious junkyard already visited and the family activities rambling along in parallel, parade preparations were looming. Of course, there would be unmissable festivities sprinkled throughout. I vowed to do the best I possibly could to help ready three vehicles for an hour-and-a-half idle-crawl through hot, candy littered streets. Of course, not at the expense of missing the Dakota Rangers polka band or big winnings at chicken poop bingo!

So, what would need to be prepared, exactly?

In my family we are blessed with cars and cousins willing to drive them. I am one such cousin. We gathered in an old Studebaker dealership’s accessory building. First and most importantly came a 1909 Buick Model 10, followed by an almost finished 1958 Impala convertible restoration, and finally an incorrigible 1956 Eldorado drop top.

Before I tell you about driving the Buick, allow me to dive into a bit of family history on this prewar item: Back in the mid-1940s, my grandfather bought a small country bank. Included in the sale was likely the first car to reside in town: a dull grey, 35-year-old Buick. Through today’s lens, I guess it would be like buying a house with an ’87 Century in the garage.

At that time, however, the car had already managed to escape transformation into an artillery shell in both World Wars. The family seemed to agree that it deserved to live on, so when my grandfather sold the bank to my uncle, the Model 10 came with it. Over the years it received an engine overhaul, slick white lacquer, six-volt electric start, and a good bit of carpentry to keep it fresh and usable. If the Buick could make it to the parade, I would get to drive it—what an honor! Getting this relic ready would be priority #1, followed by bingo at the gym and the vintage tractor pull behind the John Deere dealership directly thereafter. Big day in store!

The Chevy and Cadillac should need less, I wagered. They’re nearly a half-century newer, right?

I started my first “work day” off on the wrong foot by staying out too late the night before. The famed Johnny Holm Band was playing at the iron yard and the whole crew was out. How could I miss such quality family time? Immune to early morning tiredness after a late night—probably due to years of practice on hunting and fishing expeditions—my uncle called me at 7:30 a.m. to ask what time we should meet at the shop. That’s North Dakota speak for “you’re already late.”

I made a Bosnian style coffee—water straight in the grounds—and left the camper on foot for the shop. I guess time had gotten away from me, what with all of the junkyarding and Bon Jovi singing. The reality of needing to prepare three cars for a parade, in as many hours, seemed suddenly daunting.

First order of business was obviously the Buick. My uncle and I tag-teamed it by filling the diff, oiling the exposed valvetrain, and sampling a bit of fuel out of the petcock next to the bent iron tube they called a carburetor. It was rancid and sticky but still probably better than the combustibles available 114 years ago. With those maintenance items done and the brass gleaming, we flipped the magneto switch and hit the starter. Rather than a satisfying light-off, it was clear that the most beloved of the four cycles—bang—was not happening. In its stead was a constant stream of pickled gasoline running out of the carb and onto the cement. For the moment, we left it there to think about what it had done.

We moved on to the Impala. The beneficiary of a slow yet thorough restoration, the Chevrolet had in a previous life served as long-range rifle target out on the prairie. Now, with gleaming Tropic Turquoise paint, it at least looked parade-ready. Well, almost: It was missing its continental kit and fender skirts which I was frantically trying to attach in a near headstand position. My millennial mind really has no firsthand experience in how such antique J.C. Whitney accessories are supposed to be installed, but after a two-towels-jammed-between-the-undersized tire maneuver, rattling wheel house, and twenty minutes of wrenching upside-down with a pounding (sleep-deprived) headache, I was confident enough that the kit and skirts would remain attached at five miles per hour for no longer than two hours. Any longer than four and I’d have to call a doctor.

Upon first fire, the Cadillac gave every reason possible to give up on it and focus on the Chevrolet. There was simply not time for its complex problems of pinging, premature shifting, and low oil pressure. So we moved on and decided to address it for parade #2. Sorry, Caddy!

While we let the 348 big-block come up to temperature in the shop, coolant started to belch out from underneath. Something was amiss in an area that I couldn’t even see. The day’s event calendar revealed that perhaps I should just bail and go see the Looney Lutheran Ladies performing outside of the auditorium instead. No, no, we must push on.

I took off the body bracing under the radiator to reveal a loose lower radiator hose, easily tightened. Without so much as a full warmup cycle to validate, the ’58 was on the way to the parade staging area. Nothing terrible happened on the way over, so I walked back to the Buick to focus my efforts there. My uncle, having beat me there, discovered that the magneto switch has three positions. Two of them apparently did nothing. The third, however, kick starts this 1909 industrial-grade mosquito fogger. I was then given the Cliff’s Notes on How to Drive a Pre-War Right-Hand-Drive Buick for Dummies: Left pedal is for reverse. Middle pedal pushes in to go forward. Right pedal to stop. Inner stalk on the throttle quadrant handles ignition timing. Outer stalk: throttle opening. Don’t touch the levers on the right. Got it? I was then turned loose on a 114-year-old Buick.

Together we rattled and shook cautiously, yet very proudly, down the streets. With every four way intersection—none of which have stop signs, only the old German “rechts-vorfarht” right of way rule—I frantically looked for traffic while trying to remember which pedal I would need to jab in an emergency. At the staging area, I received a quick lesson on how to pull over mid-route and fill the brass radiator. Noted. My wife, uncle, and aunt took over candy chucking duties as I was already overstimulated by the controls, responsibility, and what the local newspaper spread would look like if a wrong-pedaled it over a cat, through the cavalry, or maybe even into the chopping Hemi-powered street rod in front of me.

With the parade now underway, the smoke from the Buick was immense. I thought briefly about all of the children running into the dense hydrocarbon fog to retrieve our tossed Tootsie Rolls. The kids will be fine, I decided. After all, we were fine, weren’t we?

I glanced back at my cousin in the momentarily stalled ’58 Impala, which was receiving emergency idle screw adjustment by a parade watcher with a pocket knife. That made me question my assessment, if only for a moment. From my vantage point in the Buick, we were doing pretty great.

The Buick and the Chevy made it through the entire parade route both days with minimal protest. And, not to worry, I did make it to bingo—both chicken poop and regular style—saw three more concerts, bought a belt buckle at an auction, practiced my regional German, went to the tractor pull, a car show, a vintage tractor show, a photo exhibit, bought a raffle ticket for a gun and a dragster, and stuffed myself with food truck offerings. All solidified great memories with my family. After cleaning up the town, packing up the camper, and driving three days back to North Carolina, it was finally all over. Just 25 more years to get ready for the next one!

***

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The title here may be misleading. This was not an ordinary road trip, nor an ordinary junkyard. Not to me, anyway.

Approximately 125 years ago, a community of Protestant Germans living in southeastern Ukraine for four generations saw unpredictability on the horizon. Germans hate unpredictability. Rather than gamble on the outcome of a pending revolution, many figured their prospects would be brighter if they traveled via boat and then wagon train to the homesteaded ranch lands of North Dakota. Cold, yes, but safe.

They built grass huts and businesses. They spawned people who spawned people who spawned my family. How better to celebrate than a 125th anniversary celebration of their settlement?

I’ve never actually lived in Wishek, North Dakota. Still this small German-speaking town of 851 people—100 miles from a stoplight in any direction—remains a large part of my cultural identity. So, I keep going back. Maybe twenty times so far. I think it’s the people that bring me back, the history, the traditions. Ask my family and they’ll assure you: I go back for a junkyard.

For the record, it’s not just a junkyard. It’s Martell’s Auto Salvage, a glorious yard managed over the years by four generations. One hundred acres, 3000 cars, open since 1935. So, when my aunt posted in our family group chat with an invitation to come for a four day quasi-centennial blast, I packed my tools.

In completely and utterly unrelated news, my uncle there claimed that he needed some help prepping cars for the parade. The deal was officially sealed.

As you may have read several times before, these sorts of long-distance trips typically involve my lady, our rescued Romanian street dog, and 1990s Hobby 600 Fiat camper van. With such an influx of visitors, accommodations would be scarce. Thinking about the roughly 3500 miles and two weeks ahead of us, I started a checklist. Tools and ratchet straps? Always there. Functioning and clean toilet? Check. Relatively fresh oil? You bet. An alternator that actually charges the battery? Hmph. You got me there.

Remember when I rode my bike to a Spanish junkyard to get a replacement alternator on our pan-Southern Europe trip? Well, I still haven’t installed it. I did, however, find a workaround: redlining the motor for about 3 seconds, thereby jostling the voltage regulator from its slumber to charge for the remainder of the drive cycle, albeit at maybe 10 Amps. That’s not enough to run the wipers and the lights but enough to drive from sunup to sundown.

Rather than unwrapping the carpet snippets protecting the grease- and sand-encased Iveco engine, I’d ultimately like to do a GM 1-wire swap. Maybe just not the day before the trip. Something a bit quicker and dirtier would be required: living with it. The previous owner, who had made many of his own customizations, added a second battery cable to bring the auxiliary battery in parallel. This would yield a twice-as-long battery drain time while off the grid or driving in extreme conditions of drizzle or dark. Those footsteps seemed worthy of retracing so I attached one end to the starter and the other to the battery. Job done!

Rewinding to a couple weeks ago, the fresh oil filter—which I managed to ID as being shared with a New Holland tractor—had spun itself off in the Blue Ridge mountains. Luckily this all occurred at our camp site, and I noticed the oily abstract art it had created in the gravel. Under the watchful eye of fellow campers, I reached beneath the greasy undertray and gave it as much of a snug as my oily fingertips would allow. (I had not checked its tightness a second time. This will become relevant later!) Packed with an arsenal of tools primarily for junkyard activities, we hit the road.

As usual, the Hobby’s turbodiesel lumbered uneventfully through the foothills and mountains along I-77, 81, 64, and 35 through North Carolina, both Virginias, and into Ohio. Following the usual plan of bumming free nights in the fields of wineries and parking lots of breweries, we crashed (with approval) at a vineyard not far from Gallipolis, Ohio. Just I was unpacking the grill, I noted an oily zig-zag across the gravel lot. Uh oh, the abstract art again. I grabbed a rag and cinched it down as hard as possible without spitting the o-ring out the side.

The following day brought us to a brewery at Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin. This put the North Dakota border within reach by noon and arrival in Wishek by 4:00 p.m.—just enough time for my uncle to show me his finished ’58 Impala restoration and head to the town of Venturia for a small, unrelated celebration. It may sound odd, but the festivities that kicked off in the dirt streets of this 20-person town began with the arrival of 70 local cowboys towing a wagon train from Eureka, South Dakota, just as the first settlers had done. So of course we had to be celebrate with them. No car work today!

The next morning came early, as I planned on a big day of wrenching, seeing family, and attending as many of the local car shows, tractor pulls, and concerts as possible. Knowing where my interests lie, my uncle had called ahead to Martell’s Salvage and let them know I might be coming by. It would be fine, I was told, to just slide under the gate and go peruse the 100 acres. As any caring and thoughtful husband would do, I invited my wife on a junkyard date starting promptly at 9 a.m. The bug spray would be my treat. We traversed the roughly one mile through town, into the cemetery, around the sloughs, down Highway 3, and under the big red gate and found ourselves in the scrap iron wonderland.

Years ago, I had spoken with the then-owner, Mike Sr., about a 1959 Vauxhall Victor in the yard. At the time, I asked that he please not crush it and maybe one day I’d be back for it. Was this the time I was back for it?

Maybe. My main aim was an external sun visor. Possibly for my Moskvich, possibly for my Studebaker Lark, but mainly as a patina-rich souvenir from a place where you can drive for hundreds of miles with the sun in your eyes, not a tree or building to block the view. I think I’d like a reminder of that on the side of my barn.

While cruising through the hulks of metal, a side-by-side trundled up to the second gate, which we’d just crawled under. Uh-oh. Perhaps the message hadn’t been fully passed along that I would be scaling all manner of passive security devices to visit the sweet lovely rustbuckets I’ve been pining over since I was five.

“Hey, it’s me, Matt. My uncle called up here and said I’d be coming by,” I yelled as I glided down the slick prairie grass. Ross—Mike Sr.’s grandson—had seen me on the security cameras and decided to suss me out. Indeed, I was the sketchy character my uncle warned him about, so he let us be.

I mentioned to Ross that I was looking for a visor. He pointed me in several different directions, each of which I explored, coming up only with some heavily hail-damaged and far-too-large examples. I should also admit that I wasn’t really looking that hard and was more focused on balancing my wife on my shoulders as I trudged my way through deep mud and fragrant sagebrush, targeting a row containing a pair of Morris Minors and an Opel Olympia.

That was fun, but my desire to see that Victor again ultimately became too much to bear. I left her on the hood of a buried ’48 Chevrolet and sprinted off into the distance. It all paid off, too—I found my long-lost Vauxhall at the bottom of the row, significantly more perforated than in my memory. I decided to let it stay there.

After hitching a ride home in the bed of my uncle’s F-150, I got a text from Ross. He had, fortunately, found an external sun visor meeting my very stringent requirements. For a fair price, he would pull it and drop it off at our camper. We agreed, and “It’s the space van parked in the vacant lot next to the hunting shack on 10th” was enough detail for him to get it to us safely.

The visor won’t fit on the van, of course. But as we soak in endless miles of uninterrupted horizon on our trip, I’ll just be glad to have it with me.

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When’s the right time to drive Route 66 in your 1966 Ford Mustang? When you turn 66, of course.

I live in Alaska, so just getting to the road was a challenge. I didn’t want to drive the Mustang all that way, so I found a trailer and had my 2001 Ford F-250 inspected—twice—to ensure it was roadworthy. Nevertheless, in Rugby, North Dakota, the transmission quit. The tiny town (population: about 2500) had a Ford dealer, but the truck would be out of commission for a while.

I hadn’t come this far not to finish, so I unloaded the Mustang and kept driving. I picked up longtime friends (Kathi Henrickson and Sandra Birdsall, also 66) and met up with my brother and his son, who had come up from Texas. Everyone was excited to be on the Mother Road.

And hot! We drove with the top up most of the time to provide shade and eyed the temperature gauge, worried the heat would overwhelm the 289’s original four-blade fan. Yet the only issues we had over 4500 miles were a leaky hose and, near the end, a loss of taillights.

There’s plenty to see on Route 66, yet for many, we were the point of interest. Folks would approach and tell us about owning a similar Mustang or someone they knew who had. I thought many others would be driving Route 66 in classic cars—evidently not.

***

This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

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Bowie hates trucks. Bowie hates cars. Bowie hates vans, riding mowers, Radio Flyer wagons, canister vacuums—pretty much anything with wheels. He is a willful, nervous little terrier mix, and riding in a vehicle generally turns him into a panting, vibrating mess. Bowie sure does love me, though. And maybe even more than me, he loves his ball. So when I tossed it into my 2003 Nissan Xterra last summer and climbed in after it, against his shaky better judgment, Bowie jumped in, too.

“To Canada!” I yelled.

“What have I done?” Bowie said, panting, vibrating.

There’s something to be said for owning a vehicle you love but don’t care about. You’re not actively interested in getting it scratched, dinged, or dented, while at the same time none of those scars will cause you to lose a moment of sleep. This Xterra is losing paint by the flake. Its dumb plastic is faded—or missing entirely. There are layers of rich compost in its shadiest crevices. There are colonies of moss now, too. Outwardly, my Xterra is fast approaching “hunk of crap” territory, and I am grateful to be the steward to take it there. It sure is a champ, though, and I’m even more grateful for the territory to which it has taken me. Like Canada, for instance.

There are a few ways to get there from my home in Oregon. The five-hour straight shot up I-5 is fast and easy, but I’d recently learned about the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route (WABDR), a series of interconnected dirt roads that takes you to Canada the slow, hard way. I could think of no better summer adventure than off-roading to a sleepy international border crossing. I just needed an accomplice. Who’s a good boy?

With the Xterra’s trademark rear-hatch first-aid kit fully stocked, some beer and steaks in the cooler, camping and recovery gear packed into the cargo area and onto the roof, off we went, midday on a Tuesday, into the Columbia River Gorge to grab a burger and fries at the Eastwind Drive-In before shuffling across Bridge of the Gods, WABDR’s official starting point.

A small group of adventure motorcyclists established the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route in 2010 when they decided to see if a course could be charted on existing forest roads from Washington’s southern border with Oregon to its northern border with Canada, all while visiting some of the most majestic spots in the Evergreen State. They scouted by plane, then explored it with 4x4s, and finally they completed it on their bikes. The result was a six-stage, 600-mile adventure that absolutely lives up to their mission. It also sparked an effort to create more routes via the nonprofit organization Backcountry Discovery Routes.

“It became clear from the beginning that the BDR stumbled on a magic formula of creating off-pavement routes that make backcountry exploration on public lands inspirational and attainable,” said Inna Thorn, executive director of the group. Today there are routes all across America, including 10 western states, the mid-Atlantic region, and the Northeast, with three more BDRs in the works, including Montana and the Southeast. All of which means that no one is ever very far from easy access to well-managed off-road adventure.

Once over the Columbia, we picked up the Wind River Highway for a short section of blacktop before getting onto the dirt of Forest Road 68, our entry into the depths of the 1.3-million-acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We’d be bucking around for the foreseeable future, so I took the opportunity to air down my tires while Bowie played with his ball.

The sky was cloudless and the sun relentless. The makeshift thermometer in the truck read 95. Despite the heat, which would accompany us with an added digit as the trip progressed, I was leery of the Xterra’s air conditioner. It functions—not quite crisply. But it also seemed like a potential trouble spot on my marginally fettled truck. Besides, if there is anything that reassures Bowie that he won’t die at any moment, it is having the windows down—just enough to taste life at speed with his face, but not enough for self-defenestration. He is small-brained and jumpy, and it is a fine line. “We’re gonna get dusty, my friend,” I told him, but I knew he didn’t care. Dirt suits him. Up we went, a long steady climb through Douglas firs and spindly alders, around the southern end of a big 8000-year-old lava bed called, appropriately, the Big Lava Bed.

The first stage would take us to the town of Packwood, 119 miles up the trail, but because of our midday start, there was no way we’d make it in daylight. No matter; the BDR loosely prescribes a section per day, and most folks on the WABDR Facebook page claim it’s a trek of three to six days. I’d set aside a full week. As we plodded along at 14 mph, the twisting road opened to big views over hazy, dense conifer forests. There was 11,240-foot Mount Hood to the south and 12,276-foot Mount Adams to the north, both of them still bright with snow. The slow pace gave me time to whittle off some math in my head (a subject for which I have a dog’s brain), but it got me wondering how anyone could do this trip in three days. And why they would want to.

Now, the first-generation Nissan Xterra is almost nobody’s idea of a classic rig. And by most accounts, they’re still in the flat, “just a used car” arc of their collectible trajectory. They certainly lack the cachet presently attached to Japanese 4x4s like the Toyota Land Cruiser and first-gen 4Runner, the Mitsubishi Montero, and the Isuzu Trooper, to say nothing of XJ Cherokees and even more vintage-y vintage trucks like Series Land Rovers and original Broncos.

But the body-on-frame Xterra was conceived and built with hard-to-reach places in mind, and young, cash-strapped Gen Xers were the intended audience. “We hope these outdoor enthusiasts will think of Xterra as part of their gear,” mused Jed Connelly, Nissan’s vice president and general manager at the time. “Xterra is a vehicle that will help them enjoy their outdoor passions to the fullest and then get them home safely again.”  With its stadium rear seating and matching stepped roofline topped by a handy roof rack, plus that funky bulge in the tailgate to accommodate the first-aid kit, the Xterra could not be mistaken for anything else.

In addition to being everyone’s 15th choice in a fun off-roader, the 2000–2004 Xterra falls down in nearly every practical comparison against its own second-gen sibling, built from 2005 to 2015. Chiefly, they are gutless, cramped, and devoid of amenities and gizmos that indicate status or technological advancement. The 3.3-liter V-6 cranks out 180 horsepower and 202 lb-ft of torque. A 210-hp supercharged version was also offered, but both return about 13 mpg. All the power of a four with all the thirst of an eight. But they are sturdy, nimble, cheap, and reliable, and I had no qualms putting my 194,000-miler to the test in the backcountry.

Darkness settles quickly in the forest, long before the sun does, so that first night, we found ourselves a nice flat spot along Trout Lake Creek to camp. I cooked pasta and meatballs and treated Bowie to some of his favorite gross wet food, and after playing ball, we fell asleep easily in the tent to the steady rush of the creek. A great joy of America’s national forests is that anyone can camp just about anywhere, at any time, no permits or reservations required. It’s up to you to do it right, which at a very basic level means: Tread lightly. Stick to established roads, camp at least 200 feet from water, store your food properly, pack out your trash, pick up after your dog, leave your camp cleaner than you found it, and fully extinguish your campfires.

Day two began early, the forest still cold, and as Bowie paced the front seats, into and out of my lap, every time I petted him, I could feel the starch of fine dust in his hair. Mine felt the same. Soon we reached intermittent snow and the 4350-foot Babyshoe Pass, so named for nearby Babyshoe Falls. The etymology beyond that is unclear, but I appreciated the tongue-in-cheek approach previous travelers of Forest Road 23 had taken by nailing dozens of actual baby shoes to the signpost. Bowie chased his ball before he, too, stopped to appreciate the signpost.

At this point, we hadn’t seen anyone else in the forest, a remarkable bit of solitude that is difficult to appreciate until you stop to appreciate it. I began to give some thought to the minimum requirements for driving the WABDR. Broad accessibility of the forests relies on good roads, and so far, they had been gentle enough to navigate in a Prius. But as the climbs got steeper and the sharp basalt rocks embedded in some of the smaller roads became more menacing, all-wheel drive and good all-terrain tires seemed like the minimum. A little clearance never hurt anybody, either. Subarus, AMC Eagles, Chevy Astro vans, that sort of thing. A short while later, as we shook and rattled along at a cool 9 mph, as if to challenge everything I’d just determined, parked in a small trailhead turnoff was a filthy Acura RSX, miles from nowhere and sitting low on its 16-inch P-metric rubber. “I don’t get it either, Bobo,” I said.

A quick stop for ice and gas in Packwood, population 319, marked the end of the first stage and the start of the second. One of the great things about WABDR is the ready access to food, fuel, and lodging, should you need or want them, at the end of every stage. Paris to Peking it ain’t, but the regular interval of amenities allows for as much or as little self-reliance as you’re willing to tolerate. If you’re out of water, it won’t be long. If you want doughnuts, hey, buy some doughnuts. The sequence of towns—and the highways that connect to them—also means that you don’t have to do WABDR in one go. Do a stage or two one weekend, follow up with a couple more the next month, or the next summer. Such flexibility removes some of the stress and uncertainty that can accompany a backcountry trip.

Still, just as one does not simply walk into Mordor, one does not set off on a drive like this without some level of forethought. The WABDR Facebook group (and WABDR for 4x4s) are fantastic resources for everything you could need, from the best time to go and what to bring to how to prep your vehicle and what sorts of damage you might expect (minimal, with scratches, or “trailstriping,” generally the worst of it). July through September is the ideal time; any earlier and you risk running into deep snow. Any later and you’re headed into dangerously dry woods, which means no open flames and no easy escape routes.

Beyond the “when,” I sorted out the “where” with a combination of paper and digital maps. Washington has tens of thousands of miles of forest roads, and it is easy to get lost if you’re not careful. Butler Motorcycle Maps makes an exceptional companion for all BDRs, with detailed section information, elevation charts, history and local color, plus alternate roads around particularly challenging parts. I brought a Washington Atlas & Gazetteer as a backup, but largely I relied on the Gaia GPS app, to which I downloaded the entire route, complete with points of interest and potential campsites, all populated by those who have come before.

The second stage begins with a 36-mile trip east up U.S. Highway 12. The realities of topography and private land ownership mean that some “tarmac stages” are baked into WABDR—a hundred miles or so overall, though this stretch was one of the longest. I didn’t bother to air up the tires, so we just floated slowly on down the road until the turnoff to Bethel Ridge. By this point, we’d traded the spongy emerald mosses and ferns and the shaggy red cedars of the Gifford Pinchot for the drier Wenatchee National Forest, with its pale greens of sagebrush and tawny grasses towered over by ponderosa pines. All of it framed by giant blue sky and punctuated in every direction by wildflowers at the peak of their blooms. Golden balsamroot and pale pink bitterroot and purple lupine bells—millions of them—lining the two-track for miles on end.

Our slow, methodical jouncing up the steep switchbacks of the ridge lulled Bowie into his calm place and he swayed himself to rest, a hot potato in my lap. Butterflies and the shadows of butterflies were our constant companions. We camped that night on the edge of the ridge—the side of the world, practically—and watched the lights of Yakima twinkle to life before the July supermoon rose massive and bright over everything.

Just before noon the next day, crossing an especially wide-open section of shrubland, we finally encountered fellow travelers. Through the dust plume in my rearview came a fast-moving headlight, and by the time I looked again, it was beside me, a black-clad biker on an orange KTM who showed me his left index finger with great emphasis—ONE MORE! Off he went, and before long, I saw in the mirror his partner, who was just as quickly by me in a rolling dust storm. They were easily tripling my speed, standing upright on the pegs the entire time to absorb the motorcycles as the motorcycles absorbed the terrain. It looked exhausting, punishing. But in that moment, I got it: Experienced riders on big bikes, those are the folks capable of crushing this trek in three days. Certainly not an old cash-strapped Gen Xer and his dog sucking dust in a 20-year-old slug and fumbling across the earth on overburdened leaf springs.

Despite their speed, we encountered Phil Edgerton and Nik Amyx several more times before trip’s end, in that way people on the Gringo Trail just seem to keep running into one another. “Heyyyyy! It’s you again!” There they were later that afternoon, in fact, resting their bodies and snacking in the shade of some pines off of Bear Mountain Road. And an hour after that, when they’d caught and passed us on the miserable slog up Baby Head Hill—no relation to Babyshoe Pass, but so named because of the specific size of the eleventy billion wretched, punishing chunks of volcanic rock that comprise that bit, and all made worse by an absolute lack of shade, by swarms of biting flies, by a sweltering lap dog, by the compression of my spinal cord.

Packwood to Ellensburg. Ellensburg to Cashmere. Cashmere to Chelan. Chelan to Conconully. Day after day, we settled into a bumpy slow dance that saw us crawling up and then down, up and then down, a hundred miles here, a hundred degrees there, never really topping 30 mph and more often working to maintain half that. The route took us past a small logging operation up Nahahum Canyon, where we plowed through dirt so deep and so fine, like sifted flour, that it permeated every crevice everywhere. It took us to the bald granite summit of 5810-foot Chumstick Mountain, with a 360-degree view of the whole of Washington.

On the descent, I found a bag of industrial-looking dehydrated meals—cheesy broccoli rice and creamy potato soup, some chicken thing, and lots of oatmeal, all good until 2048! We treated ourselves to a hotel room in Wenatchee, “Apple Capital of the World,” where Bowie and I had a contest to see whose bathwater was browner (tie). And where the mosquitoes were so wretched that the hotel had printed out a big sign apologizing for them—and please, here’s some bug spray on us.

The gnarliest section of the trip, on section 4, plunges to the deep, glacially carved finger of Lake Chelan. Called “The Jungle,” it was noted on the map as “overgrown but passable.” It’s a precarious path for sure—overgrown indeed, uncomfortably narrow, with death by a thousand tumbles on your right. I pulled the stubby shift lever into 4Lo to stay off the brakes, clutched the wheel to stay on the road, and as we ground our way down, listened happily to the great shrieking wail of thick and heavy trailstripes liberally applied by a tunnel of unruly brush and the lanky dead branches of long-ago burned trees. One of them was even clever enough to open my door as I passed. Up and then down, for hundreds of miles, day after day.

By the morning of our last day, on section 6, when I had essentially forgotten about them, there they were once more, Phil and Nik, rejoining the route on their bikes after camping before the climb up to 6700-foot Lone Frank Pass, the highest point on the WABDR. They squirted away and easily beat us to the finish, the loneliest international border crossing in the world, at Nighthawk. And yet there they were again, one last time, late in the day as I sat in the hot shade of a defunct Chevron station in tiny Oroville, airing up the tires for the long drive home. Up they rode, quite serendipitously in need of an air pump. “Heyyyyy! It’s you again!” I said. Bowie barked furiously at them. He hates motorcycles, too.

Washington was Phil’s second Backcountry Discovery Route, he told me. He’d ridden Colorado in 2020—for his bachelor party, losing one guy to a concussion after just 5 miles. “This one’s tamer,” he said. “Colorado is full of fourteeners, and the rocks are bigger.” He looked quickly at the Xterra’s saggy back end, then added: “You’d need some taller suspension for that one.” Phil’s goal is to do one BDR per year, and he already had his eyes on Wyoming. “Six hundred thousand people in the whole state,” he said. “If you want to get remote, that’s the place to do it.” Then he looked at the Xterra one more time. “Seeing guys in trucks, though, with coolers and beers and steaks, maybe I’ll buy an old Jeep and fix it up, bring the family.”

An old Jeep. An old Xterra. An old Explorer. Whatever. Love it but don’t care about it on a Backcountry Discovery Route near you.

Bring the dog.

***

Gear up and go

Anytime you venture into the woods, you need to make sure you can get back out—or that you’re prepared to spend the night in case something goes wrong. In addition to a shovel, a chainsaw, a tow strap, and traction boards for any particularly hairy situations, I brought along the following gadgets, which provided peace of mind or simply made life easier.

***

This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

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The post A crusty first-gen Nissan Xterra takes man and man’s best friend off the beaten path appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Shelly passed a can of cold beer and a plate of French fries over the antique bar top. A waitress in her middle-age, she spoke matter-of-factly, barely looking up from her tasks as she answered my questions. “The reporter in here before you called this the ‘Rest Stop of America.’ Most people just take a sh**, fill up, and leave.”

I chewed on the fries, and on the thought that someone was here before me, doing the same exact thing that I was doing. Working over the same group of locals for insight into this odd little place. For Shelly, it was an unremarkable rehash. Routine is what makes Breezewood go ’round.

Only 178 people live in Breezewood, a south-central Pennsylvania plot that lies just east of the Allegheny Mountains. There is no city hall nor elected officials, with locals leaning on larger Bedford County for governance. None of that is unique for an unincorporated community in this country. Breezewood is, however, a fascinating anomaly born specifically of America’s highway system—a colorful, fluorescent-lit monument designed to be visited on wheels, more waypoint than destination.

From the main drag, U.S. Route 30, it’s two hours to Pittsburgh or three to Philly. Also known as the Lincoln Highway, this route dates back to 1913, part of the first transcontinental highway designed specifically for automobile travel. The road follows the path of a valley over which the two-lane Pennsylvania Turnpike sweeps east-to-west. Interstate 70, another two-lane freeway, ushers traffic north-south to and from the Maryland border.

Travelers looking to hop from I-70 to the Turnpike, I-76, are offered no convenient merge or seamless cloverleaf. Rather, they must come to a screeching halt and weather the quarter-mile stretch of traffic signals, gas stations, convenience stores, and fast-food restaurants—aka Breezewood—before the transition is complete. The reason for this is an entanglement of arcane red tape, relating to the cost of a proper interchange compared with qualifying for federal funding to forgo one. The upshot, however, is fascinating: In 2019, Bloomberg reported that 3.5 million passenger vehicles and 1.5 million trucks roll through this commercial bottleneck in a given year.

Every travel stop is open 24 hours, 7 days a week. Breezewood does not sleep.

***

Prior to my arrival, I read no fewer than three full-length feature articles on the town, from outlets like The Wall Street Journal to the New York Times. What’s the obsession? For one, the town is a pressure cooker of commercial Americana seemingly airdropped in rural Pennsylvania. Breezewood’s slow decline has also come to exemplify, for some, what’s wrong with fickle corporate culture and ruthless capitalism squashing local businesses. In 1991, Business Week called it “a polyp on the nation’s interstate highway system.” The town has even become the punchline for a smattering of internet memes.

No matter how you slice it, Breezewood is a spectacle. Fine art photographer Edward Burtynsky snapped a shot of its main drag in 2008. A print of the photo sold at a 2017 Sotheby’s fine art auction for $43,750.

In the 15 years since Burtynsky’s shot, Breezewood’s only drastic changes are the varying fast food signage and a new, squeaky-clean Sheetz gas station. The layout remains the same: The motorist logjam occurs in a valley, its low point a four-way stop between I-70 and U.S. 30. It’s the gladiator pit for elbows-out motorists—a dizzying array of green signs, white arrows, and orange barrels. The congestion is difficult to appreciate until you take 30 out of town and look over your shoulder into the stew. From this elevated vantage point, particularly at night, the town is a magnificent canvas of lights and logos. It looks simpler from this perspective, too. Traffic engineers’ fingerprints suddenly seem comprehensible, from stoplight bypass ramps to a four-lane megastrip for westbound traffic.

Breezewood is a “traveler’s oasis” reflecting the state of American car culture, its siren song a fugue of gasoline fumes and roller hot dogs. Heavy-hauling semi-truck drivers clash with business travelers, vacationers, and everyone in between. The chirp of air brakes meets car horn blasts. This strip of I-70 is one of the only segments of American interstate with a stop light, so stop-and-go traffic is a fixture. Even if everyone is paying attention and every truck driver double-clutches to perfection, the section still produces backups. Gridlock is a guarantee during peak hours, so its severity is the only meaningful variable. On a holiday weekend, like over Memorial Day? Well, if you’re gonna sit still, you might as well eat a Beef ‘N Cheddar.

Amid my dirt-track race-chasing adventures all over the Midwest and Northeast, I’ve driven this stretch of turnpike plenty of times. The toll road connects the Midwest to some of the nation’s most historic circle tracks. Eric Weiner, the executive editor of this website and a Pennsylvania native, has too. We were talking road trips one day when Weiner pitched that I stay in the town and report on what I found. Rather than a pit stop, I’d spend 36 hours in Breezewood—longer than most people might spend cumulatively in their entire life.

Less than a mile from Breezewood’s main drag, I sat on a stool at the Wildwood Inn, sipping the beer Shelly served up. The two-story hotel has outlived most of the other businesses in Breezewood. In 1955, Walter and Clara Price opened the restaurant. Traveling families turned off the Pennsylvania Turnpike for a warm meal, or to view its “world famous” collection of antique spoons and plates.

Back then, Breezewood was known as the “Town of Motels.” Present day, there are only a few options for a clean overnight stay. The Wildwood Inn no longer offers rooms. “I remember when the Ramada was nice, with chandeliers and a swimming pool,” said Shelly. “I worked there.” My haven was the Holiday Inn Express, a four-story box hotel wedged between the area’s busiest gas pumps: TA and Sheetz.

***

At the town’s peak, according to one local, Breezewood could sleep nearly 10,000 people. Handsome hotels like the Penn Aire, built in 1955, welcomed travelers with its light-up-script sign and ornate front entrance. The Breeze Manor, constructed several years later, was the first inn with a swimming pool. Whether you lived on the East Coast and were headed west or lived in the Midwest and were driving east, most vacationing families couldn’t get further than Breezewood in a day’s drive.

Though these mid-century hotels were new to the region, the promise of transit and hospitality was not. “You go back far enough, there was no Breezewood,” longtime local Forrest Lucas told me.

What is today Bedford County has been a travel hub since the first trading post in 1750, built on existing Native American trails. A couple miles to the east of where I was nibbling on fries sat Ray’s Hill. In 1836, shopkeeper John Nycum established the Ray’s Hill post office—reportedly the smallest in the United States, measuring six by eight feet—and served as its longtime postmaster. Ray’s Hill soon became known as Nycumtown. (You call the shots, it seems, when you control the means and the mail.)

Next to Ray’s Hill sat the town of White Hall and its 22-room inn, which served as a stagecoach stop for for westbound travelers leaving Philadelphia. Locals of White Hall and Ray’s Hill dubbed the valley between their towns “Breezewood.”

In the early 1900s, Breezewood became a stop on the Lincoln Highway. A young Dwight Eisenhower and his comrades rambled past in their Army convoy in 1919 amid a 62-day journey, known then as the Trans-Continental Motor Truck Trip. Frequent reports on the state of America’s roads—as well as the effectiveness of nascent off-road motor vehicles—were sent back to Washington.

A decade later, Breezewood was on the eve of its first big break. To improve travel through the area, namely through the Alleghenies and the Appalachian Mountains, the federal government began to build the Pennsylvania Turnpike using seven tunnels from a failed 19th century railroad project. Approximately 15,000 workers sourced from 55 different construction companies laid pavement at a rate of about 3.5 miles per day. The Turnpike, also known as America’s first expressway, was finished in 1940. Breezewood was enshrined as Exit 6, and business boomed.

In 1941, Merle Snyder established Gateway Motel and Restaurant for turnpike goers. Gateway Travel Plaza, as it is now called, is one of the only businesses remaining from Breezewood’s golden age. Rather than the original bed and breakfast with a second-floor bunkhouse, though, it looks today largely like any other highway stopover—a TA truck stop, Exxon fuel station, showers, a Dunkin’, and an Arby’s.

***

Interstate 70 was built in 1960, and the aforementioned strange set of clauses pertaining to the funding of the highway would ultimately change the fate of every soul who worked in, lived in, or passed through Breezewood.

Section 113b of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 mandates that motorists must have the choice whether to enter onto a toll road. Under Section 113c, the state and the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) could use federal funds to build an interchange between the new I-70 and the Turnpike, but both parties would have to agree to stop collecting tolls when the funding ceased.

Naturally, toll authorities were unwilling to use their own revenue for an interchange that would give travelers the option to leave toll roads. The PTC was also expecting a decrease in dollars when construction on I-80—which also runs east-west though Pennsylvania—was finished.

State highway officials took matters into their owns hands. Their solution: Extend I-70 north, past the east-west Turnpike, and connect it with U.S. 30, the Lincoln Highway. There, in Breezewood, motorists would have the option (required to ensure federal funding) to stay on U.S. 30 or pay the Turnpike toll.

Thus, Breezewood transformed from Pennsylvania Turnpike exit to literal tourist trap. The quarter-mile strip of asphalt held a captive audience for food, fuel, and lodging. Businesses got in line for a piece of the pie. By 1969, there were a reported 19 motels and 10 gas stations in town. Travelers pumped more than a million total gallons into their cars per day.

***

Breezewood looks a lot different now than in its heyday. A strip of chain stores overtook the mom-and-pop shops. Corporate tenants also appear to be struggling, however. On U.S. 30, for a couple of miles in each direction, there are just as many abandoned buildings and overgrown parking lots as there are functioning businesses.

The ethos of commercialism-gone-amok that some people project on Breezewood only touches on the community’s present predicament. With the decline of available lodging options in town, the entire economic system relies on less-than-12-hour tourism and is handcuffed to the interchange. Everything actual locals might spend on, from groceries to auto parts stores, are located in neighboring towns.

Breezewood businesses rely heavily on big rig trucking and truckers. Two large truck stops—a TA and a Flying J—are positioned on the east and west sides of the valley. There, long-haul drivers refuel, repair, and rest. This lifestyle forms the basis of Breezewood’s most communal activity, with drivers exchanging “howdy-dos” and general small talk around the lot.

Breezewood’s workers and businesses there aren’t in control of their prosperity or demise as much as they are subject to shifting traffic patterns. The paving of a new road or the widening of another could shuffle people away from Breezewood’s nuanced interchange.

Take Interstate 68, for example. The east-west highway runs about 20 miles south of U.S. 30 and was completed in 1991. Suddenly, those traveling from Washington or Baltimore to the Midwest could avoid the PA Turnpike—and Breezewood—completely by taking 68 through northern Maryland. The town’s Howard Johnson closed the same year I-68 was finished.

Plenty of other external factors have changed the travel landscape since Breezewood’s mid-century boom. Airfare, for instance, has become a whole lot more affordable. And even the most affordable new cars are capable, comfortable highway cruisers with relatively excellent fuel efficiency. The once-essential need to stop, rest, and refuel just isn’t there anymore.

At one point during my visit, I drove up the hill on the west side of Breezewood to attempt my own version of Burtynsky’s five-figure-fetching shot. With my camera on a tripod, balancing precariously on the edge of my truck bed, I could see it all through the viewfinder. Plastic and metal signs that once advertised promising businesses had been painted over, smashed, or covered with the banner of some new venture. Some businesses were dark, others completely abandoned. Breezewood’s fall from its peak has been slow and steady, rather than sudden.

“There’s just not enough traffic to maintain all the businesses,” says Forrest Lucas, whose family opened the Traveler’s Rest Hotel in 1968. “Hotels became low-rent apartments. This brought in drug problems.”

Businesses either die or adapt, and Crawford’s Gift Shop has done the latter. The Crawford Family moved their taxidermy business from Everett, Pennsylvania, to Breezewood in 1957. Travelers—and local schools—shuffled in to view exotic mounts in the building on the east side of the strip. Then, in the 1980s, the family renamed their store Crawford’s Museum (and Gifts) and sold souvenirs alongside their preserved critters.

When the Pittsburgh Steelers football team started winning in the 2000s, Crawford’s began to sell black-and-yellow regalia to fans. Football accoutrement soon replaced the more familiar souvenirs, though the popular animal mounts remained. Now, Crawford’s is known as “Your Black and Gold Headquarters,” and John Crawford V runs the show. The business seems to be doing well enough, and part of that has been diversifying income streams beyond foot traffic. Much of John V’s merch is now sold online. “We sent a Steelers jacket to Israel,” he said before quickly resuming inventory checks.

Most of Breezewood’s employees live outside of town, in Bedford County and the surrounding valleys. They list off cities like Everett or Bedford or just stick a finger in the air and say “up on a hill over there.” By its working class, Breezewood is treated more like a factory or warehouse than a proper town. Clock in, clock out. Most tell me something to the effect of, “Breezewood isn’t a city. It’s a stop.”

Emphasis on the stop. Traffic is indeed a nightmare in Breezewood, but nobody is doing anything about it. Some type of bypass to divert traffic would require township or county levels of government approval, and money, but Breezewood can hardly sustain itself in current conditions. Not to mention that any bypass would, in effect, completely obviate Breezewood’s entire reason for existence. Everyone is soldiering on, but for how long, who knows?

On my way out of town, I took a detour to investigate the town’s abandoned highway tunnels, closed after the Turnpike’s four lanes were rerouted to avoid the one-lane underground bottleneck. The mountain passes are now a cult attraction for trail-hungry hikers and bikers. The stretch of road, pockmarked and overgrown with vegetation, has been used for feature films, most notably for 2009’s The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. Nature abhors a vacuum.

I prefer to think of Breezewood as a town in perpetual flux. Before the government turned it into an artificial choke point, before Breezewood even officially existed, this valley was a throughway for travelers. Once a pit stop for the tired or hungry, its sheer novelty and history have also ensnared the curious, like me. Maybe some savvy investor will swoop in and turn abandoned businesses into a long rows of EV chargers; there’s already a new bank of Tesla chargers in the Sheetz parking lot.

Or maybe, if more businesses shutter, some areas could be turned into a trail system or nature preserve for eco-tourism. However Breezewood evolves, or whatever ultimately takes its place, the right vision could once again turn it into someplace people want not just to stop, but to stay awhile.

***

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Not everyone with a vintage car is willing to treat it like any other vehicle. Fewer still are willing to put 200,000 miles on a 1969 Camaro.

When we saw this photo on social media, we knew there had to be a story behind it. We asked the Camaro’s owner, Dominick Saad, to fill us in. Here’s the story of one family’s beloved and well-used ride, mostly in Dom’s own words.

Dom’s father bought the Camaro in 1989 for just $1500. It sat around, for the most part, until Dom approached his 16th birthday. His dad gave him the car, and the two worked on it together, “along with help from some of his friends who knew more than we did,” Dom says.

The car was originally equipped with a 307-cubic-inch V-8 and a Turbo 350 three-speed automatic transmission. The Saads and their friends removed the original powertrain to be rebuilt and sent off the body for paint. The Cortez Silver car was resprayed in its original color, this time with black stripes. Dom got his license in 2011 and used the refreshed Camaro as his daily driver.

“Not even a year later, in 2012, I was on the highway with a buddy heading to grab some food, and we crested a hill and found traffic at a complete stop. I slammed the brakes and was almost stopped when a heavy-duty crane truck lost control next to me and swerved into me from the side, pushing me into the car in front of me, and pushing him into the truck and boat in front of him.”

The collision wasn’t Dom’s fault. However, the at-fault driver fled the scene, causing a bit of drama and dragging out the process of getting the Camaro sorted. Since the damage was entirely cosmetic—the alignment didn’t even suffer—Dom had a few months to drive the car before it was treated to repaint number two.

“I decided to make the best out of a bad situation and started having some of my buddies at school sign the car, much like you would a cast on a broken arm,” Dom says.

Teachers at his school signed it. So did strangers at gas stations and grocery stores. Dom began to leave a Sharpie on the car’s hood when he parked it in public; to his delight, he’d come back to new signatures every time. Today, the signature-filled door and fender are hanging in his garage.

Once all the accident paperwork was sorted, the Camaro finally went in for bodywork. After three months at the body shop the car returned, this time with a color change: Fathom Blue with white stripes. Dom quickly realized the work hadn’t been done well. The paint chipped and bubbled. A large section of filler on the quarter panel began to delaminate.

“At first I was livid,” Dom says. “I was of the typical, ‘can’t have a single scratch, needs to shine always’ mentality back then.” However, as the car began to show more and more flaws, his stress about maintaining a perfect car melted away. A new philosophy emerged: “Why worry about all this that I can’t do anything about? Just drive the damn thing and have a blast!”

That was ten years ago, and Dom has been racking up the miles on his Camaro ever since.

Dom also changed his attitude towards how he modified his Camaro.

“As a teenager, I thought modifying everything was the cool thing to do, so I began changing things, adding chrome and aftermarket parts,” he says. However, he learned that those custom parts aren’t necessarily carried by every mom-and-pop auto parts store, so a busted component could lead to a major hassle. What every store does carry, on the other hand, are factory replacement parts, especially for first-gen Chevy small-block engines.

A few years ago, Dom did a semi-restoration of the Camaro using factory-correct parts, including a wiring harness, factory gauges and woodgrain dash, rebuilt brakes, and new bearings and axles in the rear end.

“Though I still wish the car did look a bit better, I’ve found it much more enjoyable to just drive and enjoy it versus worrying about looks.” —Dominick Saad

After the 700-R4 transmission left him stranded 450 miles from home one day, he went a bit overboard. “I wanted to make sure that never happened again, so I basically built a drag [racing] transmission to go in a less-than-300-hp car!”

“Not only was I starting to really like the look of it more, but I also liked the reliability a lot as well. I realized there was plenty of performance to be had even with factory-correct parts,” he said.

The Camaro is currently powered by a 350-cubic-inch small-block engine, along with the aforementioned 700-R4 four-speed automatic and the factory 10-bolt rear axle with 2.73:1 gears, perfect for highway cruising. The 350 is dressed in period-correct “day two” Z/28 parts. The intake and valve covers, both aluminum, are GM-factory. The Camaro’s even running points ignition.

Dom still has the Camaro’s original engine. He plans on getting the 307 back into the car with a good set of camel-hump heads plus all the Z/28 goodies currently on the 350.

“Of course, the car will never be badged a Z/28, as it isn’t one and isn’t trying to be one. I’m just taking advantage of the Z/28 parts being higher-performance yet still ‘factory correct,’” said Dom. Since he wants a cruise-happy car, he’s building the drivetrain for reliability and efficiency, not massive power. When he reinstalls the 307 engine, he’s hoping for around 300 hp.

“Back when the 350 in [the Camaro] now was newer, I would cruise around 25 mpg on the highway at 80 [mph] at just under 2000 rpm.” He tweaked and tuned a custom-built Holley double-pumper carburetor over the course of about three months to get those results, but the effort was worth it.

“Driving has always been a form of therapy for me, so if anything was going on that was making me mad or sad or whatever, it could pretty easily be cured with an aimless drive somewhere.”

The car also served well as an adventure vehicle, especially in the mines, lakes, and ghost towns of Dom’s native state of Nevada. “The car has probably seen more Nevada back roads than many trucks have!”

“I think in the summer of 2016, there was not a single weekend where we didn’t take the car on some sort of day trip somewhere,” Dom said.

They didn’t stop at day trips, either. The Camaro has been to Vancouver in Canada’s British Columbia, Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, California, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

The Camaro is no longer the commuter it once was. Dom now lives in Idaho and owns several other vehicles, including a company truck that he drives for work. Still, he makes sure the Camaro gets weekly exercise, all year long. Dom refuses to garage any of his vehicles: “I always figured you can’t take ’em with you when you go, so enjoy ’em while you can!”

He has a few secrets to keeping his car alive over 12 winters. The first is being lucky enough to drive in areas of the U.S. where roads aren’t treated with salt. He also has a strict regimen of undercoating the car each fall.

It may not be his commuter, but the Camaro remains Dom’s go-to road-tripper. When we spoke to Dom, he had just returned from a 4800-mile, 11-day trip from Idaho to Arkansas, up via the northern route and back via the southern one. The car performed beautifully as usual—and it’s nowhere near retirement.

“We will be doing a very similar trip again next year, and eventually I would like to have driven the car in all provinces in Canada, and all the U.S. states with the exception of Hawaii. It’s also a huge goal of mine to drive it up to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, and get it up into the Arctic Circle!”

It doesn’t take a whole lot of horsepower and perfect paint to enjoy a car. In Dom’s case, it might just take an extra or two set of ignition points.

***

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This column is part of a series from “Josh Arakes,” a senior U.S. military pilot who has obtained permission to share some of his life with Hagerty. Josh’s writing orbits the intersection of cars, the rigors of military aviation, and how we all think and work under pressure. Enjoy! —Ed.

Years ago, I was stationed with a fellow fighter pilot. One I didn’t know well, though I had heard only good things. We were in separate squadrons and he was a couple ranks above me, so we never really talked.

Late one Friday afternoon, that individual was leading a flight of jets home after being off-station at an exercise for a week or two. The pilots had done all the appropriate flight planning. They knew the weather was good enough to make the trip, but it wasn’t what we call CAVU (clear and visibility unrestricted).

After hours of flying cross-country, that flight was less than an hour from arriving back at home station when Air Traffic Control (ATC) called to warn of worsening conditions. Lacking a weather radar, that lead pilot opted not to divert to another airfield, a choice that would have let him avoid the line of storms between the jets’ current position and their home field. He instead relied on ATC to help avoid the worst of the weather.

ATC did the best they could, but the jets still flew through some gnarly conditions. Not until they landed at home did they realize that his decision to push through had resulted in damage to the aircraft. It wasn’t a lot, but no jet in the formation got away unscathed.

In military flying, when a pilot is at-fault for damaging—or in the worst case, destroying—an aircraft, can have a variety of outcomes. The severity of the punishment depends on a number of factors, none of which are important here. I can’t discuss the details, but the ensuing investigation essentially determined the pilot had suffered from a temporary condition that clouded his judgment.

The condition? Get-home-itis.

***

My wife and I recently took two of our kids, both of them high-school age, on separate weekend trips. She and our youngest flew out of state to visit friends. Our second youngest and I drove to a closer state to spend time with family.

Our 550-mile drive out took about eight hours and 15 minutes and was pleasant. After an awesome weekend of fun, laughter, and good food—not to mention this game we play where we hide Twinkies all around their house for people to randomly find in the weeks and months to follow—it was time to return home. (For the record, that family group does the same Twinkie thing when they come to our house.)

There are two primary ways to drive between the town where my family is now stationed and the home of the extended family my daughter and I visited. Both routes are almost entirely on the interstate, but one is 55 miles longer.

All else being equal, the obvious choice would involve taking the route shorter in both distance and time. However, that route is more southern, and it has guaranteed traffic issues which, absent an oh-dark-thirty departure, routinely add around 90 minutes to the drive. In short, the longer northern route frequently makes the most sense but is prone to nastier weather, so care must be taken.

To that end, I had been tracking a storm all weekend. The system was moving into the area of our northern drive and set to drop less than an inch of snow the day before we left for home. As we went to sleep that night, I was confident in my choice—we would use the longer southern route. The next morning, we woke shortly before 6:00 and were out the door in about 20 minutes. I felt no need to check the weather again.

Not until we’d been on the road for around 45 minutes did I ask my phone to map the drive, to get an idea of our ETA. I was surprised when it kept directing me to turn around and take the southern route. Confident the algorithm would soon realize it was no longer actually shorter to go south, I ignored the software’s repeated pleadings, scoffing at its “recalculating” beeps.

Later, after more than an hour on the road, the phone continued to think south was the way to go. Growing annoyed, I restarted the maps application and reentered my home address, convinced the silicon would figure itself out. Crazily enough, it again insisted we turn around.

I zoomed out and saw the reason. About two hours ahead, the freeway was closed.

I was now faced with a conundrum: Use my phone while driving, to figure out if the freeway was actually closed—and if so, why and for how long? Should I pull over and repeat the aforementioned search while not driving? Wake my sleeping teenager and ask her to figure out what was going on, or call / text my wife or another family member for help investigating?

Let’s be honest—waking the teenager was clearly the worst option. However, my weather monitoring had left me certain that the road had been closed for an accident, not snow, and was thus unlikely to remain closed for an inordinate amount of time. With some two hours between us and the closure, I opted to continue driving, then reach out to family once it wasn’t so early in the morning.

An hour later, I texted with my brother-in-law. He confirmed the freeway was in fact closed, and that it would remain so for the rest of the day. I had already mapped out a smaller highway that would take us to the southern route. As far as he could tell, he said, all other roads were open.

We pressed on happily, another hour passing before we reached the closure, exited the freeway, and pulled into a parking lot.

I got out my phone again and did some quick searching. Sadly, all roads to the southern freeway were now also closed. I had apparently done a good job of monitoring the weather along our originally planned route, but its more uninhabited northern stretches had gotten hammered with snow.

We had two choices: drive nearly all the way back to the house of our relatives in order to transition to the southern route, or head even farther north. Neither option was great. We’d already been on the road for three hours, and retracing to the southern route would mean another 12 at the wheel. Heading north meant only 9.5 more hours of driving, but the state’s Department of Transportation website warned of black ice there, plus heavy winds and blowing snow.

Opting to eat a warm turd sandwich instead of a cold turd sandwich, we turned north; even with black ice, I reasoned, the extreme northerly route had to be faster than essentially returning to where we started. We’d driven three hours yet were effectively only 27 miles closer to home.

Knowing what was ahead, we searched local stores for tire chains but failed to find any that fit my 2016 Mazda 6. Should I have purchased them earlier? Maybe, but I don’t need chains for that car; I have other vehicles, with chains, that I take to snowy places.

My weather monitoring had convinced me chains wouldn’t be needed on this trip, thus our choice to take the Mazda, our most fuel-efficient vehicle. Fortunately, I’m not a total idiot, so we had plenty of food, water, blankets, and a camp stove in case we needed hot chocolate. With empty bladders and full water bottles, we climbed back into the car, determined to push through.

It was Sunday. Waiting a day for roads to clear wasn’t a great option—my daughter had school the next morning, and I had to go to work.

What was that condition again? Oh, yeah: get-home-itis.

***

Our travel north began ominously. We pulled onto the shoulder of a narrow, two-lane highway to let an ambulance pass, then ended up pseudo-ambulance chasing for nearly ten miles until it finally turned off onto another road. The pavement was in good shape until then, but the DOT’s website had warned of black ice ten miles up the road, and reality didn’t disappoint. Ditches were filled with cars, trucks, and trailers that had slid off or jackknifed.

Fortunately, the road improved after a few miles, letting us go faster than a crawl. In addition to the ice, the blowing snow, and the single-digit temperatures, I was concerned about my lack of familiarity with the area—worried that, because I hadn’t verified the conditions of every road on our modified route, we’d encounter another closed highway.

I did find it encouraging that there were so many semis headed both directions. (My Hollywood-inspired vision of truckers involves them telling each other if the road ahead is closed. Though, as we’ve previously established, I’m no trucker). My phone mapping app also showed the roads as open.

All of that anecdotal evidence convinced me to keep going until conditions were either totally unsafe (as opposed to our current, mostly unsafe situation) or until the roads were closed.

Hours later, our winding, back-road route finally rejoined an open interstate. We had bypassed the worst of the storm, and the freeway was in excellent shape, so I set the cruise control and pointed for home. Unlike the previous hours, driving no longer required my full attention. My daughter was immersed in a book, and I was listening to a podcast, as we came upon a truck towing a trailer.

Imagine my surprise when a big dip in the road launched an eight-foot piece of four-by-four lumber out of that trailer. We were in the right lane–I wasn’t quite close enough to change lanes and initiate the pass (and you all know how I feel about that). As I started braking, I realized the board’s trajectory would take it into the left lane and then the center median. When it landed in the median, it quickly came to a stop in a cloud of dirt.

I downshifted, floored it, and made a quick pass. As I did, I looked over the rest of the trailer’s load—it appeared to be well secured, so I opted to not get the driver’s attention.

Twelve hours and fifteen minutes after we departed, we pulled into our driveway, no worse for wear save muscle stiffness (we had stopped the car only twice) and an excessive consumption of junky road-trip food.

***

The aforementioned mishap pilot briefed all aircrew at our base as to what happened, allowing us to learn from his mistakes. Unlike him, my case of get-home-itis wasn’t severe enough to produce injury or accident. Regardless, my flight training has instilled in me a need to learn from everything, even if nothing “bad” happens; a fortunate outcome doesn’t mean that you didn’t make a stupid decision.

I’ve made that same drive since. Two of our kids also made it while on spring break from college. I am now much more diligent about checking weather and DOT websites, and, to my wife’s chagrin, I even had the kids head home one day early once, so they could beat marginal weather.

Fighter pilots talk of working to fill up the “clue bag” before the “luck bag” runs empty. One of the ways to fill the clue bag is by learning from experience, whether someone else’s or your own.

There will likely never be a way to gain full immunity from get-home-itis, but a full clue bag makes for an excellent inoculation!

***

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It’s barely six degrees Fahrenheit at the summit of the Julier Pass. Visibility is zero, a full-blown whiteout. The edges of the road are practically invisible with the blizzard sending horizontal sheets across the windscreen. Snow ceaselessly accumulates onto the asphalt.

I’m the first person outside of the factory to be allowed behind the wheel of this updated 2023 Plus Four, and I briefly wonder whether perhaps we’re both a little too far out of our comfort zones. It may well be the most extreme test the roadster has ever been through. At the very least I suspect it is a situation in which precious few owners of Morgan’s latest Plus Four will find themselves.

This is, after all, a machine meant for pleasure drives and holidays. For meandering English country lanes, pausing for a pint and a ploughman’s lunch, or perhaps an ice cream by the coast. At an elevation of 7500 feet, the ice isn’t in a cone. It’s everywhere.

It’s the fifth and final Swiss high alpine pass that I’ve driven in as many days. Once I’m out of the mountains it will be a long haul across the autoroutes and routes nationale of neighboring France to the U.K., back home. But before we come to the end of this 2000-mile test drive, let’s go back to the beginning.

Scaling new heights

In what has been the biggest shake-up in the boutique British sports car maker’s 110-year history, Morgan redesigned its four-wheel sports cars from the ground up in 2019. The process breathed new life into the Plus Four and replaced the long-running Plus 8 with the Plus Six. Morgan’s stalwart, steel ladder-frame chassis was retired in favor of a superformed aluminum structure dubbed “CX.”

The benefits of the CX chassis are extensive. Instead of having to measure, cut and fit Morgan’s trademark ash wood frame and aluminum body panels to each one individually, the company can now produce identical chassis and pre-cut frames with incredible accuracy. The process streamlined production and created a significantly stiffer structure—all while maintaining Morgan’s hand-built traditions.

Morgan has always relied on external engine suppliers, including Ford, Fiat, Rover, Coventry Climax, and others. Continuing a relationship that began in the early 2000s with the V-8-powered Aero 8, Morgan turned to BMW for the Plus Four and Plus Six engines. The former uses a 2.0-liter, 255-hp turbocharged four-cylinder, while the latter uses a 335-hp 3.0-liter turbo straight-six. With BMW power came more sophisticated engine management, automatic transmissions, and even a digital dashboard.

For 2023 those engines remain unchanged, but the power now comes with even better control. Suspension dampers and bushings have been finessed. There are AP Racing brakes, new calibrations for the automatic gearbox and, for the first time ever in a Morgan, electronic stability control and dual airbags. These significant updates mean that the Plus Four will meet U.S. federal regulations (under the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act) and join the Super 3 in America before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the interior has been enhanced with a wider choice of fabrics, a single-piece aluminum dash, wonderful wooden marquetry for the center console, and a Sennheiser audio system which uses the uses the chassis structure to resonate bass.

These changes, on paper, should make the modern Morgan quite the grand tourer. That’s exactly what I plan to put to the test.

Road-trip ready

My destination is the Swiss town St. Moritz, home of The ICE, a gathering of some of the world’s most exotic classic cars on a frozen lake. The Plus Four may be a new car, but Morgan hasn’t much changed its styling in 80 years. I reckon it will fit in.

Storage space has never been a priority for Morgan. There’s room behind the seats for a couple of soft bags and a box of snow chains, but everything else will have to go in waterproof duffels strapped to the Plus Four’s chrome rear carrier.

One area where technology has noticeably progressed: paint. The Volcano Orange finish looks sensational. I’m a sucker for bright colors, and the first time I set eyes on the Plus Four I adore how the orange accentuates the cars’ classic curves.

The run down to Folkestone through a still-sleeping London is easy and remarkably efficient, the ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic gearbox maintaining an engine speed that’s barely above idle for most of the journey. At the 70-mph motorway speed limit wind noise isn’t too bad, but one issue rears its head that will plague the entire trip: winter chill seeps through the door seals. Naturally, it only gets worse as the temperature drops. Despite the heated seats and cranking heater, the next five days will be spent either too hot, too cold, or, somehow, both at the same time.

The car is a pre-production model, and Morgan assures me that customer cars won’t suffer in this way. But the new Sennheiser audio system isn’t quite behaving, either. In order to get it to pair with a phone via Bluetooth, the unit needs a complete reset only achievable by disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. Again, Morgan says, a pre-production glitch.

The French connection

I meet photographer Barry Hayden near the Channel Tunnel to France. We play a short game of packing Tetris, filling the meager available space with luggage, photo equipment, and other road trip odds and ends. “It could be worse,” says Barry. “You could have got a Super 3.”

Soon enough we pass through the Chunnel and under the sea that separates Britain and its nearest European neighbor. We reach France and waste no time, motoring south at 80 mph.

The extra 10 mph that France permits on its autoroutes brings a rush of wind noise into the cabin, despite the closed soft top. Dialing up the volume on the stereo, with the bass vibrating through the bulkhead, just about overpowers the drone but reduces in-car communication between Barry and me to hand gestures. Sennheiser’s Calmo noise-cancellation system would be a welcome addition (and may come later, says Morgan).

The run down to Lucerne is forgettable—around 500 miles whisking us past Reims, Metz, and Strasbourg. This is not the most picturesque part of France, being largely flat, and the grey winter sky is doing nothing to enhance the aesthetics. Fortunately, the cabin of the Plus Four is surprisingly comfortable. The seats are excellent and even after four hours or so behind the wheel Barry and I experience no back twinge or muscle ache.

Toll booths prove a challenge in a car this low and uncommonly shaped. It takes a few runs to accurately assess where the front corner of the car is, but by the time we reach the Swiss border we’ve just about perfected the teamwork required to collect or pay for a ticket without the passenger having to unbuckle and stretch out.

Despite the sustained high speed, we’re covering around 250 miles on a tank of fuel and averaging around 33 mpg.

Into the Alps

We overnight at a cheap pub/hotel on the banks of Lake Lucerne, slightly bemused by its English football theme, and the next morning make an early start for a day in the mountains. It’s still dark as we make our way out of the city through a series of tunnels, one of which is so long that the sun has actually risen by the time we reach the exit.

Soon we’re climbing up and over the Brünig Pass, which as far as alpine views does not quite reflect the spectacle it appears to be on the map. One section looks like a toddler’s scribble on paper, and is indeed a delightfully dizzying series of hairpins, but rises to only 3000 feet or so. Staying below the treeline means views aren’t of the Swiss postcard variety I’d hoped for. We drop down to lake level, running parallel with the frosty blue waters of Brienzersee and Thunersee before cutting due south for our approach to Alps.

Driving in Switzerland during the winter takes a little pre-planning, as many of the country’s most famous mountain passes are closed for the season. The handy AlpenPasse website will tell which are open at any time. Right now the Grimsel Pass I had been hoping to take is … unpassable.

The alpine anticipation is building as we head toward the base of the Bermese Alps. Abruptly, in the village of Kandersteg, the road simply stops. In its place is the rickety Lötcschberg tunnel railway that takes us through the belly of the mountain. It’s only a 15-minute ride, at the price of 27 Swiss Francs, but it takes place in pitch darkness; the only illumination comes from my fellow travelers’ cell phones which, as a testament to Swiss efficiency, retain a strong 5G signal throughout.

Emerging into the light, we unload and immediately begin to ascend. The road is sufficiently twisty to begin experimenting the Plus Four’s various engine and transmission modes. Nudge the slightly incongruous BMW shifter over to Sport and gears can be selected manually by pushing and pulling the lever or using the steering column-mounted paddles. Keeping both hands on wheel seems prudent as the curves come thick and fast, so it’s paddles for me here and, although the shifts are rapid I do feel the lack of a physical connection. The paddles themselves would certainly feel nicer in aluminum instead of plastic, and if they had just a bit more movement the whole shifting experience would be elevated.

We’re the ones rising rapidly, as we discover ourselves quickly getting above the trees and into proper snow for the first time. The beginning of the Simplon Pass is marked by the grand Hotel Külm-Bellevue, which majestically overlooks the route. It’s also home to one of the most strikingly designed public toilet buildings I’ve ever seen.

Mountain madness

It’s here that we drop our roadster’s roof for the first time. It’s not quite a Miata mechanism, as you need to release a couple of external poppers before unlatching it and carefully folding the fabric as you stow the top behind the front seats, but with practice it only takes a minute or so.

“Brace yourself,” I warn Barry, but we soon find that with hat and gloves in place and heat on full it does not really feel much colder than with the roof up. It helps that by now the sun has burned through the clouds, and we’re also some 6000 feet closer to it. The cozy, slightly claustrophobic feeling of the Plus Four’s cabin is replaced with a wonderfully open sensation: that elemental connection with the environment that makes driving a roadster so invigorating.

The road, too, is exciting, with plenty of fast third or fourth gear corners and more than a handful of hairpins thrown in. By the time we reach the end of it we’ve crossed into Italy, passing through a seemingly unmanned border crossing.

Over the next few hours we follow the valley and battle through poorly-surfaced Piedmontese autostrada, diving in and out of tunnel after tunnel, with local drivers seemingly glued to our rear bumper. It’s a relief to escape and get back onto less busy roads, skirting the glamour of Lake Como and heading north again to Chiavenna and the mountains.

At the border the Swiss guards stop us, check our papers, and then seem to get bored. They send us on our way to the simply marvelous Maloja Pass. In the space of just a couple of miles the pass climbs over 2600 feet in a spectacular sequence of switchbacks.

The Plus Four doesn’t have the best turning circle, but there’s another, altogether more entertaining way to steer it: on the throttle. I press the Sport Plus switch, disengage the ESC, and find I can adjust the attitude of the car with a lift to tighten my line or stab the throttle to slide the rear a little. Shifting rapidly back and forth between second and third gears, the Morgan reveals its previously-hidden hooligan side, with pops, crackles and bangs from the exhaust and a screech of the Avon winter tires singing through every corner. It’s the sort of behavior one might expect of a Caterham 7 more than a mature Morgan, and it’s wonderful. While Barry flies his drone overhead I make repeated and progressively swifter and noisier runs up and down. Oh how I must suffer for the photographer’s art.

The pass spits us out just a few miles from St. Moritz where The ICE concours is taking place over the next two days and, as we pass through the town, we get a sense of the kind of clientele it attracts. We see an Aston Martin DBX 707, a Lamborghini Urus, numerous 911s, even a Ferrari 296. We attract just as much, if not more attention, from the sea of camera phones.

Staying in St. Moritz is way beyond our budget, and our hotel in Poschiavo just happens to be over the Bernina Pass. It’s getting dark by the time we reach it and the clouds have also rolled in. Visibility is near zero, so Barry is calling out upcoming curves like a proper rally co-driver from what he can see on Google Maps. Behind me all I can see is a blaze of headlights and, at the merest sign of a straight, a scrappy VW Passat powers past. For a couple of corners I try to keep up, but there’s no beating local knowledge.

Over the next two days we travel back and forth to St. Moritz, and I get to know the road pretty well amid ever-changing conditions. There’s fog, snow, sunshine, and showers sometimes all within the space of the same trip. It’s a brilliant road, a good 30 minutes of full-concentration driving through tight hairpins and speedy sweepers, never knowing exactly how much grip will be available on any of them. As such, the ESC stays on and, without being aggressively intrusive, it adds a welcome layer of safety. In the one instance we switch it off on an open, snowy section it elicits a lurid third-gear slide, proving just how effective the system is. “Please don’t do that again,” quips Barry.

Old Mog, new tricks

Before I set out I wasn’t quite sure how I’d take to a modern Morgan. Could it really offer a 21st century sports car experience with such old-school styling, and would that combination actually be appealing anyway? Would it be up to such an extreme cold-weather task on harrowing mountain passes?

Yes, yes, and yes. The Plus Four is both capable and entertaining beyond expectation. It wouldn’t be a match for a modern Porsche Boxster in objective terms, but it edges much closer than one would think given the vintage aesthetics.

In the media tent at The ICE I hear people talking about the “crazy Brits” who drove all the way in a Morgan mid-winter. I turn my head and have one more look at the orange Plus Four cooling its heels on the snow. Somehow it all seems perfectly sane.

Specs: 2023 Morgan Plus Four

• Price: £70,195 (U.S. price TBD)
• Powertrain: 2.0-liter turbo I-4; eight-speed automatic (six-speed manual available)
• Output: 255 hp @ 5500 rpm, 295 lb-ft @ 1000–4300 rpm
• Layout: Rear-wheel-drive, two-seat roadster
• Suspension: Double wishbone front/rear
• Weight (dry): 2224 lbs
• 0–62 mph: 4.7 seconds
• Top speed: 149 mph

***

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It was early. Not up-before-the-sun-early. Early because it was the morning after an 18-hour travel day and three hours of sleep, and all the clocks were five hours behind the ones at home. You wake up like that, you start to think time might not be a flat circle. Still, Meg and I had a long day ahead, double-digit hours to watch a dream come to life, so I was wide awake.

A job in car media can occasionally send you to far-flung corners of the globe. You end up in some exotic machine in some location that’s as much a part of the story as the vehicle you’re wheeling. Sometimes, however, you get a simpler brief:

“Go out there and bring the car back,” your boss says.

For the past three months, Tom Cotter—Hagerty’s Barn Find Hunter—had been trekking the country in a Ford Bronco and an Airstream Basecamp 16X camper trailer, gathering material for a book. Fairbanks, Alaska, was the end of that road for him, but the Bronco and Basecamp were on loan from their makers. They had to get to Seattle, to be returned to Ford and Airstream.

Thus, an invitation: from Alaska to the lower 48, by way of the famous Alcan Highway, in a reborn American icon, towing an enduring one.

I raised my hand in seconds.

My haste had reason. Several years ago, at another job, I had a chance to run that same route in reverse, Seattle to Fairbanks, in a Jeep. Meg and I are married now, but we had just begun dating. We talked whenever I could find a cell signal, which wasn’t often. In the miles between, I dwelled on the privilege of a trip like this, imagining the same experience with her, vowing to make it happen one day.

As we fueled up the Bronco that first morning, my hands shook. “Prepare to have your brain melted,” I told Meg.

Just fifteen hours later, all the build-up—months of anticipation and hours of talking Meg’s ear off, telling her what we would see—seemed for nothing. I felt like I had failed.

***

Western Canada is not small. Google Maps says that it takes at least 39 hours of wheel time to cover the 2100-plus miles from Fairbanks to Seattle. Because Meg and I have jobs and need to ration vacation time, we decided to knock the whole thing off in just four days. As we rumbled out of town, we passed Fairbanks’s Eielson Air Force Base just in time to see a squadron of F-22 Raptors thunder up for the morning’s training session. I let out a nerdy giggle: Just a few years after first seeing this gorgeous land, back again with someone I love? I couldn’t believe the luck.

Watching Alaska’s beauty wash over Meg was better than I’d imagined. Phones were out at first, because capturing the scenery can seem like a good idea for the first few minutes. After a while, though, her phone was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she just stood there, by the side of the road, silent, staring at things like Mount Denali—the tallest mountain in North America—as if the scale of the place had shorted out her brain. Blessed with clear skies and bright sun, each roadside pause gave its own dose of magic. The trip’s time constraints momentarily fell from my mind. We stopped nine times before lunch.

Still, chasing that magic came at a cost. A quick map check at noon revealed we were nearly two hours behind schedule. In Alaska, time matters more than you’d think. Safe and smart resting points are few and far between, and falling short of a planned stop can leave you at the mercy of raw nature, cold and hungry at best or bear food at worst.

A strange feeling hit the pit of my stomach. A flicker of anxiety? I swallowed it.

The feeling snowballed that afternoon. Summer rains had washed out large stretches of the road, and while the freshly repaired highway was still passable, the going was slow. The Airstream went airborne on more than one occasion, over surfaces that would have made a suspension engineer blush. One such instance ripped off the trailer’s septic drain pipe, a problem I wouldn’t discover until two days later.

Have you ever known that you’re headed to a bad place mentally, and wanted to fight it, but you get there anyway? Leaving Alaska and entering the Canadian Yukon, we got held up in border traffic for almost an hour. In the miles that followed, I did my best to make up time, but the unforgiving roads bent our pace back to a crawl. At one point, an overly enthusiastic semi heading the other direction flung a rock into the Bronco’s windshield, spidering the glass at eye level.

My eyes flitted back and forth from the windshield’s fractured view to the map. The damage wasn’t serious, but it would still have to be documented, explained to Ford, and paid for. As the day ticked on, the occasional pang of nerves gave way to a landslide of illogical panic.

I knew that our borrowed Ford was still fundamentally fine, that no one had gotten hurt. The world wasn’t going to end if we got to Seattle a little late. But frustration mounted. First at our ever-climbing ETA, then at myself, for having the gall to believe I could simply plow on in a land like this, over this much distance. Suburban-born journalist thinks a cheery demeanor and some timely oohs and aahs will turn thousands of miles across the Canadian wilderness into a blast down I-75? Who were you kidding?

Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, Meg had opened a map and was idly reciting strange town names. She cued up a new album on the stereo and rolled down the window, occasionally calling out pretty views, content. I went silent, no longer enthralled by endless woods and rivers.

As the Yukon passed by, the road improved, and we finally picked up the pace. I’d hoped for dinner alongside a meandering river, or at a pull-off under some snow-capped mountain. Instead, with the light fading fast and hours still to go, we made do with hurried burgers in a gas station. It was well after midnight before we finally rolled into the RV park in Whitehorse, where we had planned to camp for the night.

A day that had begun with jubilation closed with flared temper. Bedded down in the Airstream, I tried to claw back a few hours of sleep, but guilt came in waves. Rather than looking forward to what was still to come, I found myself dreading it: I had convinced someone to come with me to one of the most beautiful places on earth, then ruined the trip.

The second day had always been planned to hold fewer miles. As we got on the road, the weather seemed to change every half hour—rain here to rinse the road grime, sun there to re-spackle truck and trailer with a fresh coat of pulverized bugs. I became reluctant to stop for anything noncritical, determined to not make the same mistake twice.

Despite my best efforts, Meg seemed keenly aware of my disappointment. The hubris from the end of our first day showed up again. Dead-set on progress, I began vetoing detours to watch moose, or to stare at a rushing river. We made maybe five stops all day, her insistence winning me over each time.

The funny thing was, each of those pauses brought the joy that escaped me in the Bronco. But also more guilt, as I mentally tallied all the potential stops we’d blown past since the last one.

That night’s resting place was Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park, a few hours south of the border between the Yukon and British Columbia. We reached it with daylight to spare, settling into a campsite next to the park’s namesake water. Gray clouds swallowed the surrounding peaks as we got a fire going and made food.

Years back, when I had first recounted to Meg my first trip through these lands, I had hung the whole story on a loose set of images seared into my brain. I endlessly retold that story to any friend or family member who would hold still long enough, but time had whittled the memories down to fragments of a moment: 30 seconds of this song as I rounded a bend, the way the light hit a peak, the beer I drank sitting on the hood after climbing those foothills.

At that Kinaskan campsite, for the first time on the whole trip, the moment matched the memory. Exhausted, I waved a hand at the water, then the fire, then Meg. “This is what I’ve been hoping for the whole time,” I admitted.

She shrugged, knowing my ego was bruised. “Maybe specifics aren’t the point here?” Later, as I drifted off to sleep, her words blew around my head like sawdust.

***

I did my best, the next day, to reframe how I looked at things. We made decent pace and passed the trip’s halfway point. That night, south of Prince George, British Columbia, at the gates of the Stone Creek RV Park, we were met by a shirtless bald man in Chicago Bears pajama pants. His handlebar mustache wiggled as he spoke.

“You guys are late,” he said, gruffly.

Some amalgamation of excuses flopped out of my mouth.

“No, you’re a week late,” he said.

The moment lasted seconds but felt like an hour. My stomach fell through my shoes. I’d promised this glimmering adventure, the cracks were showing, and some guy in Bears jammies had finally delivered the kill shot.

I braced for an argument, sure that I’d made the correct reservation over the phone. Instead, the man just shrugged. A bear paw of a hand extended.

“Eh, just details. Those aren’t important. Welcome! I’m Rick. Let’s get you set up.”

Our hours at Stone Creek were some of the best of the trip. We parked the camper a few feet from an ancient willow tree on the banks of a wide and gentle river, in front of a staggering view of the sunset. Rick had left a dinky old golf bag nearby. He challenged me to clear the river with a driver: “Ten bucks for every shot that makes it. You get three shots.”

Before I could mutter something about being a terminally afflicted golf nut, he thrust an old and dented club into my hands. I made back our $30 reservation fee in less than five minutes. As the fire burned low, we chopped it up with our new pal and a few of his regulars, grateful that first impressions are only that.

The next morning, Rick’s two Great Pyrenees rescue dogs greeted us as we stepped out of the trailer. Breakfast was a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, two of the dozens we ate that week. I felt better. We fired up the Bronco and headed out.

Heading south from Prince George on route 97 will land you on Canada Highway 1 in a few hours. From there, you can zip southwest toward the border and be in the U.S. by dusk. Or you can hang a right a few miles before the 97-1 interchange, onto Highway 99, chasing peaks and valleys west towards Whistler and Squamish.

Rick had warned me that 99 was “just a goat path” in places. When a man who hunts mountain lions for sport says a route is no joke, you listen. He was right: Sixteen-percent grades and tight switchbacks were draped over cliffs, and we were towing a trailer. Our GPS suggested the detour would cost two hours; it ended up being more like four, but what we saw was worth 20. Greens and blues and whites and yellows were shotgunned onto the land with varied intensity everywhere you looked. As we climbed, dazzling sunlight danced across the rippling waters of rivers, then streams, then ponds. Wildflowers hugged the edges of lakes, bordering them in neon glow.

“Great time for a removable roof!” Meg joked.

I laughed, actually relaxed. “Just wait till we hit the Sea-to-Sky highway.”

In a shocking turn of events, I misjudged the amount of time we would need for dinner. We ate but got back on the road later than planned, just in time for the Bronco to hit the meat of one of western B.C.’s most beautiful roads in the dark. The sun had gone low enough to turn the mountains into dark, featureless blobs.

I started to lament even more of my awful timing, but at the last second, something told my overactive brain to shut up. North of Vancouver, as we crawled through traffic along the shore, Meg went quiet, gazing into the deep orange sky. Boat lights twinkled across the water, the optical illusion seeming to bend the horizon, as if the Ford sat on the edge of the world.

“You’ll have to trust me,” I sighed, shaking my head. “This place is truly something in the light.”

“It’s quite something right now,” Meg said, softly.

Her words seemed to hang in the cabin. The acoustic guitar of some singer-songwriter tinkled softly through the speakers. The American border was just a few miles away. The trip was almost over.

As those last few Canadian road signs dashed past, I thought about the last few days. Even as I tried to rebuild the memories, to turn the trip into something good, the disappointment lingered. There were no colossal mistakes, just a series of missteps stacked on each other, like waves heading to shore.

Those delays, I realized, had bothered me far more than they had bothered Meg. I suddenly felt very stupid and petty.

“This was all supposed to be . . . better,” I said. “I wanted to show you more of it without a car window in the way. I’m sorry.”

I kept my eyes on the road but somehow knew she had turned to look at me.

“You might be the only person,” she said, “who would feel the need to apologize for what we just did.” The words came out half shock, half kind disbelief.

It’s never what you see or how much time you make. There were moments on that trip where I was probably the only person on the entire Alcan Highway to be annoyed by everything he saw. In a truly humbling part of the world, I was dumb and mad at everything for no good reason, and she knew.

Of course she did. Not that it mattered where we were. Walmart on a Wednesday with my wife is better than the Alps on Christmas with anyone else. It’s why I felt so lucky to make this trip with her in the first place, and why I spent days chasing an unreal perfect moment at the expense of imperfect real ones.

You travel with the people you care about because the place is never the point. And because they forgive you.

“Oh look,” she said, pointing at the nav screen. A smile. “Our ETA went up again.”

The post What a Ford Bronco and a lion hunter taught me about the perfect road trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I had never owned a car like this, one with pre-war roots, and I wasn’t looking for it. But if you’re bored and hunting on Craigslist long enough, you usually run across something that catches your eye. Something you probably shouldn’t buy.

That’s how I met Abigail.

Abigail is a 1952 MG TD. The TD is part of MG’s “T-Series” family, five models produced, one after the other, from 1936 to 1955. The TA came first, then the TB, the TC, the TD, and the TF. Each is a variation on the same basic idea. They all have long and flowing fenders, a long-stroke four-cylinder, a four-speed gearbox, and an ash-framed body. The TC, TD, and TF were built after World War II, but like so many cars of the era, their engineering basically dated to the 1930s.

The 54-hp TD met the world in 1949. It was really just a restyle and a light mechanical update of the TC. Both cars were relatively affordable and handled well. On the Miata project (See postscript: The author was a development engineer on the original Mazda Miata —Ed.) we had cited the T-Series as helping start this country’s sports-car craze, so I had a vague interest in owning one. Having just sold Edna, my ’64 Chrysler Imperial—the widest, largest, and most powerful American car made in its model year—it felt somehow right to be entranced by a diminutive lightweight like the TD.

The ad called the car an “older restoration,” noting that the owner needed to move it along to fund other projects. The following weekend, I visited the owner at his small farm near North Carolina’s coast and was smitten by the TD’s tomboy charm. It was essentially an upright piano on skinny tires.

We rolled the MG out into the sunshine. The owner started it with a simple pull of the starter knob. The engine sounded like a sewing machine. The car was indeed an excellent example, having received a frame-off restoration about eight years prior. The TD appeared to have been reassembled in the aisle of the Moss Motors warehouse—every rubber part was new, along with all the gaskets and trim. The metal bits had just enough patina to make the car look real to me.

In whole, it looked about like a 40,000-mile TD from, say, 1958. Not showroom-new, but not tattered, either—just the way I like my cars. The owner let the TD idle in the summer sun, no concern for overheating. I was impressed. Watching an English car idle for 30 minutes in 95-degree weather is like seeing a 90-year-old man do 100 push ups.

We struck a deal. I made plans to return the next weekend with either a trailer or a tow truck. On the 200-mile drive home, I texted a friend—let’s call him Q. He was a fellow Brit-sports-car aficionado. (Translation: patient with flaws, curious and willing to learn, steadfast in times of trouble. Good qualities in a car person or a friend).

Q said that he could help me pick up the MG with his trailer. But he’d only agree to help, he said, if we drove the TD back home.

“This car has not been on the road in eight years,” I said.

“Don’t wuss out,” he retorted. “What could go possibly wrong?”

And so the plan was made to drive together to get the car, then drive back in tandem, bracing for the possibilities that lay buried deep inside every one of that 70-year-old TD’s 1500-some-odd parts. The chase vehicle would be my 30-year-old Miata.

Yes, this is what counts as adventure in our man-bunned, flip-flop-wearing world: a three-hour drive on a paved road, in two cars, with no lions, tigers, or even bears.

At home, I made up a spares package. If you bring the tool/part/item, I figured, you probably won’t need it. A spare car battery fully charged: onboard. Gorilla tape and a small butane torch, plus some 12-gauge wire and solder: of course. Fix-a-flat and a jack: check. Carb cleaner and a length of fuel line: yep. We planned a route that avoided highways, sticking to interesting two-lanes with pull-off room and low traffic. (This was not our first British-sports-car rodeo.) I joined the Hagerty Driver’s Club and elected for the 150-mile towing option, then drew a circle of that radius around my home, which I called the “circle of safety.” Like an RAF pilot trying to get back across the English Channel, I knew that if I could just get the TD inside that radius—see the white cliffs of Dover—all would be well.

The following Saturday, we left to get the car. The trip there was uneventful, as most Miata trips are. When we arrived at the barn, the owner had the TD out in the sun and ready to go.

He looked around for a trailer, then back at us. “You’re going to drive this to Charlotte?”

“Any reason we shouldn’t?”

The man looked into my eyes for a double-count, the cash I had given him still palmed in his right hand. “Keep an eye on the fuel tank,” he said. “She clogs up now and then . . . ”

With that, we were off. It was noon. Plenty of margin for a three-hour drive on a lovely Saturday afternoon. I let Q drive first. First, I wanted to watch for any unusual behavior as the MG went down the road. Second, as a practical matter—I wanted to be able to see (and then collect) any parts that might fall off as Q got up to speed.

Speed being a relative term, of course, with a TD. When the car was new, it had a top-top-top speed of 74 mph. That number came in fourth gear, at the dizzying engine speed of 5500 rpm (a.k.a. the precipice of valve float).

The third reason I wanted to follow the car on that first leg? I am a visual person. Watching the MG bumble across eastern North Carolina was going to be fun.

That three-hour estimate would prove optimistic. At first, everything seemed fine. Ten minutes in, however, the car began to lose speed. Q raised his left arm and signaled—TDs don’t have visible turn signals—to pull off into a parking lot. The words of Road & Track’s Peter Egan arose from deep in my consciousness: It’s always the points.

I prepared myself for a little roadside diagnostics. This would be the first stop of more than a dozen. Over the next seven, not three, hours.

Pulling the distributor cap and rocking the car around in gear showed that, indeed, the gap on the MG’s ignition points was too small. Q assumed the kneeling position beside the engine, a posture familiar to T-Series owners (and to owners of early Porsche 911s—it’s a position of petition and humility, as if praying to the electrical gods). He made a quick adjustment and then we were off again, confident in our roadside tune-up.

Ten miles later, Q’s left hand waved once again. One more time, we pulled over to inspect the points. They were out of adjustment again, so we realigned them once more. We were only 10 miles closer to my circle of safety, and progress was agonizingly slow.

Ten more miles. Left hand up again. The points gap was now somehow too small. While messing around with the distributor, we realized the distributor had roughly half an inch of play, left to right, from a perished bushing. You could vary the points gap simply by pushing on the distributor’s body. On a subsequent stop, we took some zip ties and some spare fuel hose and used them to jam the distributor against a nearby object—in this case, the engine’s generator—forcing it into something like one position.

Setting off, we were emboldened, confident.

Ten minutes later, we were once again in a parking lot, once again looking at the distributor. The point gap was holding at an acceptable level. Emboldened by our diagnostic prowess, we quickly condemned the ignition condenser, a part that can cause intermittent poor running. There was a new one in a box of spares that came with the car. On it went. Back on the road we went.

At this point, I took over driving, having seen my fill of the TD’s rear and Q’s insistent hand signaling. We were about 20 miles to the edge of our tow range, and I was determined to make it. I was instantly reminded of how special old British sports cars are: tight steering, excellent shifters and transmissions, responsive brakes. I ran through my list of known English-girl names and settled on Abigail. The only real hiccup was a severe shimmy at speed, which I chalked up to flat-spotted tires. The whole chassis shook up and down, side-to-side, and in the yaw axis, all at once.

No matter—two miles later, the car was coughing and sputtering again. I pulled into the parking lot of an auto-parts store, ready to buy anything.

The seller’s parting words came back to me: She clogs up now and then.

I lay on the ground to inspect the fuel lines. A T-Series carries its fuel like a backpack, in a wedge-shaped slab tank just behind the body. When I opened one of the barbed fuel fittings beneath the tank, nothing came out. The barb’s innards were caked with flakes of rust.

Ah, I thought: It had never been the ignition! Our short stops to adjust the points had given the fuel system enough time to weep a few ounces of gas into the line, letting the engine restart. After which it would inevitably stall again, once fuel stopped flowing. A simple probe with a small stick cleared the line and got fuel gushing from the nipple. Once the gasoline ran clear, I put the hose back in place and moved to the front of the car, to the feed line at the carburetors. Fuel ran clear there pretty quickly, and then we were back on the road.

Well, almost. Along the way, the battery had grown too weak to turn the engine over, so we had to push-start the car.

I was reminded, once again, of the advantages of a lightweight sports car: You can push-start them when needed.

I sprinted out of the parking lot with bouts of full-throttle TD acceleration (a.k.a. barely keeping up with traffic). All was again great with the world. For 20 miles. Then my hand went up, and I repeated the fuel-purge routine. Nine more times, we performed this choreography, before reaching home, once every 15 miles or so. Toward the end, we got it down to a 90-second pit stop for both tank drain and carb-line purge.

We were well inside the towable radius now, but we felt we had licked the symptoms, if not the disease. Getting Abigail home under her own power had become a challenge. (On one of the purge routines, I noticed that the left rear brake cylinder was leaking. Something to address later—we were having trouble with propulsion, not stopping.)

In between these regular purge routines, I took inventory. The engine really didn’t mind going 5000 rpm at 65 mph. The steering was precise, the ride comfortable. A T-Series steering wheel is the size of an extra-large pizza and perfectly complements the wooden dash. The whole package worked well, and the attraction was undeniable. As a bonus, it was one of those cars so lovely to look at that you almost don’t mind taking in that beauty while sitting on the side of the road, wondering why the thing won’t run.

A few miles down the road, I looked in the mirror to see Q signaling from the Miata. I dove into a church’s parking lot, curious as to what could possibly could be wrong with our Japanese car. Q pulled up alongside.

“My phone’s weather app says we are driving into a rainstorm.” Then, in one of those I only have to run faster than the bear moments, he flipped up the Miata’s top with one hand and drove off.

I waved him back. We spent 10 minutes unfolding and erecting the MG’s prehistoric top. The car came from the factory with side curtains—clip-on fabric windows—but we didn’t have them. The TD’s roof amounted to a little more than a lousy umbrella, but it was better than no top at all. With that, we were off, into dark clouds ahead.

And rain it did. So on we drove, one-handed, with Q in the serene comfort of a watertight Mazda and me in what was essentially a wooden sailboat caught in a squall. Two more fuel-line purges were required to get through the storm, and we reached the outskirts of Charlotte with a sigh of relief.

The rain stopped, the sun came out, and the TD, somehow, settled down into a happy zone of peace and harmony. The shimmies from the flat-spotted tires finally worked themselves out. I became comfortable with a 5000-rpm cruise. The car ran wonderfully, and we came to terms with each other. The fuel tank pulled one last clogging routine, but we made it the last 10 miles to my house without incident, arriving just as the sun was setting. I pulled into my driveway and let Abigail idle for a moment, rechecking her gauges and thanking her for making it all the way home without a tow.

We had accomplished something together, she and I, and it felt good. I switched off the ignition and listened to the engine tick and gurgle as it cooled. Abigail deposited a cup of engine oil on the driveway, as if to mark her spot. Seven hours of noise melted into a nice moment of joy.

Life with Abigail is now bliss. She is a joy to drive, now that I’ve over-engineered her fuel system and fixed that leaky wheel cylinder. And people in town love her. Everyone waves and smiles when they see her coming. There is something endearing about a ridiculous car and the fool who loves her, as if we were made for each other.

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***

Norman Garrett was the Concept Engineer for the original Miata back in his days at Mazda’s Southern California Design Studio. When he’s not curating his small collection of dysfunctional automobiles and motorcycles, he teaches automotive engineering classes at UNC Charlotte’s Motorsports Engineering Department, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The post I helped make the first Miata, and now I love its ancestor appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In 2019, filmmaker and historian Alex Bescoby, backed by Hagerty, set out to recreate history’s greatest road trip—the 1955 First Overland from London to Singapore—in the very same, freshly restored Land Rover Series I, “Oxford,” that took part in ’55. The Last Overland, his 12,000 mile, 23-country journey across two continents, is now the subject of a four-part series on Channel 4, and a best-selling book.

6 November, 2019: The middle of nowhere

Under a crystal clear sky, in a country you’ve probably never heard of, the sand gathered slowly on the ruins of Oxford and of my great and foolish dream.

I knelt with my head in my hands, watching through gaps in my fingers as her vital fluids gushed around my feet. They formed into a little stream, running along a deep gouge in the tarmac that Oxford had carved in her death throes. Slowly, like a tentacle, they crept to where a single tire now lay flat, still impaled by half an axle pointing stubbornly to the sky.

She—and yes, I had come to concede the “Grand Old Lady” could be nothing else—had overcome so much. She was a world-conquering heroine, lost to history on a remote, rocky outcrop then rescued, restored, and brought triumphantly back to life after six decades in exile. Oxford had been in my care for all of seventy-three days, carrying me safely across eleven countries and 8000 miles. Together we had seen Mount Everest at sunset, dodged headhunters and the Taliban, half-drowned in monsoon rains, and half-baked in the Southeast Asian sun.

And for her troubles, I had dumped her into a roadside ditch, leaving her bleeding and maimed. There were now three wheels on my wagon, and, contrary to popular myth, I wasn’t rolling anywhere.

“Well, I guess this means we’ll be late for lunch?” said Marcus, his looming form casting a shadow on my grief.

“Do you ever stop thinking about your stomach?” said a second, Nat-shaped shadow. I had managed to keep him alive for another day, at least.

“How bad is it, Doc?” I asked, as a third, much shorter shadow appeared.

He paused, looking thoughtful.

“How do you walk with no legs?”

Larry stooped down to give a second opinion, casting his seasoned eye over the damage.

“That’s going to take days to fix, if it even is fixable, which I doubt.”

“You have only five days on your visa. After that you must leave,” said our guide Tashmurad, helpful as ever.

Recreating the 1955 First Overland road trip

Of the 23 countries we were passing through on our great overland journey from Singapore to London, this was the worst we could have broken down in. During the months of preparation for our journey I had learned that Turkmenistan, the former Soviet, central-Asian dictatorship in which we now found ourself stranded, had a less than welcoming reputation when it came to outsiders. In fact, Turkmenistan admitted fewer tourists each year than the famously reclusive North Korea.

I looked back to see our two support cars parked a respectful distance from the crash site, both reassuringly intact. From them emerged Leo and David, cameras rolling as ever. They padded up to Oxford with a rare reverence, as if filming a funeral.

The fog of shock began to clear enough for me to take a silent headcount, which then only sparked a new panic. Seven … there should be eight? Where was Tibie? Calm down—she’s waiting for us in Georgia, of course, after we mislaid her a little carelessly in Uzbekistan.

It felt like the end, but surely it couldn’t be? People all over the world were watching and waiting for us to finish, and we still had 12 more countries and around 5000 miles further to go. I had given this ridiculous endeavor every penny I had, missing births, marriages, and funerals of those I loved to see this mission through. Had it all been for nothing?

I felt my stomach churn; it had not been quite right since that volcanic diarrhea in Nepal. I looked round at my crew, my little family of oddballs dressed in their jumbles of grubby layers, hair unkempt and faces unshaved, all of them lost in private thought. Had I dragged them all the way across the world simply to fail alongside me?

After an hour, a flatbed truck appeared on the horizon, summoned from the desert haze by Tashmurad. For the first time on her epic trans-global journey, all Oxford’s remaining wheels left the road. As she was slowly winched into place, the rescue-truck driver shouted to me in yet another language I did not understand.

“He wants to know what you’re doing,” translated Tashmurad.

“We’re on an expedition,” I said, immediately feeling stupid as he took in my bedraggled, dust-covered form. The driver screwed up his face as if sucking on a lemon. He looked at me hard, then answered, shaking his head. I turned to Tashmurad for help.

“He said: ‘No one goes on expeditions anymore.’”

Damage report

After dozens of calls, Tashmurad had found a workshop in the nearby town of Mary that would agree to inspect a car that no Turkmen mechanic seemed to have heard of. We pulled into the compound. It was a place where cars went to die, their rusting innards spilling across the floor.

Only the gaggle of oil-stained men inspecting a decrepit Toyota revealed it might be more than a scrapyard. Tashmurad sought the owner, a squat man with close-cropped hair, who on seeing foreigners insisted we take no pictures or video of him or his crew. We sat in dejected silence on a clutch of old tires while Tashmurad joined their huddle, under clear instruction to establish how bad the damage was, whether it was possible to get Oxford back on the road, and if not, how we could get it out of the country.

After ten minutes’ heated exchange, Tashmurad returned.

“Is it dead?” I asked.

“We haven’t discussed that yet.”

“What have you been talking about all this time?!”

“They want to know why you’re here. They don’t understand. I tried to explain, but they keep asking—‘Who is paying for this? Don’t they have wives and families? Don’t they have jobs? Does their government know where they are? It makes no sense to travel just to travel.’ Don’t worry, I explained you are gypsies.”

Almost boiling over, I sent Tashmurad back into the fray. We needed to make decisions fast; the clocks on our non-extendable visas were ticking. This time, the head mechanic disappeared beneath Oxford. More bickering ensued, and Tashmurad returned.

“He doesn’t know Land Rovers. He wants to know why you didn’t bring a Toyota, much easier to fix. Even BMW—he has loads of BMW parts. Why didn’t you come in a BMW?”

Anger flashed across my face. Tashmurad raised his hands for calm.

“Okay, okay, we will have to wait while they open up the rear differential; only then can they say if they can fix it.”

Like a group of nervous fathers in a maternity ward, we discussed our options in the fading sun while the mechanics set to work.

“We have to be in Ashgabat tomorrow, 250 miles away. We can’t break the schedule we gave the government, or we’re in serious trouble,” Marcus explained. “Plus, we’re due on state TV the day after. It’ll be very awkward if we don’t show up.”

“More awkward if the famous overlanders turn up in a taxi,” said Nat.

“In the worst case,” Larry weighed in, “we could ship Oxford out of Turkmenistan as freight.”

“All the way to London?” said David.

“We could jump in with her and mail ourselves home,” suggested Leo. “Much less embarrassing.”

After an eternity, the head mechanic barked to Tashmurad. My heart pounded as Tashmurad translated the prognosis.

“You are very lucky. The axle is not broken, it is … what is the word … dislocated. They can reassemble it, but it will take two days.”

Before relief could sink in, Marcus chimed, “So the risk now is relying on this guy to deliver Oxford to Ashgabat as promised. If he doesn’t, we have to leave Turkmenistan without her?”

I nodded. We would have to continue to Ashgabat without Oxford while the work was done, leaving the world’s most famous Land Rover alone with these strange men, in a strange town in an even stranger country. We had no better option.

Via Hagerty UK

***

Alex Bescoby’s book about The Last Overland journey has been selected by both Waterstones and Wanderlust as one of the Best Travel Books of 2022, and is available from all good bookstores.

The post Don’t break down in a dictatorship, and other tips when driving across Eurasia appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Matthew Anderson is an American engineer who relocated to Germany a few years ago for work. He suffers from a baffling obsession with unexceptional cars from Australia and the Eastern Bloc. We don’t ask him too many follow-up questions, especially now that his move back to the Carolinas (with a shipping container housing a Moskvich, among other nonsense, in tow) has been such a tragicomic delight. To welcome him home to the U.S., we’ve decided to bless him with a dedicated column called “Against All Oddities.”–Eric Weiner

In Part 2 of this tale, we covered how a well-loved, much-personalized Hobby 600 camper found itself in my driveway. It had its share of idiosyncrasies and needs that I earmarked for future attention. This was going to be “home” for my wife and I over the subsequent three months as we traveled Europe, so we deemed a moderate degree of personalization (and sanitization) to be necessary.

Our handful of local test trips, ahead of the big adventure, confirmed a few … deficiencies: no water, no toilet, and a generally itchy, crawly feeling upon walking around inside. But it ran great! The Fiat-based motorhome (Wohnmobile to Germans) drove perfectly, which greatly lightened the sense of renovation burden. Still, we had a whole heap to do.

The first essential step was to install a rear-view camera. I did not relish the thought of cracking my bumper on a tree, person, or animal. Then again, running 20 feet of wire through 30-year old cabinetry and fiberglass seemed like a recipe for an electrical fire. Luckily, technology has progressed to the point in which a small, stowable dashboard monitor can broadcast the exact image of whatever I’m about to damage using only local wiring mods at the camera and display locations. The system needed 12 volts of power, so I bought a spare tail light housing on eBay and soldered the camera wires into the reverse light bulb housing and made a small mod to hold the camera and transponder. There were already two mystery wires dangling out of the dash, and—luck of lucks!—they happened to be ground and switched for 12 volts. Dead easy!

I turned over the Hobby’s interior decorating to my wife, who is more capable in this arena. She declared the theme would be “That Airbnb we stayed at in Istanbul that one time,” and soon, shipping boxes from the world over landed on our steps. Custom, pineapple-embroidered lace curtains from Turkey? Yeah! Green stick-on tiles from India? For sure! Carpet from as far off as neighboring Ludwigsburg? You know it! In short order, what was once a dingy compilation of thrifted textiles and upcycled plastic containers (see Part 1 of this series for confirmation) rapidly evolved into a living quarters of lace, gold, turquoise, and vintage East German light fixtures. Lots of pillows and a full-sized memory foam mattress rounded out the bedroom/rainy day hangout den. Bringing the seating areas to period perfection involved yet more online marketplace plundering, plus a snowy drive up to Hanover to pluck and complete grey-brown upholstery set. Matthew Anderson

Just look at those Indian tiles and fresh bargain basement carpet!Then, because in nature there is an equal and opposite reactions to every action, the beautification of our van was paused so I could fix the plumbing.

The previous owner’s long-held strategy was to simply rip out any plumbing system that wasn’t working. That meant no shower, no hot water heater, no faucets, no grey or fresh water storage, and a toilet converted to onion and potato storage. (We have the remnant peels as evidence.) Given the total absence of functioning systems, the Hobby’s plumbing predicament required a re-think rather than a rebuild:

What would we really need on the road in Southern Europe over the course of a summer?

Hot water? Nah, a kettle will do.

An indoor shower? I’ll rinse off with the birds and fish, thank you.

Running water for dinner cleanup, plus hand, teeth, and face washing would be nice, though. Oh, and a sailboat-style chemical toilet for emergencies. Gray water collection was feasible using drains plumbed straight down and into portable storage containers.

So, it was settled. I took some measurements of the area under the dinner-eating-and-cribbage-playing bench and located the largest fresh water tank possible—10 Euro via eBay Kleinanzeigen. The only issue was that the external fresh water fill was on the wrong side. Annoying, but nothing 10 minutes, a hack saw, and MAP gas torch couldn’t fix. That’s all it took for me to relocate the filler weld the old hole plastic shut. On top of that, I had ordered some food-safe PVC tubing for the external fill and removed the European-style hose fitting so that it could be filled from anywhere, regardless of regional conventions. A lightly used Shur-Flo on-demand pump completed my hardware install. An on-demand pump contains an internal pressure switch that turns it on or off, rather than the faucets containing a microswitch to kick on the operation. The advantage of this: Pressure is constant, just like at home, meaning the water flows freely and on demand. The disadvantage: If we spring a leak, ergo lose pressure, the pressure switch just assumes you’re brushing your teeth really, really well and will happily empty 100 liters of water … under your bed.

Why the bed? Well, I had just gotten done connecting the pump and faucets to the hodge-podge of new and existing PVC plumbing, much of it hidden behind paneling. Upon first fire, the pump didn’t stop running, which meant … consequences. I hadn’t thought of my brilliant emergency switch idea yet, which you’ll read about in 45 seconds or so, depending on when you stop laughing at me.

I had clearly not done a proper job of making sure each hose had an ending place, but I realized it too late. The result was approximately 5 liters of water being pumped into our sleeping quarters. After drying it all out, I stuffed small wads of Kleenex in every tube ending I could find in order to isolate which hidden water lines were actually being used. When I hit it with compressed air, spitballs shot out of all offending hose ends. Upon capping all unused T junctions, I repeated the test. Success! Now for adding an emergency shutoff switch …

But what about the shower, you ask? Nothing to see here! Our plan involved staying mostly at campgrounds with functioning plumbing services. The outliers will be “rustic” sites, which is Van Person-speak for remote areas where a human outdoor bucket shower would be a newsworthy event for local wildlife. To this end, I picked up a black collapsible bucket to fill and let bake in the sun, while a small USB-rechargeable pump with an 8-foot hose (and shower head already on it) would bring the spray. The whole setup cost 62 Euro. What a world!

Now that that’s all out of the way, we can shift focus to things on which it doesn’t absolutely to work. Being an organized person, my wife championed the notion of procuring devices that bring structure to our otherwise chaotic and spontaneous travels. Spice containers, for example. Tupperware and unbreakable (challenge accepted!) wine glasses. Silverware and cutlery that neither shatters nor clanks. Foam carriers to keep everything secured in the cabinets and zipping ones to keep the clean and dirty clothes separated.

So … where to go? A good friend of mine from college in Australia was marrying his Swiss fiancé in Chianti, Italy, in early June. This at least made waypoint No. 1 and our drop-dead departure date clear. My wife wanted to visit her ancestral home of Albania, so that would serve as waypoint No. 64 or so. The Douro Valley in Portugal was also a must, and it’s right on the way to Albania via France, Spain, and Italy. Timing? We’d figure all that out later. Ideally, we hoped, we’d make it to the wedding for cocktail hour the day before and then make our way to Vlore, Albania. Done. The plan was planned.

With the upgrades, repairs, and preventative maintenance completed to the best of my crystal-ball estimation, we said our tearful goodbyes and loaded Lukas the Romanian street dog into his bed. We’d thought of everything! I took a deep breath as we aimed for Italy via the Swiss Alps. Our time in Germany was in the rear view, and I was excited for our journey, blissfully ignorant of the fact that I’d neglected to pack a single pair of underwear.

The post How to quit worrying, ditch your job, and ramble Europe in a ’90s spacevan: Part 3 appeared first on Hagerty Media.

I’ve written repeatedly about “Hampton,” the remarkably original survivor 1973 BMW 2002 that I bought in Bridgehampton, Long Island, from its original owner 3 1/2 years ago. Part of the appeal of the car was that, when I bought it, it had 48,125 documented original miles that aligned with its intact survivor vibe.

Now, 48,000 miles is a funny number. It’s not remotely in the same league as the sub-thousand-mile cars that get bid up to crazy prices on Bring a Trailer. But a BMW 2002 with that mileage is a rare beast. When I bought my ’74 Lotus Europa Twin Cam Special nine years ago, it had 24,000 miles on it. That’s not why I bought it, but I did think that the mileage made it something special. I was completely wrong. There appear to be a fair number of Europas, particularly Twin Cam cars, with that kind of mileage on them, because a) They were generally bought as third, not first or even second cars, b) The water pump is integrated with the front timing cover, the seal leaks from sitting, and because of the mid-engine design, the engine has to be removed to rebuild the pump, which is part of the reason behind c) the widely-repeated saying that Lotus stands for “Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious.”

But a BMW 2002 isn’t like that. These cars were bought as primary transportation, owners drove the wheels off them, and they were and continue to be generally quite reliable, making sub-50,000-mile 2002s pretty uncommon. When I bought Hampton in the spring of 2019, it had been sitting in a barn for a decade due to a change in family fortunes. I don’t usually flip cars, but I saw dollar signs. I cleaned it up, sorted it out, put it on Bring a Trailer, and was surprised when it didn’t meet a reasonable reserve. I think the main reason why was that although folks say that they love original survivor cars (“It’s only original once,” and all that), BaT’s click-and-bid-bid-bid machinery is more hospitable to eye-candy cars with powder-coated subframes and dry-ice-blasted engine compartments, neither of which Hampton has. I wasn’t planning on keeping the car, but when it didn’t sell, that seemed to be my lot, at least for a while.

During this unexpected second act of the play of ownership, I’ve been very conscious not to rack up the mileage. Virtually all the 800-ish miles I put on the car was running it back and forth to the warehouse in central Massachusetts where I rent space. I never really “pleasure-drove” it anywhere. While some component of that was that the nearly-bone-stock Hampton doesn’t have the snap of my fuel-injected 2002tii or my other 2002, with its high-compression twin-Webered-and-cammed engine, the bigger reason was that I was adamant about not rolling it over to 49,000 miles (“le petit rollover”), much less 50,000 (“le grande rollover”).

However, over the past few months, there was a shift in my thinking. First, the idea of hoarding mileage—owning a car and not driving it because of worry that that will affect its value—is antithetical to everything that I do. The value of Hampton will be increased by a) detailing the engine compartment and undercarriage (the latter of which will likely never happen), b) wire-brushing, treating, and repainting the little bit of seam rust on the hood and the door bottoms, c) having paintless dent removal performed on the little dings, and d) the passage of time. I now realize that zeroing in myopically on the mileage and saying the car be worth $Y with 49,000 on it but only $X with 51,000 is just plain silly.

Second, even though the other 2002s, the Lotus, the BMW M Coupe, and other cars are well-ahead of it in the pleasure-driving queue, Hampton is the prettiest 2002 I own, and its survivor vibe gets under your skin. The original paint and bone-stock interior are often conversation pieces. I had a guy chat me up recently outside a liquor store and ask if he could smell the car’s interior. Rather than look at him askance, I understood the request completely. The horsehair padding (“Gummihair,” as the Germans called it) of the seats has a very characteristic smell. He opened the door, stuck his head in, inhaled deeply, and smiled. “That is exactly how a BMW 2002 is supposed to smell,” he said. He was right.

And so I began to use the car more. After identifying and fixing a long-standing hard-starting problem, I focused on another carburetor issue, that of lean-running. Using a portable exhaust gas analyzer I bought 40 years ago in a pawn shop in Austin, I verified my suspicion that the car’s hesitation at even throttle and numbness on modest acceleration was indeed accompanied by the meter on the gas analyzer swinging well into the lean zone. I ordered an assortment of idle and main jets, and with a little tweaking, was able to a) get the needle on the gas analyzer to sit much closer to the middle, b) the hesitation to go away, and c) the car to wake up when I squeezed the throttle.

But while iteratively doing that, I was running the car a few exits up and down I-95 and put another hundred or so miles on it. As I homed in on the final jetting, I didn’t cringe as the odometer did le petit rollover to 49,000 miles. Instead, I smiled at the fact that I’d largely let go of the “I shouldn’t be driving it” issue and was actually performing useful tuning that would increase my driving enjoyment.

Since my usage of the car was increasing, I installed a spare Recaro-like Konig driver’s seat I had in the basement. While I absolutely love the look of BMW’s 1970s seat pleating, the big wide, flat horsehair-padded seats are uncomfortable for anything other than short drives, and with my back injury in August, I need all the lumbar support I can get. Plus, for enthusiastic driving, the bolstered seat held me in place much better. Not that I was sliding the car around entrance ramps. That would be pleasure driving (haha).

I was so pleased with this shift in tone and purpose that I decided that Hampton deserved something of a coming-out party. After all, even close friends of mine in the vintage BMW world had never seen the car. One good friend joked that the car was an urban myth. So, I took it to “BMW Day” at the nearby Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts. There were any number of cool cars there, including a survivor 1935 315/1 roadster, so it’s not like Hampton was the belle of the ball. But enough of my local 2002 friends laid eyes on it to retire the “urban myth” joke.

In fact, it got the gears turning in my brain to something bigger:

Road trip!

The following weekend, my wife, Maire Anne, and I were planning to drive up and see some close friends in Manchester, Vermont, one of whom is a former bandmate who had asked me to sit in with his band in a gig they had during Columbus Day / Indigenous People’s Weekend outside the Orvis building. Road trips in smelly, old,  vintage cars aren’t really my wife’s thing, so I was planning on taking my smooth and quiet 2003 BMW 530i. Plus, rain was forecast, and as much as I love pounding out big miles in the vintage cars, driving them in drenching rain is stress-inducing to the driver and rust-inducing to the car.

However, the morning we were planning to leave, I looked at the weather radar, and it showed that the precipitation bands were predicted to head well north of our destination, so any rain was likely to be episodic rather than drenching. I ran the smelly-old-vintage-car question past my better half, and she signed off on it, so into the trunk went the Tech21 guitar amp, and onto the back seat went the Peavey T-60 and the Taylor GS guitars. The projected 150-ish-mile trip was a Goldilocks-just-right distance, as I felt comfortable bringing a toolbox and a few reasonable spares (fuel pump, distributor cap, plugs and points, fan belt) but eschewing the floor jack, two gallons of antifreeze, timing light, and more that I’d take on a real road trip.

We had a picture-perfect drive up through fabulous foliage. The windows were down and the sunroof open for most of it. As we approached Manchester, we could see the storm center hovering ominously off to the northeast, but although the temperature dropped about 15 degrees, there was absolutely zero rain.

The only problem we had on the trip was that my supposed hard-starting fix last month wasn’t the magic bullet I thought it was. With the colder overnight temperatures, the car had trouble starting in the morning. Adjusting the automatic choke so it rotated hard closed didn’t fix it. Then the problem started happening even when the engine was warm. Fortunately, I brought a battery jump pack just in case I ran the battery down and needed to self-jump, which I did. Curiously, starting with a fully open throttle turned out to be the magic trick. I’m still not sure what the cause of the problem is. But all in all, it was no more than a minor annoyance.

One of the reasons BMW 2002s had a cult following when they were new is that they were small sports sedans that did a lot of things well. They were stout, had an acceptable amount of power, could seat four, had a real trunk, and were almost criminally smile-inducing on a curvy road. All of that is still true. Further, while there’s no pretending that you’re not in a 50-year-old car in terms of wind noise, the car’s two-liter engine, snickety four-speed gearbox, front disc brakes, McPherson strut front suspension, and fully independent rear suspension still make the 2002 a joy to drive. That can’t be said of all vintage cars. I may have missed the extra power and the wonderful wind-up of the 2002tii when I wanted to squeeze the accelerator to keep pace with traffic up a hill, or the roar of the dual Webers and the hot cam when I wanted to mash and pass, but what Hampton lacked in snap, it more than made up for in panache.

In addition, not only were Maire Anne and I happy road-tripping the perky little 2002, Hampton seemed happy. Before the car was put in storage in 2009, it had been a summer car in the Hamptons, used only to tool around between a vacation home and the beach. This was probably its first road trip in over 20 years. Deciding to drive the car, to use it as intended instead of hoarding its mileage like virginity in a 19th century British novel or vintage scotch seemed to lift a pall that had descended upon it after it didn’t sell on BaT and I stuffed it away.

The roughly 310-mile round-trip ticked the mileage up to 49,365. I can’t say that I’m going to start planning road trips in the car to Nome or Seattle or even Asheville. It still is likely this car is sojourning with me rather than a long-term soulmate. And I have other cars, and they all get their turn. But that’s the point—Hampton is now getting its turn with the rest, and I will now use the car for what I want instead of feeling like keeping the mileage down is the single most important thing.

After all, when le grande rollover happens, the car and I should be livin’ the dream on some road trip, not running cardboard boxes down to the recycling depot. Or getting an inspection sticker. Or tweaking the jetting on I-95.

***

Rob Siegel’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic^TM: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon. His other seven books are available here, or you can order personally inscribed copies through his website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post The low-mileage car gets a road trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Route 66 is probably the most talked about road in America and people are always saying they want to see it saved, but not many are doing anything about it. With the 100-year anniversary coming in 2026, there are companies doing their part to help save this piece of American history. One example of a business invested in saving Route 66 is Mobil 1. The motor oil brand is trying to preserve and protect the Mother Road by running a campaign “Keep Route 66 Kickin”. This campaign aims to help small businesses along historic Route 66 by advocating to make it a National Historic Trail. This act would help generate more dollars for the preservation of the road and all the small business along it. Also included in the campaign are Guinness Book of World Record setting events planned along Route 66 and creating a guide to Route 66’s small businesses. You can support the effort by visiting keep66kickin.com.

With Mobil 1 coming up with a way to try preserve this piece of automotive history, it got us thinking about encouraging a great American road trip. What better place to take a road trip than historic Route 66. For most people, Route 66 is thought of as these nostalgic images or even pictured through the lens of the Pixar movie Cars. There is a lot of American culture and history that can only be seen by driving this decommissioned highway. If you’re thinking about taking a drive on Route 66, Hagerty employees shared 18 of their favorite spots to visit along the route below. But first, what is Route 66?

History

Opened in 1926, Route 66 is 2,448 miles long from downtown Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier near Los Angeles. Some of it is actually older than that as a portion began as a government-funded wagon road built by the US Army in 1857. Although it was signed into law in 1927 as one of the original US Highways, it wasn’t fully paved until 1938 (with numerous route changes and adjustments over the years, there are still parts that are unpaved you would drive down today). A combination of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the Great Depression caused many families to use the road to travel west in search of jobs.

Along with the rise of the automobile offering freedom for motorists who wanted to explore the country this became quite the well-traveled route. Mom-and-pop businesses like gas stations, restaurants, and motels were popping up everywhere. During the 1940s it was war-related industries in California bringing more traffic to the route. Then, in the 1950s, vacationers heading to see the west coast were a lot of the people traveling the road. This is when most of the wacky tourist locations started appearing. Everything from teepee-shaped motels and reptile farms, to displaying giant “Muffler Men”. Not to mention the birth of the fast-food industry occurred along Route 66 during that time. The road was so busy that there are sections, especially in Oklahoma and Illinois, that have underground walkways just so people could safely get to the other side of the street.

Eventually a decline in travel came with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. New highways were added, many times running parallel to Route 66, that made travel much faster and were used to bypass cities and small towns. The loss of traffic meant the loss of businesses and eventually whole towns along the route. Ultimately all parts of Route 66 were replaced by different highways, and it was officially removed from the US Highway System in 1985. The road isn’t gone though, and is still a popular drive for people looking for a bit of adventure and nostalgia.

Planning a road trip

Driving the original Route 66 and alternate alignments is doable, but can be a challenge. Some parts are still their original width of 9-foot-wide “sidewalk highway” form, never having been resurfaced to make them into full-width highways. These old sections have a single paved lane with gravel shoulders for passing. A lot of Route 66 is bypassed, unmarked, or slowly deteriorating back into the earth. Staying on it demands constant vigilance as it frequently crosses interstates.

If you’re trying to stay exclusively on Route 66, be prepared for the frustration of rolling at 45 mph parallel to an interstate where you could travel nearly double that. Hagerty’s Senior Vice President of Content Larry Webster drove it with his 2 sons and mother and his best advice was the “keep-it-loose strategy” when it comes to planning everything out. He says a trip down Route 66 is always an unpredictable journey. They took a 1969 Chevelle instead of renting a newer car which allowed them to meet many people that would not have otherwise. We definitely think if it is possible, taking a classic car for the drive is the best way to experience it.

Even if you can’t make it all the way from Chicago to LA, driving just a portion of it will still be memorable. There is so much history and heritage of the route to learn about. A road trip like this gives you an appreciation for the way life was not so long ago. As you drive you will hopefully see a revival of Route 66 happening with old motels, diners, and gas stations being restored now.

18 locations along Route 66 Hagerty staff think are worth visiting

Illinois

Cruisin’ with Lincoln on 66
Bloomington, IL
A Route 66 and Abraham Lincoln themed museum, gift shop, and visitor center to pick up your Route 66 Passport and start your journey.

Abraham Lincoln’s Tomb – Oakridge Cemetery
Springfield, IL
The 16^th president’s tomb is the 2^nd most visited grave in the country. Along with the 117-foot-tall obelisk over his grave, there are many statues and war memorials worth seeing. Be sure to rub the nose on the bronze bust of Lincoln for good luck.

Missouri

66 Drive-In
Carthage, MO
Opened in 1949 this historic drive-in appears in the epilogue of the movie Cars. It’s a family friendly stop with playgrounds to keep the kids entertained during intermission.

Kansas

Kan-O-Tex Service Station
Galena, KS
Only about 13 miles of Route 66 are in Kansas, but there’s some cool old building to see on their small stretch. Parked outside this service station is the tow truck that inspired “Tow Mater” for Cars. The town has since added a “Sheriff” car from the movie mounted on a pole, a “Red” firetruck, and a replica of “Luigi” as well. You can even find a small stretch of yellow brick road in town.  

Oklahoma

Cultural District
Miami, OK
Driving through the town you will see many murals commissioned in the last 30 years with more added each April, making this a highlight of public art.

Texas

U-Drop-Inn Conoco Station
Shamrock, TX
The historical station is fully restored now and serves as a visitors’ center. It was also the building that inspired Ramon’s House of Body Art in Cars.

Cadillac Ranch
Amarillo, TX
Yes, it’s a total tourist trap, but isn’t most of this stuff anyway? Grab a can of spray paint (sold in front of the cars actually) and add your name to these 10 tail fin Caddies in the ground. You have a choice of models to paint from 1949-1963.

New Mexico

The Motel Safari
Tucumcari, NM
An unbelievable motel that feels like going back in time… except squeaky clean.

Blue Hole
Santa Rosa, NM
In the midst of the desert, there is a beautiful clear blue water lake that attracts scuba divers from around the world. This 100-foot-deep water stays clear by renewing itself every six hours. It’s free to stop by for a quick swim, but be warned, the water is very cold.

Musical Highway
Albuquerque, NM
Align your tires on the rumble strips and drive exactly 45mph and you will hear America the Beautiful. Sometimes the governments’ ways of getting cars to slow down can be annoying, however this one is neat and really works (only on the eastbound lane).

Arizona

Wigwam Hotel
Holbrook, AZ
These used to be a chain of seven locations around the US but are down to just three (with another one being on Route 66 in San Bernardino, CA). Cozy Cone Motel anyone? What’s not to like about hotel rooms in simulated Teepees, plus it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

Angel & Vilma Delgadillo’s Original Route 66 Gift Shop
Seligman, AZ
This is the town Radiator Springs from Cars was based on. If you’re lucky you can stop by Angel’s barber shop and talk to Angel Delgadillo who is considered the “Guardian of Route 66”. Every type of Route 66 knickknack you can think of is available to purchase here, plus there’s lots of cool stuff to see in this small town.

Meteor Crater Natural Landmark
Winslow, AZ
The world’s best-preserved meteor impact site. Enough said.

Wild Burros
Oatman, AZ
The roads around the old western town of Oatman are beautiful and scary at the same time. A lot of no guardrail hairpin turn steep drop-off white knuckle driving to get there (definitely not something for an RV). Once there you will have the unique experience of seeing wild donkeys walking the streets and sometimes even into the bars. The donkeys were left by gold miners 100 years ago and like to be fed by tourists.

Walnut Canyon National Monument – Ancient Cliff Dwellings
Flagstaff, AZ
The 600-foot-deep canyon with ancient cliff dwellings are spectacular to see and well worth a stop.

Petrified Forest National Park
Petrified Forest, AZ
Although Route 66 no longer goes right through the park, it still takes you to the entrance. This is a park you can drive through and park at many well maintained easy to walk paved trails with stunning views.

California

Route 66 Museum
Victorville, CA
This is a free museum with great handouts and a gift shop where the workers will share entertaining historical stories with you.

Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch
Oro Grande, CA
A totally unique free folk-art environment to explore.

Those are some of the Hagerty staff’s favorite stops, what are yours? Comment below and let us know what we missed.

If you’re trying to find some independent businesses to visit along the route, Mobil 1 put together a whole list of them all in one place.

There are over 4 million miles of road in the US, but no road is home to more incredible memories than Route 66. For the love of driving, let’s keep Route 66 kicking.

The post Best places to visit on a Route 66 road trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Have you ever felt totally out of place? Maybe you were in a spot that isn’t your scene, as they say? In that moment, did it seem like everyone could see right through you and they knew you didn’t belong? It sure feels that way to me.

I don’t consider myself superstitious. There’s not a special sports jersey I wear when my team is playing, I had a child born on a Friday the 13th so the calendar doesn’t bother me, and broken mirrors/black cats/walking under ladders aren’t a thing for me. That said, in all my years of flying, I’ve only had my wife (with or without our kids) watch me take off once or twice. The odds of something catastrophic happening on takeoff are really small (thankfully), but I figure those odds get worse when loved ones are present. It’s one thing to become a giant, smoking hole. It’s quite another to do so in front of family.

For those of you who are new here, this piece is part of a series from “Josh Arakes,” a senior U.S. military fighter-jet pilot who has obtained permission to share some of his life and experiences with us here at Hagerty. If you want to hear more about the Top Gun lifestyle, both as it relates to jets and cars, please let us know in the comments or by emailing tips@hagerty.com. Josh is willing to tell us anything that doesn’t compromise operational security. Enjoy! —Ed.

Prior to taking off, a ground crew will look over each jet for leaks or anything amiss (some call this “last chance”). As part of that final check, weapons troops will arm up any munitions and ensure pylons are able to jettison any stores in the event of an emergency. Near that area on the airfield can be a pretty good spot for guests to observe the jets and watch the takeoffs, though getting access with a proper escort can be a tall order in many places.

Some fighter jets only have single-seat versions (F-35, for example); others, like the F-18, have trainer variants in which an instructor sits in the back seat for a few sorties until the student is cleared to fly sans instructor. Regardless, during the months-long initial training, if there’s not an instructor physically in the aircraft, there’s one in the aircraft next to you.

I clearly remember one of my very first sorties without an instructor sitting in the rear seat of my fighter jet. We were both going through this “last chance” inspection and arming, which can take several minutes depending on how many jets are ahead of you and the number/type of munitions being carried (and whether or not any problems are discovered). On this particular day there was a group of 10-15 people observing the inspections and arming, though they were more interested in the takeoffs that followed. And with good reason: There’s not a bass drop in the world’s entire musical archive, to include the complete Rick Astley discography, that compares to watching fighter jets take off at close range. As the jets in front of us left the arming area and slipped the surly bonds of earth, we filled in the empty spots near the group whereupon they started taking pictures of us and our jets.

I couldn’t help but realize they thought we were super cool, yet they had no idea how hard I was working to not expose my idiocy and cluelessness; I was, figuratively, hanging onto the jet’s tail for dear life and I hadn’t even taken off yet. If they had been able to see the giant red clown nose and clown shoes I felt like I was wearing, they would understand I was anything but cool and collected. They’d wonder how I’d convinced anybody to let me anywhere near such a magnificent machine, let alone pilot it.

As the years passed and my experience in fighters grew, I still had to work to stay ahead of the jet but I shed my metaphoric clown nose and shoes. (Well, mostly shed, anyway; few things can humble you like missing a target or blowing an assignment that leads to the simulated deaths of your buddies.) I had proven myself to my peers over years of flying, hundreds of sorties, combat missions, and multiple assignments, so I knew I belonged.

It’s in the space between assignments where I still feel the struggle to fit in. Moving is a regular occurrence for military families, though we’ve moved more than most. Our three high school graduates lived in 16, 14, and 11 houses/apartments before moving out of the house. When it’s time to move, the military will pay movers to pack up and move your stuff. Each military member is given a weight allowance based on their rank and whether or not they have dependents (not the number of dependents they have, just on whether or not they have any). If the weight allowance is exceeded the military member can be responsible for the excess costs.

My wife and I have five children. Strangely enough, they each wanted their own bed, dresser, clothes, etc; kids these days, amirite? Add in my tools, all our books (last count was over 1200), and my classically-trained musician wife’s collection of instruments (to include an 800-pound baby grand piano), and we blew past our weight allowance lo these many years ago. Fortunately, there’s an option to do all or part of the move yourself, for which the military will reimburse you.

A Do-It-Yourself (DITY) move, now called a Personally Procured Move (PPM) for some unknown reason, can be advantageous to both the military and the member. Generally, the military pays the member 95 percent of what they’d pay a mover (though the percentage does occasionally vary), and the member can choose to do a partial DITY and, for example, be paid only for the luggage in their vehicle, or go nuts and do the entire thing solo (if you, either by yourself or in conjunction with movers, move more than your weight allowance you are only reimbursed up to said allowance). It’s possible to even make some money—potentially a few thousand dollars after expenses and taxes—but it certainly takes way more effort than watching movers do all the work for you.

Several moves ago I realized we were pushing our weight limit. I managed to convince my wife to do a partial DITY by filling an entire moving truck, thereby potentially making a little money while also not suffering charges for going over our weight allowance. We did these one-truck moves on two separate occasions before I thought we should just do the whole thing ourselves. Only after we decided what we would put the money towards did my wife acquiesce to undertaking a full DITY (for reference, on our most recent move we had 24,000 pounds of stuff, many thousands of pounds over our weight limit).

And that’s how I became a poseur truck driver.

Over the course of four moves, I’ve driven a 26-foot Penske truck, towing a car trailer, more than 12,000 miles. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons, been to a lot of truck stops, and spent more time than I care to remember crawling up freeway inclines at school-zone-legal speeds.

My first attempt at truck driving teetered frequently on the ragged edge of disaster. We had movers load up about half of our stuff; we sent the awkwardly shaped and light items with them and saved the dense items to go in our truck. As part of the paperwork, the military gives you an estimate of what they’ll pay you based on the weight estimate you give them. My brain naturally breaks that down into dollars per pound, meaning it’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at heavy furniture, seeing dollar signs, and then overloading the truck.

And so it was that I found myself on a Friday afternoon at a truck scale trying to convince myself it wasn’t a bit deal that the weighmaster just handed me a ticket saying my full truck weighed 24,000 pounds when the driver’s side door of my truck had a notice that read “GVW Under 20,000 pounds.” On my 20-minute drive to our now-empty home, having noticed the truck did possess a curiously high center of gravity, I decided that although the truck was sure to have a safety margin in terms of what it could actually carry relative to what it was rated to carry, a 20-percent margin seemed a little high. Not to mention what weigh stations across eight states would say when I rolled in carrying the equivalent of two extra GBU-31 JDAMs.

A quick search told me that Penske had a larger truck that was available in my area, so I made the reservation to swap trucks. I called the moving company that loaded our military goods and got a couple of their guys to agree to meet me the next day to help transfer our 10,000 pounds of household goods from one truck to the other. I got the two trucks back-to-back and we extended the loading ramp of one truck to the cargo area of the other so we could move items gangplank-style without having to walk down one ramp and up the other. A couple hours later I was a few hundred dollars poorer, but also legal and safely loaded, and thus ready to drive by majestic purple mountains and fruited plains en route to our new home.

For some reason I thought it would be prudent to make the 2000+ mile drive in three days while towing the Jeepster on a car trailer (I don’t think I realized that I wouldn’t be cruising at 80 mph the entire time as I would in a car). Traffic was terrible on day one, and late at night, desperately needing food, I made a rookie move and pulled into a fast food restaurant’s parking lot. There, an inattentive driver forced me to pull into a small section of the parking lot to avoid hitting them. Long story short, I was unable to turn around, and without a spotter to help me back out, it took 20 minutes to work my 55-foot long truck and trailer combo out of the small lot without incident. I skipped getting food in the end and hopped back on the road, patience exhausted and still over an hour from the hotel.

Once I got there, the combination of my cluelessness and tiredness caused me to once again get stuck, this time in a small section of the hotel’s parking lot. The awning over the hotel entrance was lower than the truck’s height, which is why I now scout my prospective hotel parking lots on Google Maps and avoid hotels with crappy parking layouts. As I tried to back my way out, the trailer tire caught a curb and popped the weld on the trailer’s tongue, destroying it. I unloaded the Jeepster, managed to back the barely-held-together trailer into a parking spot where I disconnected it before parking the truck. And collapsing into bed.

The next morning I called Penske, explained the situation, and within a couple hours they brought me a new trailer and used a wrecker to take the other one away (at no charge!). Hitting the road at noon with 800 miles in front of me, the day was miraculously event-free, a layer of delicious guacamole on an otherwise cold, stale poop sandwich of a journey.

I awoke on day three facing 700 miles of occasionally mountainous terrain before reaching my destination. I’d been averaging 8-10 mpg to this point, and there remained one final big climb. Eyeing my gas gauge, I knew I’d need to fill up on diesel before hitting the mountain and I’d seen a sign for a gas station a few miles up the road (I hadn’t yet internalized the rules to only use truck stops and fill up with no less than a quarter-tank remaining). Naturally, the gas station was closed (as in, windows were boarded up and parking lot was chained off) and there wasn’t anything for another 20 miles or so into the mountainous terrain. Without any other option, I crossed my fingers and headed off.

This is a good time to discuss the uncountable hours I’ve spent trying to decode the transmission’s shift algorithm in these Penske trucks. There are plenty of times that it just refuses to downshift while the truck drives uphill, leading me to try all manner of experimentation to please-for-the-love-of-all-things-good-on-this-green-earth get it to drop a gear. My conclusion? Short of coming to a dead stop, ill-advised for lots of reasons, there’s nothing you can do to outsmart Skynet. The transmission will shift when it feels like it.

Over the several-thousand-foot climb, I watched the needle on the gas gauge march inexorably towards empty. In flying, I’ve gotten really proficient at using lobster eyes—one eye on the airspeed and the other eye on the attitude indicator, for example—so simultaneously watching the road and gas gauge was easy. It quickly became apparent that I simply didn’t have enough gas. Some neuron buried deep inside my hippocampus remembered that running an engine out of diesel is way worse that running an engine out of gasoline. Still 5+ miles from the gas station, I pulled to the side of the road, afraid to go any farther on fumes. Head resting on steering wheel, I couldn’t help but think of Han Solo declaring, “No reward is worth this!”

At that dark moment, a bright light burst forth from the gloom: I remembered that not only was I towing a functional, drivable, newly-rebuilt Jeepster, but I had two empty 5-gallon gas cans in the Jeepster’s cargo area. All I had to do was unload the Jeepster, drive it to the gas station, fill up the cans with diesel, reload the Jeepster on the trailer, and like a modern day Ernest Shackleton, I’d rescue myself!

Walking back to unload the Jeepster, I noticed one of the trailer’s two passenger-side tires was shredded. Barely a thin ribbon of tire remained wrapped around the rim, and the other tire on that same side was nigh unto joining its compatriot in crossing over to the big tire mound in the sky.

Somehow, I had cell service. I called Penske (again) and they agreed to send someone to change the tires while I went and fetched some diesel. Not long after I returned, tire guy arrived, changed the two tires on the side of the road. Mad props to him, as the entire process looked miserable. Suddenly I was good to go, and my journey pressed on without further incident all the way to my destination. (Penske saved my bacon, again, at the palatable price of $0.00, again).

This is, I promise, not an ad for Penske. I chose that particular renter on this first big self-move because it had the bigger truck for less money than the other guys. The other times I’ve rented a moving truck since then, it’s always been Penske because of  how well I was treated that first time, even though they haven’t necessarily been the cheapest for subsequent moves.

Fortunately for al parties, the other moving truck rentals I’ve experienced haven’t been nearly as memorable as that first trip. Admittedly, I had forgotten that first trip’s extreme level of heinousness. I just asked my wife how it was that we had continued to move ourselves across the country in light of its unparalleled awfulness. Bursting out laughing, she informed me I was not to ask her that question. She is awesome, infinitely patient, and so much more, but no aspect of packing, loading, and/or unloading moving trucks is appealing to her. Yet she humors me, and at this point the strategy is actually is starting to make some financial sense now that we know what we’re doing (not to mention how hard it was to get movers this summer).

The only other real truck issue we’ve had was during this summer’s move. In the absolute middle of nowhere, roughly 75 percent of the way through the first day’s drive, and with my wife caravanning behind me in the LX470 towing our trailer, I got a “Coolant level low” caution in my Penske. The truck dropped into limp mode, 25 miles away from any sign of civilization. With a top speed of about 50 mph (and a low of a scary 17 mph going up one particularly steep grade), we staggered to the first exit and pulled into a truck stop; I kept one of my lobster eyes on the temp gauge the entire time and it never budged (thankfully). I called Penske during the limping drive, got into the call-back cue, and my phone rang as we arrived at said truck stop. Penske offered to send somebody, and it would take an hour or so. Figuring my hack mechanic skills wouldn’t do me any good troubleshooting a modern diesel engine, I didn’t even bother opening the hood to see what was up. About an hour later the mechanic showed up, opened the hood, looked at the coolant reservoir, saw it was missing its lid and the coolant level was below the sensor, and said something to the effect of, “That’s your problem right there.”

I made the split second decision to not tell him that I write about cars as a side job.

He had a lid for the reservoir at his shop, nearby. Roughly twenty minutes later, reservoir filled and cap replaced, we were ready to hit the road again.

The truck stop, I noticed before we left, had a certified truck scale. (Weight tickets, full and empty, must be provided in order to receive reimbursement from the government for the move.) Knowing the Lexus and its trailer still needed to be weighed full of boxes, my wife went to take care of it. When she went inside to get the ticket, before she could say a word, the lady behind the counter looked at her and asked, “You need a weight ticket? Military move?” Stunned, my wife said that’s exactly what she needed. How did the lady know it was a military move, with no base within 100 miles of that truck stop? Looking around a little furtively, the lady told my wife, “You don’t look like a trucker and you don’t smell like a trucker.” At a loss for words, my wife thanked her, took the ticket, and drove back to the Penske.

I have no doubt the friendly mechanic, as well, took one look at me upon his arrival and knew I was no trucker.

In the years since I graduated from pilot training, my confidence in maneuvering massive machines loaded for bear has grown. I no longer carry my clown nose and shoes to the jet with the rest of my flight gear. But when I drive a 26-foot moving truck towing a car trailer, the clown nose and shoes are in the cab with me, if not on full display. I can’t say I know what a trucker looks like or smells like, but those who do sure can sniff out the pretenders.

They’re gracious, though. Truckers on the road and at stops have given poseur me and my Penske room to merge when I’ve needed it, and not yelled at me when I’ve failed to pull forward after filling the truck with diesel. For that, and for all the stuff truckers have delivered either to my house or the store from whence I bought it, I tip my hat. Thank you, and I wish to bless your travels with low diesel prices, short shower lines, and shallow inclines!

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Across the digital world, most published content is bite-size, designed for quick consumption. Still, deeper stories have a place—to share the breadth of an experience, explore a corner of history, or ponder a question that truly engages the goopy mass between your ears. Pour your beverage of choice and join us each day this week for a Great Read. Want more? Have suggestions? Let us know what you think in the comments or by email: editor@hagerty.com

Off-road exploration is having a moment. Blame the pandemic, our deteriorating national discourse, that ad for tactical underwear you saw the other day—whatever the reason, we now have a hankerin’ for anywhere else, and we want to get there behind the wheel.

Social media and advertising have helped sway this narrative, selling a specific image of adventure. If you believe the hype, you can’t even trundle down the nearest fire road without a dedicated 4×4 lugging five figures of overland gear. The cool kids are all running 37-inch tires, more lighting than a football stadium, a roof tent, and heavy-duty bumpers. Carmakers have been trending toward dirt for almost a decade now, chasing what people want. What’s left in the wake is a mixed bag: We have a new Ford Bronco, but we also have a slew of half-baked cosmetic packages tacked onto crossovers with no business on a trail.

Perhaps the oddest result: A factory-built, warranty-equipped minivan with a lift kit. The Toyota Sienna Woodland Edition rides sixth-tenths of an inch higher than stock, 6.9 inches of ground clearance to the base Sienna’s 6.3. The van wears no other real concessions to off-road duty. All four wheels see power through a hybrid system, two electric motors and a CVT helping a wheezy, 2.5-liter four. Toyota says the tow bar out back can pull 3500 pounds. Second-row captain’s chairs are standard, and the whole thing makes a combined 245 hp. For just $46,715, this mutant between worlds can be yours.

Naturally, we decided to call Toyota’s bluff and take this thing to the American West. Where all the overlanders, van-lifers, and Jeep-thing-you-won’t-understanders go for ad shoots and social feeds. Into a vehicle built mostly for children we piled three grown men, some camping gear, and too many snacks. Then we headed for Nevada’s Great Basin National Park—like a lifted minivan, a large and mysterious thing totally apart from civilized reality.

Questions were asked along the way: What does adventure mean, anyway? Is it really an off-road rig if it can’t flatten mountains? And why is your author just now learning about the glory of Mango HiChews?

Lessons were learned, and none of them would have come at the wheel of a Jeep. All told, the trip wasn’t about a lifted van so much as how far you can go when you stop worrying about how to get there.

***

Monday, May 16, 11:00 a.m. PST

In the arrivals lane of the Las Vegas airport, the Sienna’s doors and liftgate opened in unison, like a peacock in full fan. Senior editor Brandan Gillogly, our trip’s photographer, hopped out of the driver’s seat as my friend Sam and I threw our bags into the trunk. I’ve known Sam for years and invited him along—mention questionable adventure, he immediately asks when and where. We’d packed as light as we dared, but even cheap outdoor living requires a fair bit of gear. The Sienna swallowed it all—two large bags, two small suitcases, backpacks, groceries—without so much as a readjusted seat.

Great Basin sits some five hours northeast of the Vegas Strip. The journey spans desert valley crossings best measured in whole songs on the radio. The only task worth pursuing along the way is reducing your ETA—no apexes to clip, no hills to climb, just a straight shot and a heavy foot.

Brandan had picked the van up from Toyota’s Los Angeles media fleet and driven into Vegas the day before. Because he is our staff’s resident weird-snack connoisseur and a professional bad influence, he had filled the Sienna’s center console with enough weird candy to choke a horse. (“We’re not playin’ around here, fellas—this is a serious ordeal.”)

Brandan is more than six feet tall, with shoulder-length hair, a former editor at Hot Rod. We call him Hot Rod Jesus. Or sometimes just, “Jesus, Brandan.”

Wrappers piled up on the floor. Steely Dan blared from the speakers. Seats reclined, comfy and buzzed, we developed a plan: Four days in the desert. In a minivan. Getting lost.

That was the end of the plan.

Three hundred miles later, the park’s mountain range crescendoed to the right. Every eye in the van settled on the dirt roads snaking up those hills. There were jokes about two-tracking the Toyota, and then, because adult males hopped up on candy are adult males hopped up on candy, they stopped being jokes. We took a pause and headed for camp.

***

Monday, May 16, 4:00 p.m. PST

Sacramento Pass BLM Campground sits just north of the park, off Nevada’s Highway 50, a stretch of pavement so desolate, Life magazine once labeled it The Loneliest Road in America. As with so much of the land west of the Rockies, overnight stays at that campground are free.

Road trips in certain cars make you think a certain way. In a minivan, for me, I mostly felt like a kid, and kids have no restraint. Maybe it was the novelty of Gillogly’s candy overload. Nauseous from an unholy combination of Nerds Rope and Fruity Pebble Rice Krispies treats, I began to scope out a campsite. A dry gully ran along the area’s lone road. On the other side, nestled between a pair of hills, was a clearing just big enough for a minivan and a few small tents.

Gillogly went serious. “No time like the present to see what a half-inch lift kit is good for.” In the interest of journalism, I inched the Sienna over the first ruts in the gully, lining up the tamest path possible. The suspension up-and-down hung a wheel in the air for an instant as the driveline decided where to send power. I flinched, expecting an underbody crunch, but it never came.

Triumphant, I flung open the van’s doors open, inhaling the view. We set about erecting tents, pretending like we were excited to get a bunch of awful outdoor sleep on what was really just an angled gravel pit.

I glanced over at Sam. He is an athletic person who takes care of his body. The first five hours of the trip, he had been chipper. His body language now said other things, however, and most of those things suggested he was slowly resigning himself to several days of internal and external abuse.

“Dumb fun, ain’t it?”

Sam sighed the sigh of a man who really does not want to tell an extremely sugared old friend to shut up. “Please just hold the tent pole still.”

Monday, May 16, 6:30 p.m. PST

Gillogly had the bit in his teeth. There was a trail at the far end of the campground. “What’s a little two-track to a machine that’s already ventured off-piste?” he said.

The answer appeared about 100 yards in: Far more than what you’re built to handle, bud. Our confidence evaporated as the ground abruptly morphed from uneven dirt to miniature rock garden. The Toyota thumped its tow bar on one giant rock and barely cleared its front fascia on another—not stuck, but clearly not going any further. I put the van into a seven-point turn, trying to escape. That didn’t work. Backing up slowly and carefully was the only way out.

Humbled, we rolled back to our tents. Then, hot dogs on the fire for dinner. Some parts of camping are always exactly what you expect, and what you expect is pretty great.

Tuesday, May 17, 11:00 a.m. PST

In 2021, nearly 300 million people visited one of the 423 sites in America’s national park system. Of that figure, a mere 144,000 made the trek out to Great Basin. It’s easy to see why; the nearest major airport, Salt Lake City, is still four hours by car. Some of the more popular western parks—Yosemite, Olympic, Rocky Mountain—are less than two hours from a big airport. They regularly see attendance in the millions.

Two days in, we opted to roam like most people do in these environments: drive a national park’s main byway, then stop off for a bit of low-consequence hiking to feel like we did something.

A few miles into a hike that carried us past two gorgeous alpine lakes, a sign signaled the chance to chase up another peak, toward a grove of bristlecone pines. This gnarled tree species is one of the oldest non-clonal (one plant per root system) organisms on the planet, fantastically overbuilt to survive the harsh climate of the Great Basin area, where temperatures swing wildly. I am not overbuilt, but I like hiking, so we gave it a shot.

The trail turned out to be more of a goat path, hung off the side of a mountain and tapped into a few feet of snow. Jokes about loose footing flowed freely, but then the air grew silent, punctuated only by soft cursing and the sound of sliding feet. After three dozen falls, sudden posture changes, and moments where whole legs disappeared in deep snow, Sam, leading the way, turned back to Brandan and I. He looked exasperated.

“Anyone having fun?”

Brandan, red in the face, answered. Between deep breaths.

“Not even. A little. Bit.”

Laughter all around. I thought of the Toyota, almost stuck on that dinky camp trail a quarter-mile from our tents. Oil pan nearly cracked on the rocks, some guys without real hiking gear breaking their legs in deep snow, what’s the difference? There’s a thin line between stupid and seeing what you can get away with.

“Thinking we call this one a draw and about-face,” Sam said.

“Way ahead of you,” muttered Brandan. By the time I turned to look, he had already reversed up the trail, bee-lining for the van.

Tuesday, May 17, 3:00 p.m. PST

As vast as Great Basin is above ground, a main attraction lies below. The Lehman Caves span several miles, a subterranean maze formed over thousands of years. The park rangers offer cave tours every hour. We lined up with a small group of tourists and walked underground, where our guide told us that, despite being named after a local prospector in the 1880s, the caves were originally used by Native Americans as a burial ground. (“Absalom Lehman was simply the first one to charge admission,” he cracked.)

It was all damp, dark, and occasionally cramped. A fine pressure cooker for anyone brave enough to bring their kids, and our tour group had a few. Halfway through the cave, a little one behind me reached his breaking point. When it became clear the boy’s meltdown was serious, the family turned around, bolting for the exit.

At the end of the tour, blinking back daylight in the parking lot, I saw the kid again. He was still crying, only now his flustered father was trying to fold him through the narrow rear door of a Jeep Gladiator. The dad wasn’t having much success. The Jeep carried all the signs of a serious overlanding rig—tires, roof tent, bumpers, lights. Built for a job.

We ambled toward the minivan. As the Toyota’s doors slid closed, a thought escaped my head.

“Should we ask if he wants to trade?”

Tuesday, May 17, 5:30 p.m. PST

There is a bar in the front office of the Whispering Elms Motel & RV park in Baker, Nevada, population 36. It’s the type of place you find only in small towns, where everyone either knows everyone already or will know them five minutes after walking into the room. The bartender slings beer on draft or mixed cocktails. You can also buy a frozen pizza, which you are then responsible for cooking in a small oven that lives on a table at the back of the bar. The walls hold pictures of people who have stopped in on their way to somewhere else. Music videos play on a small TV, but the sound from the speakers is actually a YouTube playlist of old country hits from the bartender’s computer.

That man was equal parts gruff and warm, always willing to pour but slow with conversation. Our trio took up a table in the corner, discussing the day, while a few park guests hooted and hollered at the bar. In the lot outside, the Sienna sat between an older Silverado and a Jeep. All three vehicles wore a thick layer of dust.

At the bar, somebody piped up in surprise: “Who’s running around here in a minivan?”

“We are,” I replied. “Staying north of town at Sacramento Pass. Went off-roading the other night! Didn’t go so well, but what can you do?”

“Pick a better vehicle? Why a minivan?”

The question hung in the air. I simply shrugged and passed my credit card over the bar, to close out.

Wednesday, May 18, 10:00 a.m. PST

Against logic, we went off-road again. Maybe it was Brandan’s novelty candy. You meet things in the outdoors that break your thinking. (What is the wild beast Mango HiChew? What does it want from us? Why could I not stop eating them?)

Lexington Arch, a highlight in Great Basin’s southern half, lies at the end of a road that the park map marks as high-clearance 4-wheel-drive. Which the Sienna was not, of course, but then, the first bit was easy, just graded gravel. The Toyota happily loped a few miles into the bush, past the ruins of an old shack and some pull-offs for dispersed camping.

The road dove into a dry creek bed shortly after. The map’s markings hadn’t lied, but I had begun to enjoy seeing how far we could get. There was a brief pause where the three of us debated what would happen when rock met rocker panel. Then we waved the white flag again and turned around. Back on the park’s main drag, we found a lumpy road running west toward the hills, through open pasture. The Toyota humped and flopped along, faster with each mile. Somewhere in the Sienna’s wiring harness, a computer scurried through data, frantically trying to make sense of a few screaming stability-control sensors. (In typical Toyota practice, the Sienna’s ESC system can’t be fully disabled.)

We charged on like that for miles, over hills and down into a valley along another creek. A wry smile crept across my face. Then little bouts of laughter as I tried to Scandinavian-flick a minivan through fast left-handers.

I swear, the Toyota even seemed to like it.

Disclaimer: It’s also entirely possible I was simply out of my mind in the middle of a very hot desert and blinking back the corn-syrup sweats in a lifted Toyota mom van that woke up one day and wasn’t in the Kansas school drop-off line any more.

Whatever. Adventure is what you make it. All I really remember is that my teeth hurt.

We eventually reached a pull-off marking the start of another long hiking trail. Dust hung in the air as we climbed out. The hike ascended a hillside, worming through clumps of scraggly desert foliage before turning hard left and opening to a valley between two mountains. The brush gave way to a grove of quaking aspens that pulled your eyes to the horizon. The latter seemed to stretch for a hundred arid miles before climbing a far-flung set of peaks and vaulting off into blue sky.

“I’ll take it,” Sam said, between long pulls from his water bottle.

Thursday, May 19, 3:00 a.m. PST

Great Basin National Park is one of just 42 certified International Dark Sky Parks and sanctuaries in the lower 48. Aside from Baker to the east, civilization has almost no footprint in these lands. No people means no light pollution. Each night, the stars take center stage as a cosmic glitter bomb erupts across the sky.

I had seen a sky like that only once before, near Moab, Utah, in my 1998 Mitsubishi Montero. I had just bought the truck and was driving home to Michigan. That trip occupied a large portion of my brain Thursday night, as I tried to sleep in that campsite, in that tent, on those rocks, near that van.

Overlanding forums and books are filled with the idea of “fitness for purpose.” The Montero would have made quick work of just about everything we encountered in the Sienna. It makes sense, to a point. Assuming you have a good idea of which purpose you’re getting fit for.

Dinner had been a concoction of Spam seasoned with cajun spices, assembled from the shelves of a nearby gas station. On top of that were too many Mango HiChews and some lukewarm lager. As that mess began to run up and down my esophagus, I hoisted myself out of the tent, hoping to catch the sky showing off.

Instead of an arm of the Milky Way, I was greeted by a full moon, the desert doused in iridescent blue light. The hills behind us cast long shadows through the creek bed. Great Basin’s peaks sat in the distance, capped with the last gasps of winter snow, glowing like dull neon. The Sienna, filthy, sat dormant by the fire pit we’d huddled around just hours earlier.

In some other lifetime, I might have cared what we were driving.

I zipped the tent shut and tried to get comfortable once more. Only this time, there was a smile on my face.

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The post How minivan overlanding fed my soul appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Tom Cotter, known for his treasure-hunting exploits through the Barn Find Hunter YouTube series and as the author of multiple automotive books, has grown accustomed to taking the road less traveled. This time around, Cotter and photographer/co-pilot Michael Alan Ross pushed that idea to the limit—and found it deeply rewarding.

“I have wanderlust. I love to travel, and I especially love to drive,” Cotter says. “I can’t sit on a bus with a tour guide; I’d rather be self-guided. I love maps, but a map only tells you how to get there, it doesn’t tell you where to go. You have to figure that out.”

Cotter and Ross recently drove a new four-door Ford Bronco (in Outer Banks trim), towing a Airstream Basecamp 16X camper trailer, from Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska. The most direct route would have been about 7000 miles, but Cotter and Ross added nearly 2000 to that number. Along the way they managed to see 17 states, British Colombia, and the Yukon Territory. “It would have been 16 states,” Cotter says, “but we were only three miles from Arkansas, so we decided we had to do it.” Cotter has now visited all 50 states; Ross just needs to see Louisiana to match that total.

While the 8881-mile road trip naturally offered a visual parade of scenery and automobiles, Cotter says the focus of the upcoming book that documents the trip, America’s Greatest Road Trip (set for a fall 2023 release by Motorbooks), will be about the overall adventure of travel and the people that he and Ross met along the way. The key to finding both ingredients, Cotter says, was getting off the interstate.

“We took two-lane roads all the way—no interstates, no cities. You see real America by taking the two-lane roads,” he says. “I’ve come to the conclusion that when you take an interstate, every exit is the same. The same gas stations, the same stores—all generic. But if you get off the interstate and take two-lane roads, you see Main Street America. You experience what real America is like.

“It’s about the people you meet—the waitress in Alabama, the cowboy in Montana, the German couple on a four-year trip around the world, the Israeli driving a BMW motorcycle to Deadhorse, the man walking with his dog from Argentina to Deadhorse, the mother and son riding their bicycles from Billings, Montana. No one on that road was there by accident. I was so happy to sit down with those people and have the opportunity to tell their stories. I’m happy to report there is a lot more out there that unites us than divides us.”

Cotter said he’d been thinking about a trip of this magnitude for years. And although classic vehicles have been at the center of his adventures in the past, he decided to make an exception this time around.

“At first I thought about taking this trip in a vintage car or buying one in Florida and selling it in Deadhorse, but then the trip would be more about the car and less about the people,” he says. “So, I thought, what if I took the car out of the equation? I decided to drive something trustworthy and reliable, and I’m glad I did. The Bronco performed beautifully—and the Airstream was fantastic. So this is not a car book, it’s a road-trip book. It has cars in it, because I wanted to be true to my Barn Find Hunter roots, but it’s not about that, it’s about the adventure.”

With that in mind, Cotter and Ross—who accepted pledges to help Vintage Racers for Rescues, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit foundation that helps raise money for an animal rescue shelter—set off from Key West in mid-May “with no deadline or agenda” while driving to Alaska’s northernmost city.

“At a campground somebody would usually ask, ‘Where are you going today?’ And I’d say, ‘I don’t know. We’ll know when we get there,’” Cotter says. “The plan was to meet people off the grid and just see where the wind blew us. It could have taken two weeks, it could have taken four weeks, it could have taken two months … we just didn’t know. It was like when we were kids and we’d meet up on bikes and ask, ‘What do you want to do today?’ Every day was a new adventure.”

There was, however, some déjà vu—at least for Ross, who is such a huge contributor to Cotter’s book writing that Tom refers to him as his co-author.

“This is our sixth book together, so we know each other well and work well together,” Ross says. “In situations like this, my job is to just follow Tom around like a fly. I’m documenting where he goes and what he does and what he sees. I shot 11,544 images, and they’ll use 200–250.

“You never know what Tom’s going to latch onto or what will make it into the book, and you can’t ever say, ‘Can you go back and do that again?’ So you shoot everything—and even then I still miss stuff sometimes. Every day starts at the crack of dawn and goes until the lights are out. Since I also do the social media when we travel, and I have a lot of other [tasks to do] too, Tom definitely gets more sleep on these trips than I do.”

Since for much of the trip the two would be “boondocking it,” as Ross calls it, he knew that electricity would be an issue. So he bought a heavy duty River Mobile Power Station, which not only recharged their batteries every day, it also gave Cotter the opportunity to use his computer while Ross was driving. “So Tom could transcribe the notes that he’d just taken and work on his manuscript. I think that was super helpful because his notes were fresh.”

It was definitely helpful. Cotter has already completed 32,000 words of a 50,000-word manuscript. “I’m about three months ahead,” he says.

Cotter and Ross drove from mid-May to mid-June, parked the Bronco and the trailer in a friend’s barn outside Seattle while they went home for a month, and then returned in mid-July to drive the rest of the way. They reached Deadhorse on August 4.

“We spent days and days driving though British Columbia and the Yukon,” Cotter says. “We just couldn’t get over how beautiful it was. I’d go back there again in a heartbeat.”

Allowing his true Barn Finder Hunter persona to come out, he adds, “Once you get into those remote regions, there are lots and lots of old cars. When they break down, there’s no good way of getting them out of there, so they just park them out back. If you want to look for barn finds, British Columbia and the Yukon are great places to do that.”

Cotter was also reminded that the world is a small place. “When I was interviewing the mother and son riding their bikes, we were in Pink Mountain, British Columbia, which claims it has a population of 100 people and 1000 bison. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere, and a guy on a Harley pulls up. After a few minutes he walks over and says, ‘You’re the Barn Find Hunter! I recognized your voice. I watch your show with my son’ … Then another guy walks over, says he watches the show, and asks, ‘You want to see my Camaro?’ It was a really wonderful experience. I was blown away.”

In addition to meeting interesting people, Cotter and Ross saw plenty of wildlife along the way, including bison, muskoxen, elk, moose, eagles, antelope, grizzly bears, and black bears. “You quickly realize this is their world and we’re just visiting,” Cotter says.

Fuel prices ranged from $3.79 a gallon in the southern states to $9.07 a gallon in Deadhorse. “Of course, we only had to pay that once to fill the tank at the end.”

“When you reach the end of the road, there’s this great sense of, ‘We did it,’” Cotter says. “We started at the southern most point on US-1—if you go any farther south you’re in Cuba. And when you reach Deadhorse you can’t drive any farther unless you go into the ocean and on to Russia. I swam in the Gulf [of Mexico], so I wanted to swim in the Arctic Ocean, and I did it. It was like 48 degrees. I joined the Polar Bear Club. I think that was greatest accomplishment.”

Ross says: “This experience was filled with non-stop visual inspiration. From the people we met to the incredible vistas along the way. Just amazing stories, incredible people. It’s mind-blowing what you find if you take the time to look.”

As proof of that, Cotter tells a story about Malta, Montana, located 55 miles south of the Canadian border. “You can see that what was once a thriving little town is kind of a shell of its former self. It looks forgotten,” he says. “I said, ‘Man, if I grew up in this town I’d leave as soon as I was 18 and never look back.’” But then he met some of the residents, and one of them offered to give him a glimpse of life there.

“He brings out a horse for me to ride. I said, ‘I don’t ride horses,’ and he said, ‘You do now.’ Before I knew it, I was riding a horse, wearing my Davidson College sweatshirt, Top Siders, and a ball cap. These people are all cowboys, and they’re rounding up cattle … branding them, tagging them, vaccinating them … Everyone was there; they even hired the local football team to help. It was an all-day activity, and they cooked out and everyone ate together. Then they made plans to do it again at someone else’s place. It was amazing to see.

“I met a guy whose Norwegian ancestors had staked their claim there, and each generation after them farmed the land. While growing up, he wanted to do his own thing, so he went away to college and started a career, but he said he just had to come back. He missed the place … It really set my bearings straight and made me rethink this—just 24 hours earlier I thought people couldn’t get away from there fast enough, then I meet these people who didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“It’s a magical place, and that was one of the most memorable days of my life. It gave me a different perspective. And I never would have experienced it if I hadn’t taken a two-lane road. That’s what this trip was all about.”

The post Tom Cotter’s 8800-mile road trip to find Main Street America appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The evening before my flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, my phone involuntarily updated and, in the process, wiped out thousands of photos. Numerous digitally preserved memories, scrubbed clean, all at once. Everything is temporary.

Should I have backed up my cell shots to the cloud? Absolutely. Did I? No. For some reason or another, the typically automatic backup process hadn’t triggered for about a month. By the time Cameron’s No Good, Very Bad iPhone Photo Massacre of 2022 (so named in the textbooks of future generations) struck, it was too late. Troubled as I was, there was no time to mourn; more pressing was the matter of packing enough clean underwear for a three-day road trip in my boss’s 1986 Ford Mustang GT.

The plan: Meet editor-in-chief Larry Webster and his son down in the Queen City. Spend an evening at Bowman Gray Stadium watching stockers circle one of America’s oldest—and most unique—short tracks. Drive the Fox-body home to Webster’s house, while he flew back to catch a meeting.

Saturday night, the day of the race, it rained. A torrential downpour soaked Bowman Gray’s grounds, washing away all hope for competition that evening. Imagine traveling to the Louvre only to find it closed because the sprinkler system had gone off. Despite the setback, we stuck to the plan. Webster handed me the keys to his Mustang that night. I would ride at dawn.

Ford unveiled its third generation Mustang in 1978. Lighter, shorter, and with much less chrome, the pony car riding on Ford’s new Fox platform was a radical departure from any previous Mustang. “Put everything you’ve learned about Mustangs into the Inactive file,” wrote Car and Driver in a review of the 1979 model.

The Mustang—along with its equally-fresh stablemates, the Fiesta, and Fairmont—received favorable grades from reviewers following its transformation. Ford had finally trimmed the fat and the new fighter was leaner and more nimble. By 1986, the Fox body generation was coming into its own. The Blue Oval had also ditched the carburetor in its legacy sports car, in favor of fuel injection. Another big boon was the GT trim that supplanted the short-lived Cobra Mustang. The Mustang GT’s 302-cubic-inch V-8, which was the most powerful engine in the 1979 model with 140 horsepower, now pushed past 200 and the venerable ’86 could lay down sub-15-second quarter-mile times.

Across the aisle, Mustang had stiff competition in the Camaro, which was experiencing a similar glow-up in the mid-1980s. Car and Driver pitted the two against one another in a performance test at California’s Willow Springs road course. Their conclusion: “Our overall feeling is that the 5.7-liter Camaro is more fun for blowing sludge out of your brain on a deserted two-lane, but the Mustang is the better all-around automobile. In all but the wildest maneuvers, it’s more coordinated, more comfortable, and more poised—in other words, a nicer car to live with.”

I left Winston-Salem early. The long commute back north to my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, began with clear roads and clear skies. After a couple hours in the car, tossing through the gradual twists of Highway 89, I had to agree with that contemporary assessment, which has aged well. Less accurate is this bit of hyperbole from the same article: “Today, both the Camaro and the Mustang have enough power under their hoods to light a small city.” Imagine time-traveling back to ’86 with today’s 460-horsepower Mustang GT.

The Fox can still light up its driver, thanks to that engine. The deep growl from the set of Flowmasters out back helps. (And masks the creak of ’80s plastic.) As I shuffled through the gears of the Borg-Warner five-speed, leaving waves of V-8 noise in my wake, it certainly felt like I was setting land-speed records.

I stopped for lunch in Galax, Virginia. (The city’s intergalactic-sounding name comes from Galax urceolata, a leafy plant found throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains.) Galax’s primary industry is furniture, which means a turn down any side street often yields a pile of prepped lumber stacked stories high. The downtown is rather quaint, punctuated by small businesses like Canton Restaurant.

Canton has been a staple of Galax since the Seventies. It’s owned by a couple who divide and conquer when it comes to orders and food prep, and the restaurant is one of several Chinese-cuisine establishments owned by the family throughout the United States. I arrived on Sunday, sharing the dining room with the church crowd. As families discussed the local happenings and ran through the upcoming soccer practices and appointments for their children, I took note of a giant fish in a tank on the other side of the room. He didn’t have a name, the owner said, but he was a 13-year-old dragon fish. I asked how long dragon fish live. “I don’t know. You never know. They’re just like people.”

While waiting for a plate of chicken, I searched for a place to stay along my wandering route back to Michigan. I figured a couple hours more in the Mustang would be a great way to get more acquainted and close out the first day. Looking at the map, I found southern Virginia and the town of Pulaski. Another cool name. Once there, I located the Jackson Park Inn—a 1920s grocery warehouse renovated to house weary travelers such as myself.

Pulaski is nestled against Virginia’s portion of the Appalachians and is situated just a few clicks southwest of Roanoke. According to an ornate sign in its cute downtown, Pulaski sprang up at the coming of the railroad. Initially called Martin’s Tank, the town was renamed after Polish nobleman Casimir Pulaski. “The Father of the American Cavalry,” Pulaski saved George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

According to the National Library, “The British caught Washington in a precarious position with a clever flanking maneuver. It appeared that the Americans might be routed and Washington captured, but Pulaski—possessing no rank—asked Washington to give him temporary command of some cavalry. Washington assented and Pulaski skillfully led a counterattack, helping delay the British enough for the Continental Army to retreat and regroup.” Casimir was given chief command of the American Light Dragoons.

Monday morning, I made like a dragoon and rode my pony out of Pulaski. The new-for-’86 sequential port fuel injection, which provides one injector per cylinder, keeps throttle response lively. The Mustang and I bounded from stoplight-to-stoplight, finding an easy rhythm. I was a pair of taillights and Ford mud flaps.

I planned for this day to be pretty cut and dry. Once I was clear of the Appalachians, I completed a four-hour rush north along I-77, so that I could reach Pennsboro Speedway in West Virginia before sunset. Inspired by an episode of NBC’s Lost Speedways, where Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his cohost visit the famous abandoned race track, I decided to indulge my own proclivities for automotive archeology and pay a visit.

I-77, despite its status as an interstate highway, is an excellent ribbon of pavement for a road trip. Its somewhat dramatic curves and length connecting Virginia and West Virginia remind me of Pennsylvania’s I-80—a tourist’s expressway. There’s plenty of roadside beauty, especially through the Mountaineer State’s undulating countryside, and traffic hustles along fast enough to cover solid distance in a day of driving. I relished each opportunity to pass and watch the needle dive toward the speedometer’s 85-mile-per-hour terminus.

Time in the Mustang allowed me to reflect on the importance of those iPhone photos lost. Why did it sting? I ate the food, I watched the sunset, I did the thing. Yet there was comfort in saving those moments in a tiny black box. Why? Shouldn’t the memories in my own head be enough? Would losing some of them be so bad?

On my way up to the track, I passed a funeral procession with a Red Bull van bringing up the rear. I wondered if it was it part of the motorcade, giving the departed wings. Drive long enough by yourself and truly stupid thoughts like that start to sound witty.

Unlike today’s speedways, the Pennsboro is shaped like an imperfect egg, which would be fine if horses were still racing there like they did from 1887 until the 1960s. Even after years over overgrowth, you can still see the variances in banking, width, and turn radius. Eventually, auto racing took over the venue as far-flung speed freaks flocked to watch dirt all-stars battle for checkered flags. “The Hillbilly Hundred” and “The Dirt Track World Championship” garnered national attention. Now, the track lies dormant, year-round.

By the time I arrived at the old fairgrounds, the sun was low, casting an eerily beautiful glow across the field where the track once stood. As if it was a sign from the still-angered racing gods, a black cloud moved in over the sun the moment I set foot on the property, and with it came a sprinkling of rain. I walked the track, undeterred, imagining what it would’ve been like to be a fan—or even a driver—at Pennsboro. A river runs through the track and mid-corner bridges used to usher cars over the water. The front stretch buts up next to a knoll where fans would dig their seats into the soft hillside. Some of the structures like the ticketing booth, the Skoal Tobacco sign, and the bridge guardrails still stand. They aid in creating a mental picture of how Pennsboro looked in all of its glory. Tracks with this kind of character don’t get built anymore.

The rain picked up, pelting the vestiges of the old speedway, so I hopped back in the Mustang and took off for Marietta, Ohio. I planned to stay at the Lafayette Hotel on Webster’s recommendation. “The place floods a bunch because it’s right on the Ohio River,” he said. “Old and musty. It’s great.”

Indeed, Lafayette smelled like grandmother’s basement and was just as cozy. I took the cabin room, which was the size of a water closet and featured ornate, hand-carved wooden furniture as well as oxblood tile in the bathroom. At the hotel bar I met Steve Simpson, an engineer from Milford, Michigan, who helped develop the 1984 Corvette. Much like the Fox-body Mustang, the Corvette enjoyed dramatic improvement throughout the ’80s; by the time the ZR-1 rolled out in 1990, the C4 Vette was a dagger.

Simpson and his group of boomer buddies had just retired from a day of riding the curves of Southeast Ohio. They were now bellied up to a bar, trading stories about love and loss. “Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while,” said one of Simpson’s buddies, showing the group an iPhone photo of a love interest. Sleep that night, which doves cooing in eaves outside my window helped invite, felt well-earned.

Tuesday—my final day in the Mustang. I liked it enough to not care that it burned oil and refused to charge my phone through the cigarette lighter. I planned to visit the Peoples Mortuary Museum in the morning, but after dialing up the number on the back of the pamphlet, I was informed that the museum was closed on Mondays. Even death needs a day off.

I traveled north on I-77. Rather than make a highway haul like I had done the day before, I took an impromptu exit and tore off into the wealth of tight corners and steep drops. The Mustang is poised on the road, especially for its age. The short wheelbase and humble track width were ideal for the squirming roads of Southeast Ohio. The rear end gently pivots through long corners and the body roll is relatively minimal. From the driver’s seat, the car feels like a compact by today’s standards. Compared to this old Fox, a 2022 Mustang is a leviathan.

I arrived home that evening, having covered more than 700 miles from Winston-Salem to Ann Arbor. The wound of losing all those photos was healing over. I had made a bounty of new memories, anyway. Will what my camera captured present the same way when I come back to this webpage in a decade? Two decades? Definitely not. But there’s no forgetting what I saw over the hood of that Fox-body, windows down and twin pipes roaring.

The post Foxtrot: Winding roads, a giant fish, and an ’86 Mustang appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Perhaps classic Mini owner and Hagerty Community user ZZZPR said it best. There’s truly “something different about the camaraderie among Mini owners … [I] can’t really put my finger on it, but it’s not the same as with Camaros, Mustangs, Corvettes, Challengers, and all the other more common enthusiast cars.”

There’s no better example of this collaborative, high-spirited automotive culture than Mini Takes the States (MTTS), a multi-state rally in which the modern Mini community unite, bond, and share their often unique. It started innocently enough in 2006, when Mini USA kicked off the event as a way to celebrate the introduction of the first, hardcore GP edition of its high-performance John Cooper Works model. The gathering must have had a positive impact, because MTTS turned into a biennial event. The route is different with each running, which means die-hard Mini fans can return every other year and savor a whole-new experience with friends old and new from across the country.

I’ve followed MTTS for years now, albeit from afar in my days working at a franchised dealership. We’d promote the heck out of it on social media for target customers and brand loyalists alike, and it was always well received. But MTTS for 2022 hit a little different, since the pandemic forced organizers to cancel the 2020 road trip. I was fortunate enough to attend this year’s proceedings, on Mini USA’s dime, as member of the media. The catharsis that came from the satisfaction of a palpable, protracted desire for wanderlust made this event feel truly special.

MTTS 2022 started in Burlington, Vermont, this year. Drivers arrived on July 9 and made their way down the East Cost to Spartanburg, South Carolina over the course of eight days. My first experience was parking amongst the Mini faithful came on the famous “tricky triangle” of Pocono Raceway, where I joined the MTTS caravan on the trip’s third leg. The morning gathering included breakfast, live music, contests, and photo booths for all participants to enjoy. I got right into the mix with MTTS’s exuberant owner community, piloting both a manual transmission Resolute Edition and the top-tier John Cooper Works during my drive. Relatively firm suspension, quick reflexes, and punchy turbo engines mean all new Minis are pretty fun to drive, provided you can tolerate the lack of Android Auto on these long road trips. No matter—with CarPlay in tow and another member of automotive media as my co-pilot, we headed out in the 2022 John Cooper Works (JCW) to start our journey.

The roads on this well-curated path were well-suited to Minis, with their consistently taut suspensions and quick reflexes. Both the JCW and the Resolute I drove were an absolute blast during corner carving. On the flip side, Minis aren’t usually known for a buttery-smooth ride. Yet even the stiffly sprung JCW was a pleasant highway partner. The Harman Kardon audio system faithfully reproduced most frequencies with ease, while seat comfort proved far more pleasant in practice than the firm padding initially promised. Kudos to the Resolute Edition’s bespoke houndstooth seat fabric, which protected backsides from the summer heat better than the JCW’s all-leather affair. Both models could, however, benefit from a slightly less rubbery manual shifter and smoother, more progressive clutch pedal engagement.

And, in those moments where temptation gets the better of you on public roads, Mini’s traction control and stability nannies do a good job ensuring front-wheel drive torque steer is a non-issue, even with the JCW’s robust 228 horsepower. It takes a lot of ham-fisted actions to overcome Mini’s years of refining the art of front-wheel-drive torque delivery. The modern Mini powertrain and chassis tuning philosophy is right in line with the brand’s styling: spunky, lively, and focused on fun. It makes sense why owners are so enamored with their vehicles from top to bottom.

That said, MTTS (or any other large event) isn’t the place for serious driving impressions. The journey is the main event, and absolutely nothing prepares you for the open-armed camaraderie that permeates the Mini community. These people love their cars. Parked on this famous Pennsylvania course and surrounded by hundreds of Minis bearing the same shape in various sizes, the atmosphere felt more like a music festival than a road rally. I heard the word “Woodstock” uttered at least twice. For a true old-school Mini vibe, however, I had to talk to Kiki Williams.

Kiki became a multiple-Mini owner after falling for the new-era model in 2010. Once her kids were old enough to fend for themselves (automotively speaking), Kiki finally bought the Cooper she’d been wanting for years. It was motoring bliss from the start. Then, something unexpected happened; one day she came across a right-hand drive classic Mini Cooper for sale online. It was a 1988 Mary Quant edition—a designer-series vehicle that, unlike the Bill Blasses and Valentinos of the world, belies a connection stronger than mere licensing agreement. Mary Quant is credited with the creation of the mini skirt, a fashion accessory she famously named after her favorite car: the Mini Cooper. Kiki remembered how returning pilots would bring the original Mini (as cargo) to the U.S. when she was in college. She always wanted a classic Mini, especially once she realized that her two-car garage was large enough to swallow two modern versions and one classic with only modest shuffling. (The ’88 goes in sideways against the back wall.)

As you can imagine, a long-haul journey behind the wheel of a classic Mini is a far different experience than a modern example loaded with creature comforts. While Kiki’s sports an aftermarket Bluetooth receiver, there’s still no air conditioning or NVH control to speak of. Kiki, however, insists the classic Mary Quant Mini is far more enjoyable because of the attention it garners at every turn. Not to mention  it’s more fun to drive than her late-model JCW Mini.

Kiki has been on six MTTS runs, but only three from beginning to end. This time she’s doing the whole thing in her classic Mini, with her husband following in their modern JCW. The 80-mph top speed is a challenge, but so are the crowds that swarm her at every stop. “Everyone wants to see it,” says Kiki. Bystanders in small towns are gobsmacked by hundreds of Minis passing through, but they are utterly thrilled to see the small-but-mighty original in the mix. The Mary Quant Mini has been reliable during its time on MTTS, and Kiki insists her classic is both the most reliable and the easiest-to-service Mini in her fleet. Both Kiki and her husband are so smitten with the car that they insist it will never be for sale.

That relative ease of repair is a consequence of parts availability from stateside vendors and their UK counterparts. Kiki can diagnose a problem, order the needed parts, and perform the repair herself. While MTTS is not the venue for a classic Mini to suffer any major setback, modern examples that run into basic repair issues have the advantage of Mini USA’s helping hand. The company offers a pop-up diagnostic/repair shop that’s available each morning before participants hit the road. These tents have Mini technicians willing and able to perform repairs like engine computer diagnostic/repairs, light bulb replacement, tire changes, and just about anything else one can imagine that doesn’t require a service lift or a massive tool box. More to the point, these services usually come at no cost to the owner. I even heard that Mini USA once replaced a failed turbocharger at no cost to an MTTS participant, though I suspect such work was done at a nearby dealership and not in a parking lot.

My fantastic few days on MTTS got me thinking: What other car manufacturer would—every two years—throw a multi-state party for loyalists, clear their check engine lights, design an exciting road trip with unique destinations, and use a smartphone app to post photos and answer brand-specific trivia questions along the way? Scion tried a similar business model, courting a unique demographic with extra-stylish Toyota vehicles, radical options, no-haggle pricing, and experiential events aimed to make an impact larger than your average Corolla ownership experience. Scion closed up shop in 2016, but modern Mini has been around since the 2000 model year.

What Mini USA has nurtured from the meager footprint of Alec Issigonis’ original blueprint is beyond impressive, and it’s such a rare thing to behold in this era of globalized/homogenized products, short term profiteering, and skin-deep marketing campaigns. Sales of new Minis have dipped in recent years, sure, but MTTS proves the existence of a passionate owner community that is very much alive. We hope BMW will continue to nurture the Mini brand, which with the right roadmap (and EV engineering) could morph into a compelling, style-forward enthusiast brand with many more great years ahead of it.

Case in point, behold the loyalty generated by Mini’s commitment to MTTS. After fuel prices surged and shipping rates spiked, Teresa Flores and Mark Ryan from Arizona decided that renting a vehicle instead of driving their Mini was a smarter plan. Because they weren’t gonna miss this 2022 reboot, as the Mark has attended since 2008, Teresa since 2006. Their rental was a Ford Edge ST, which to be fair, is about as close to a Mini as you’ll get at a rental counter. They did an impressive job making the Ford into a “Counterfeit Mini” with decals and blue painter’s tape. And what was their muse for the Counterfeit Mini? Behold this delightful commercial from 2005:

You can’t garner this kind of loyalty overnight, its a serious investment over time. Combine this with Mini USA’s commitment to animal welfare (both in marketing and with the prevalence of dog treats on this rally), the aforementioned free vehicle services, the passion of every employee (and event partner) I met, and you have an event unlike anything else in this world. It warmed the cockles of my heart to the point I’ve repeatedly considered buying a Mini mostly to participate in MTTS 2024. But make mine the Goodwood edition with a 9″ screen in the dash, as I have plenty of time to do it right.

The post 2022 Mini Takes the States—and steals our hearts in the process appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you’re here reading this, you likely feel (as we do) that driving is more than a means to an end. A to B is not the point. Beyond the pavement, roads are emotional avenues that help us experience a slice of freedom, transcend monotony, and lead more enjoyable lives. Naturally, not all paths offer that type of liberating experience. But you best believe we remember our personal favorites.

Here at Hagerty Media, we’re celebrating Independence Day this year by sharing with you the roads our staff of editors love and long for. Enjoy, and share your most-loved roads with us in the comments. Happy 4th!

Belle Isle (Detroit, Michigan)

Belle Isle has been a Detroit landmark for 30 years; it’s a natural beauty punctuated with apex curbing and waterside straightaways. The thought of your tires sharing the same pavement with the likes of Alex Zanardi, Danica Patrick, and Hélio Castroneves is second only to the romantic sunset views of Detroit and Windsor, Ontario as the backdrop. Don’t limit yourself to the road course, either. The rest of the island has rally-like features, and even a bridge that—if not taken with prudence—has the potential for an airy launch. Beware, too, that this is a state park policed by the DNR, and you’ll quickly note that the standard flow of traffic is counter-course to the now-defunct Grand Prix road course. — Alejandro Della Torre

Highway 36 (Missouri & Kansas)

This sounds like such an odd one compared to what everyone else has suggested, but Highway 36 from Hannibal, Missouri to Marysville, Kansas does it for me. This is a painfully straight stretch of road, but this scenic 55-mph-friendly route is a staple of my old car adventures on drives from my current home in Traverse City, Michigan, to my family home in Kansas. The small communities it goes through and the small Erector-set looking bridge that is used to cross the Mississippi feel charming when the rest of my year is spent on super slab highways and coach seats on airplanes. — Kyle Smith

Pigsah Highway (North Carolina)

North Carolina, not far from its southern border, is home to one of the east coast’s greatest driving roads: Pisgah Highway. (According to me, anyway.) Officially designated U.S. 276, this gorgeous, squiggly romp through Blue Ridge country starts just north of the quaint college town of Brevard and runs through the Pisgah National Forest, intersecting with the historic Blue Ridge Parkway. This is a technical route suited to small, lightweight cars with usable power—think small BMW, Miata, or Datsun 240Z—but macho machines like the Corvette, Camaro, or Mustang will still enjoy plenty of longer stretches to flex V-8 muscles. Don’t skip the lookout points, waterfalls, and hiking trails around every delicious bend. Or maybe that’s the vinegary BBQ talking? — Eric Weiner

Yerba Buena Road (California)

It’s tough to pick a favorite section of pavement in Malibu because there are so many that offer great vistas and engaging corners. The one that checks all the boxes for me is Yerba Buena Road. One of the great delights of this winding, two-lane stretch is that it’s fun to drive even at the speed limit. There are great views of the scrubby Malibu hills and the Pacific Ocean at various points, too. Along the way you’ll find turnouts for trailheads that have great hikes, a bathroom stop near the midpoint, and when Yerba Buena hits Pacific Coast Highway, you’re at Neptune’s Nest—a great lunch spot. We have used this route for several of our road tests and reviews over the years, and we’ll likely keep coming back. — Brandan Gillogly

“Hocking Ring” (Ohio)

Deep in rural Southeast Ohio, a unique triumvirate of snake-like roads combine for the most thrilling circuit outside of an actual race track. Back in the day, buff books used this route to shakedown everything from economy cruisers to ultrafast supercars. The loop, which is comprised of tight esses of varying cambers and radii, circles Hocking Hills State Park, by way of state routes 374, 56, and 664. Unlike many of the point-to-point paved ribbons in United States, the “Hocking Ring” as it’s known by enthusiasts, makes one large 13-mile loop. Want another go? Just keep your foot in it. Another boon: the location is far more obscure than Tail of the Dragon or Highway 1, so dense traffic is rarely an issue. And should you tire, the area is well-known for its bucolic parks. Pack a hammock and a lead foot. — Cameron Neveu

State Highway 97 (Idaho)

Idaho is, in general, underrated. They like it that way; Idahoans hate when outsiders talk about it too adoringly, for fear of the secret getting out (see: Colorado). So hopefully the state’s citizens will forgive me for spilling the tea on Highway 97. I’ll never forget the outer reaches of Lake Coeur d’Alene, which I first saw while on a family vacation as a kid. Just 10 miles southeast of the city of Coeur d’Alene, whimsical miles of road border sections of the lake’s eastern shore. The route wiggles and twists through Idaho’s towering pines, with tight turns and plenty of turnoffs for stretch breaks and lake views. To this day, I’ve thought of returning in something other than the rear seat of a ‘98 Plymouth Voyager. To really do it right. For a complete loop, the northern stretch of State Highway 3 is also great, weaving around ranch country and the Coeur d’Alene River before reconnecting with U.S. 90. It is roughly 70 total miles of impeccable driving. Go, but keep it off Instagram. — Bryan Gerould

Highway 27 to Highway 14 North (Arkansas)

It’s the smallest line you can make on a map, a barely-there representation of my favorite road. It’s Highway 27, east to Highway 14 North, starting out in Marshall, Arkansas, and ending up in Yellville. It was the way home to my parents when they lived on the White River in Norfolk, a tiny village that is barely there, too. It started out as a shortcut the day I took the road in a Peugeot 405, and later on a BMW R50/5, if that tells you how long ago it was, and it became ingrained in me as an exercise in ultra-rural landscape carved up with good pavement and tight turns. In the fall, it’s beautiful. Any day, it’s profoundly mind-clearing. — Steven Cole Smith

BC-99 (British Columbia, Canada)

Whoops, this one isn’t even in America! Just think of it as a belated Canada Day celebration. British Columbia, out of Vancouver, is home to one of the most magnificent roads that I’ve ever had the privilege to turn a wheel on. BC-99, better known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway, runs along the west side of B.C. from West Vancouver all the way to the world-famous Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort (and well north of that). The car you choose is almost immaterial here, provided there are big windows for the endless sightseeing. Bolder drivers may choose a classic convertible to enjoy the endless greenery and incredible views of the Howe Sound. Others may opt for the luscious ride of a modern grand tourer—say, a Lincoln Navigator or a Dodge Charger, cosseted in total comfort while drinking in the Great White North’s natural beauty. The blend of sweeping curves, blue waters, and craggy mountains ensure that one run up BC-99 will be more than enough to vault it up your list of great byways of North America. Pro tip, though: bring a raincoat. — Nathan Petroelje

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On a moody fall Saturday, the last bit of sunlight flitted between Rocky Mountain peaks, flashed across the glacial valley and through thick aspens crowding the Trans-Canada Highway, and exploded through the water-streaked windshield right into my retinas. Kaleidoscopically orange, green, white, black—the sunset was backed by the primal 3000-rpm beat of the 1967 Pontiac GTO’s 400-cubic-inch V-8. The wipers added no rhythm though, because, naturally, they were broken. Instead, the afternoon showers, dispersed by Rain-X, formed rivulets that wobbled up the windshield to gather in pools, fluttering in the airflow like the vocal sacs of chirping frogs. From here, they leaked onto our laps, courtesy of the weathered 55-year-old top seal. But the wipers weren’t the only system on strike; so were the temperature and oil pressure gauges, the brake-light switch, the driver’s door lock, and the parking brake, plus, eventually, something even worse. We were flying fast and loose in a powerful and achingly loud muscle car, and it felt sketchy, exciting, and alive. And suddenly damned familiar, because I’d been here before, 40 long years ago.

Summer 1981: In a rural backyard near a stand of sweet-smelling conifers in South Lake Tahoe, California, sat the sorry ragtop. Running but crippled by a blown clutch, it had been pushed into the meadow like an old glue horse led to pasture and left to wither three years prior. Only by chance had I seen the classified ad in the Tahoe Daily Tribune: “1967 Pontiac GTO convertible. Manual transmission. Needs work, $650.” Random travels had stranded me with a one-speed Schwinn Cruiser, an unlikely candidate to ride 450 miles over 8000-foot mountain passes to Los Angeles. I needed a car, and the GTO needed a savior. Sold!

Entering my life between a 1965 Cadillac hearse, a 1976 Checker New York City taxi, and a raging case of wanderlust, the GTO stood little chance of becoming a long-termer. To use a social analogy, it was like hitching a ride home with somebody you met on vacation, having a one-nighter, and never seeing that person again. “I used her, she used me but neither one cared/We were gettin’ our share,” sang Bob Seger in 1976’s “Night Moves.”

Midmorning on that Tuesday, August 4, a tow truck hoisted the front of the GTO, plowed through the tall fescue and up to the street, hooked a right and then a left onto the local highway, and ambled three miles to Kingsbury Automotive & Supply. A new clutch for $217.40, an F70-14 bias-ply whitewall pulled from a gas station’s used tire stack for $15, a check of radiator water, engine oil and tire pressures, and I was on my way, with the Schwinn stashed in the trunk.

Barely into my 20s, I’d already owned two dozen cars and motorcycles, and thus I knew the GTO was special. Which is why, two months later, after a summer of surfing, partying, and burnouts, a nagging feeling accompanied selling the convertible. But there was stuff to do, namely retrieving my possessions from the Big Apple, and a taxi purchased from a Haitian cabbie seemed way better for that job. But that’s another story. Anyway, the GTO vanished like that one-night stand.

Nearly four decades after dispatching the GTO, I answered the phone. “This is Andrew,” a voice said. In 1974, I met Canadian Andrew Morin in an English youth hostel while vagabonding around Europe. Both crazy about cars, bikes, and adventure, we got along great and stayed in touch afterward. “I found your GTO,” he said. “It’s in Calgary.”

The words froze me like a door hinge creaking in the night. “Are you kidding me?” I answered, grasping for focus. “Who? Where? How?” As Andrew rolled out the info, I could see it clearly. The guy I’d sold the GTO to in British Columbia parked it for 28 years before selling it to another Canadian, an engineer named Rob who is coincidentally a friend of Andrew’s. One day last year, Andrew asked Rob about the car. The story goes that after Rob and another owner, it went to Steve Bacovsky, a Canadian collector, whose email Andrew tracked down and provided. After connecting and sending Steve my vintage photos, I found myself typing the words every car guy knows: “If you ever want to sell it …” The letters—common ones, not even decent Scrabble points—coalesced into words slowly, haltingly, like forbidden fruit budding on that ancient tree. The GTO was tempting but a temptress, virtuous but a vixen. I knew it was right. I knew it was wrong. I clicked “send.”

Months passed, and the GTO reversed to back of mind, just as it had many times before. But one morning the creaky door blew open when Steve wrote back. He’d found a Hemi Belvedere and, on his game board, a Mopar trumped a Poncho. The GTO’s sudden availability forced some deep soul-searching; I’d long hungered for the car but really didn’t need it. Money’s always a thing, space is always limited, and there’s never enough time. I walked into the garage, sat on the stairs, and pondered my internal-combustion geode. And the more I thought about it, the more complicated the GTO seemed.

In your 20s, life is simple. If you want it, make it happen—and if it can’t happen now, well, you can always do it later. But now that it was later, well, the opportunity seemed rather pressing. Candidly, I felt selfish pursuing the car. The unknowns, including whether an old Goat could drive 2000 miles and across an international border, were also concerning. It all seemed like a big hassle. But contemplating who I’d become if I didn’t at least try was more terrifying. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be loose on the land in a Pontiac GTO, thundering across the Rockies and down the Pacific coast? As it turns out, “YES” earns more Scrabble points than “LATER.” I said yes.

During that long-ago summer, I had liked the GTO immediately. It was fast, the Muncie four-speed shifted great, and the new clutch made sublimating the rear tires into heinous, glorious, acrid smoke easy and fun. On the two-lane linking Tahoe and LA, all was bliss, despite the torn original top flapping overhead, the rear window yellowed to opaqueness, and the rusted exhausts rumbling below decks. Yes, the GTO was wounded and probably so was its driver, in between school and jobs and searching for direction in life. Weirdly, we were perfect together, two castoffs on an open road. And the Pontiac’s big-block omnipotence made this freedom even better.

Driving through the eastern Sierras felt divine. Jagged snowcapped peaks thrusting to 14,000 feet above my right shoulder, sharp sunlight on my face, and the effortless torque produced an unexpected sense of command. Maybe that was life’s tonic, being in command. However, the car drove like a bus with a race engine, meaning fast in a straight line and elephantlike in the turns, thanks to its manual steering and brakes. But so what? Because GTO.

Reuniting with the car in a Calgary storage facility, I was surprised to see the Route 66 water transfer I’d placed on the right vent window in ’81. It still had the same convertible top that Robbins Auto Top in Santa Monica had installed for me, and a small crack in the steering-wheel rim, a flaw felt every time the wheel was shuffled during one of the GTO’s long, lazy turns. But the biggie was a charred edge of the woodgrain instrument panel where, years earlier, a driver’s cigarettes in the ashtray below had exacted their toll. These oddities, which would mean demerits in show judging, heartened me because I craved evidence that the car had lived, that it had a past, that I had been a part of it, and it had been a part of me. Largely, restoration had erased those signs in pursuit of perfection. I was glad a few remained.

When I first bought the Pontiac, it was just 14 years old and its odometer showed under 90,000 miles. Now it read 92,894 miles, meaning it was about to drive farther than it had since Richard Nixon was president. On a sunny morning in late 2021, the old Goat steered west, from flat-as-a-pancake Calgary toward the Canadian Rockies, those formidable sedimentary bulwarks softly wooded by spruce, fir, and trembling aspens now at peak foliage. The forests and roadway here are sculpted by numerous lakes and rivers, some spectacularly green from suspended minerals. Road signs warn of moose, deer, mountain goats, and avalanches. It’s a wildland here; nature still runs the show.

The car needs a five-speed to soothe the big motor on the highway, so copilot Andrew and I kept it to about 3300 rpm, or 65 mph. That was just as well, because with the vainglorious mufflers, the interior sound pressure measured 89 decibels, a perfect cocktail for hearing loss. The rebuilt, hot-rodded engine also occasionally misfired, a disconcerting hiccup in an otherwise stout mill. Despite assurances that the car was road-ready, it had a lot of other issues from the get-go, including the non-op temp and oil pressure gauges and dead wipers. With care and diligence (and some luck) we got to Vancouver, 650 miles down the road, in two days. There, Andrew and I stayed at a mutual friend’s house and spent Day Three of the trip tackling problems. New sending units rectified the temp and oil pressure gauges. I drained the supposedly clean oil to find really dark, old oil instead, and so we replaced that and the filter. A disconnected wiper-switch ground under the dash explained the stalled blades, so I soldered up a shunt using a copper washer and grounding wire that worked. At last, we were in motion again.

At the U.S. border near Vancouver, the agent questioned why the GTO’s Alberta plate didn’t match my U.S. passport. After I explained, he asked, “So you’re buying it?” Then he sent me inside an office that seemed frighteningly paramilitary. But I had the right paperwork, and Customs clearance took only about 10 minutes. Then we were free to go.

After inching through crowded Seattle and Tacoma, we happily swung west toward the Washington coast and soon were among calm Northwest waterways, woods, and farmland, with tidal flats to the right and hay bales standing like the Queen’s Guard in autumn fields to the left. Rain again struck the windshield, this time great, fat drops that spattered like miniature asteroid strikes.

All the while, in fits of indecision, the two-lane threaded left and right, up and down, and finally to the Pacific. Lazing along in third gear, the GTO passed groves of stunted cedars, hunched over rock faces in the onshore wind like toiling peasants, and forsook tangles of plump blackberries, ripe for picking. Among the sporadic oceanfront towns, some looked purposeful, prosperous, and well-maintained, while others seemed poorly planned, seedy, and disjointed, their raison d’être, fishing or logging, long since abandoned. The Goat could make mincemeat of this humble highway, but there was no point. As with a photographic image slowly emerging in a darkroom’s developer tray, when traveling, a sedate pace deepens appreciation.

Pontiac GTO s/n 242677B108879 drove off Pontiac Motor Division’s Baltimore, Maryland, assembly line in early November 1966, destined for Lawless Cadillac-Pontiac in Worcester, Massachusetts, and carrying a sticker price of $3834.80. Painted Silverglaze over a black vinyl interior, it had the 335-hp, 400-cubic-inch V-8 with a four-barrel Rochester carb, bolted to a wide-ratio gearbox powering through a Safe-T-Track differential with 3:55 gears. The black roof was power-operated, and inside, under the dash and optional Rally gauge cluster, hung a factory eight-track tape player. “Eighty minutes of uninterrupted stereophonic sound-in-depth,” promised Pontiac’s 1967 brochure.

Quick-ratio steering, manual drum brakes, and Rally I wheels were fitted, along with special ride and handling springs and shocks. Whoever ordered the car was likely a good-time Charlie who wanted the most fun for his money. Or maybe a good-time Charlene; I don’t know which.

But I do know that on March 14, 1970, the gent I first bought the Goat from purchased it used from Bancroft Motors, likewise in Worcester. He paid $1995 and traded in a 1968 Dodge Coronet 440 hardtop, for which the dealership kindly credited him $1395. In early 1973, the GTO migrated to San Jose, California, where it lived until moving to Lake Tahoe. Soon afterward, its clutch scattered and it got parked, its race run. From hero to zero in a decade, such was the life of ’60s muscle cars.

Almost without warning appeared the Columbia River, where Lewis and Clark culminated their long trek from St. Louis in 1805. The Big River is eponymous in that it looks more like a bay, but we sailed easily over it thanks to the Astoria-Megler Bridge, North America’s longest continuous truss and coincidentally one year older than the GTO. Mercifully, the daily rain showers abated in the afternoon, which brought dappled sunlight, raking through the forest canopy and dancing off the lissome fender lines and hood scoop. Occasionally, the winding route allowed glimpses of the craggy coastline, the ocean restless and pounding against obstinate rocks, attacking the continent and tearing it apart, grain by rocky grain, a century at a time. Once, when Andrew arced through a long sweeper, still wet in the shade, the back end stepped out. He countersteered quickly but it was a good reminder: There’s no stability control here—just the BFGs and the driver.

From Alberta and British Columbia to Washington, Oregon, and finally California, the Beaver State definitely showed the GTO appreciation. At the Tillamook Air Museum, middle-aged Barbara made a beeline to the car, her hippocampus redlining as she recounted driving her boyfriend’s ’66 GTO with a 389 and a console shifter, and how just tipping the gas pedal had snapped her head back. Then, later that afternoon, a young, burly and wildly inked Jason at a gas station commented, “Nice Goat!” Although sighting a GTO in the wild is rare today, people still know and remember.

Coos Bay, a former logging town, is on a protected inlet along Oregon’s southern coast. We found that Olympic runner Steve Prefontaine’s boyhood home was just a few miles off our route, and being a masochist—er, being a runner myself—I was drawn to seeing it. In front, neighbors were talking. One was Pre’s friendly sister Linda, once a nationally ranked athlete as well. She revealed her famous brother was a car guy, too. He had two MGBs, and earlier, a black Tri-Five Chevy with a Hurst shifter, in which he enjoyed cruising Coos Bay with his high school buddies. “A lot of people run a race to see who is the fastest,” Prefontaine once said. “I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then, at the end, punish himself even more.”

The GTO’s niggling problems—including the persistent misfire, the driver’s door lock that failed when a linkage clip slipped off inside the door, a barely working parking brake, and the leaky top—meant that maybe this trip had something in common with Pre after all. That afternoon, under pastel skies, we proceeded farther south, still hugging the coast. Inspired by Pre’s life, Oregon’s spectacular bluff-top views, clear streams flowing seaward, and driftwood piled on the wild beaches, I parked and scrambled down a trail to run on the sand, smooth and hard-packed, pitching gently toward the Pacific.

Entering California soon brought us to Trinidad for gas (12.8 mpg trip average), a fish and chips dinner, and a Steelhead ale. Unexpectedly, the GTO attracted more attention here. A fast-talking surfer fueling his diesel rig announced with hubris that he wanted to steal it. Sketchy but whatever; insured! Then a hippie lady, Sandi, floated up to us. Wearing a tie-dyed shirt and curly Janis Joplin hair, she wanted to know what year the Goat was. Then while we were dining, a slickster wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a gray ponytail, and a smile approached. “I don’t have a business card,” he cooed. “But I have cash and would like to buy your car.”

Good thing the Redwood Highway was constructed in the early 1900s, because it would likely be impossible today. Call it sacrilege or spectacular—or maybe both—but driving through this living cathedral with the top down was simply otherworldly. So was the realization that 40 years ago, I’d headed north beneath the same trees in this same car to deliver it to its next owner. Same road, different directions, different centuries. My mind whirled trying to comprehend it all.

Now as then, it’s dead silent in the forest, where tree canopies stretch skyward to mesmerizing heights. The cool and damp air, the deep, cushiony duff underfoot, and the shadowy light filtering to the ground are surely Tolkien-esque. And the dimensions of the old-growth redwoods are equally mind-bending, with trunks up to 20 feet in diameter, reaching 28 stories high and surviving since the Middle Ages. Comparatively, man counts for nothing—except for our historic ability to screw nature over. GTO Owners & Tree Huggers, unite! Nearing wine country, we hatched a plan to peel toward Bodega Bay (to hunt for the Aston Martin DB2/4 from Hitchcock’s The Birds), navigate San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and, in one more day, glide home. The Goat never made it. Negotiating a parking lot in little Garberville, the GTO’s retrofitted power steering pump suddenly groaned, low on fluid. I killed the engine, shimmied under the front bumper, and found the circlip, dust washer, and seal displaced from the Saginaw steering box, and the pitman arm covered in fluid.

After consulting with two repair shops, I decided to remove the pump’s V-belt and proceed. At this point, the GTO felt reminiscent of the famous World War II B-17F named All American, which, after colliding with an enemy Messerschmitt over North Africa in 1943, managed to limp home to base with her tail nearly severed. Our strategy worked acceptably until a gas stop in equally tiny Hopland, a few hours hence, where the steering coupler alarmingly began ratcheting on the steering box’s splined input shaft.

While we investigated, Craig Frost of nearby Shadowbrook Winery stopped in his pickup. He owns a classic 1966 Toyota FJ40 and, recognizing that an old car with its hood up meant trouble, kindly offered the GTO safe haven in the winery’s nearby barn. Here, further inspection revealed the steering coupler’s pinch bolt was inexplicably loose. At this point, recalling how a broken steering column caused Ayrton Senna’s fatal accident, and an ambulance ride of my own after a brake failure caused a racing crash, I called the trip. I’d been OK driving sans power steering, but not with potentially damaged steering splines. We’d made it 1600 glorious miles, and my only regret was seeing the Pontiac on a flatbed. But the roads are still there, the Goat is still in one piece, and, most important, so are we. As Chuck Yeager drawled, “If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing.”

Poetically, the GTO’s failure perfectly restarted our relationship, because it entered my life wounded in 1981 and it reentered my life wounded in 2021. So perhaps this little GTO actually still needs me. Which is good, because now, I definitely need it.

1967 Pontiac GTO Convertible

Engine: 400-cubic-inch V-8
Power: 335 hp @ 5000 rpm
Torque: 441 lb-ft @ 3400 rpm
Weight: 3522 lb
Top speed: 124 mph
Price when new: $3834.80
Hagerty #2-condition value: $82,250–$105,500

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It’s the sort of road trip that any group of car nuts would conjure over late-night beers: The longest contiguous route in America. Key West, Florida, to Deadhorse, Alaska. Tom Cotter is no stranger to long road trips, but this 7000-mile odyssey has the Barn Find Hunter more excited than ever.

Beginning today, Cotter and photographer Michael Alan Ross are hitting the road to find what Cotter calls “the heart of America.”

Cotter’s road-trip rolodex reads like a greatest hits album. He’s piloted a 1926 Ford Model T across the entire Lincoln Highway: Times Square in Manhattan all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. He regularly takes his 1939 Ford Woodie Wagon across swathes of the states in search of dusty treasures in Hagerty’s beloved video series, Barn Find Hunter. He’s written several road-trip books on the grand adventures along the way—perhaps you’ve read some of them.

For his latest endeavor, he won’t be driving a classic car. Instead, Cotter and Ross will rely on two modern reinventions of legendary nameplates: A four-door version of Ford’s new Bronco (in Outer Banks trim) and a shiny new Airstream Basecamp 16X, each graciously provided by the manufacturer.

“This [route] has been on my mind for five years at least,” says Cotter. “The question was always … what kind of car? I thought maybe I’d buy an ’80s Corvette, or maybe I buy a car on Craigslist in Florida and then sell it in Alaska.

“But then I decided, let me take the car out of the question—the potential breakdowns and stuff—and let’s concentrate more on the country instead of the automobile.”

They may not be vintage, but a Bronco and an AirStream still turn heads and start conversations. “I have a Cobra, I have Shelbys, I have Cunninghams—all sorts of amazing cars,” Cotter says. “I have never gotten as much attention as I get with this Bronco and with this Airstream. Nobody is afraid to come up and talk about it.”

His quest to find the heart of America centers on avoiding the interstate system. Cotter believes that along the two-lane roads and quieter parts of the country, there are still stories to be heard and celebrated.

“I’m hoping to meet Americans who are seldom met,” he says. “Americans who live off the grid—and I don’t mean that digitally, I just mean Americans who don’t live near big cities and interstate highways. With all the conflict going on in the United States, I’m hoping that by the time I get to Alaska, I’ll have found that there’s more that binds us together as a country than separates us.”

And that’s not the only noble part of his quest. Cotter and Ross have partnered with Vintage Racers for Rescues, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit foundation that helps raise money for an animal rescue shelter. They’ll be taking per-mile donations from those interested in getting involved, with all proceeds going to the non-profit. If you’re inclined, even a penny per mile will have a large impact in helping this foundation offset the costs of sheltering and caring for animals in search of a forever home.

Cotter has plenty of experience in America’s last frontier. He once drove 2000-plus miles in an original 289 Cobra on Alaska’s paved roads, temporarily becoming famous when a nosy bear clawed its way into the precious roadster overnight to score some Fig Newtons left in the cabin by his co-pilot. Cotter was quick to note that no such snacks would be left unattended this time around.

Interested in following along as Cotter and Ross make this great trip? Be sure to follow @thebarnfindhunter on Instagram, where the duo will be posting daily updates.

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Last week, I wrote about preparing for The Big Road Trip—3000-ish miles from suburban Boston to MidAmerica 02Fest in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I laid out my basic preparation philosophy of fixing the problems you know about, performing preventive maintenance on “The Big Seven” things likely to strand a vintage car (ignition, fuel delivery, cooling, charging, belts, clutch hydraulics, ball joints) and carrying enough spare parts and tools that you won’t feel like an idiot if something common breaks. I thought I’d let you know how it went.

The Drive

My wonderful, tolerant, passion-enabling wife doesn’t accompany me on these long-haul road trips, as her idea of hell is endless hours in a fragrant, loud old car. Really, it’s less the fragrant old car part than the endless hours part—“the forced march,” as she calls it, is not at all to her liking. Her preferred pace is the stop-and-smell-the-quilt-shops kind of road trip. I get it, but on a trip like this (1500 miles each way, broken into two 750-mile days), those miles don’t drive themselves. You have to pound them out.

Fuel, rest room, and oil-checking breaks are unlikely to be less than 15 minutes. Take four of those and it adds an hour—longer if it’s more than four (it always is) or if you need to take an actual breather or fix something. Do the math and you’ll see that, if you’re 63 years old like me who runs out of consciousness when he runs out of daylight, the goal is to be rolling into the parking lot of the hotel no later than sunset, you’re eating breakfast at dawn, hitting the road at sunup, and basically driving every waking daylight hour. Most of the time, that works for me—I love these little cars, I love road-tripping them, and I love the alone time for my brain to do the percolation thing it doesn’t get to do at home. But if I hit traffic or weather or have to stop and fix something and the drive continues after dark, it definitely ratchets back the “livin’ the dream” part.

The Caravan

As I described last week, my days of lone-wolf road trips are largely over. There are undeniable advantages in running with a pack. Even ignoring the social aspects, from a purely practical self-enlightened standpoint, there’s safety in numbers in terms of mechanical breakdowns and the ability to have someone run to the nearest Autozone for duct tape and 10-mm bolts. Maybe someone even has them in their trunk.

But pack size and makeup are crucial. Every May, I run with a regular four-person caravan to the event “The Vintage” in Asheville, North Carolina. We’re very compatible in terms of:

• Speed—We typically drive just a notch faster than traffic flow, which usually puts us in the 75–80 zone where 2002s shine.
• Passing—We keep right except to pass, only pass on the right when someone is an unforgivable left lane hog, and never weave through traffic as if we have some God-given right to carry more speed than the traffic volume will naturally allow.
• Lunch—We eat while rolling in our cars; sit-down lunches just take too long when you have pavement to pound and miles to go before you sleep.
• Hotels—We agree on something midway between a Marriot and no-tell motel).

On this trip, however, it was just me and one of these caravan members, my friend Bob Sawtelle.

There’s a tendency on the part of caravan drivers of the same cars to want to keep the pack together, but on anything other than an empty road, you just can’t keep more than a handful of consecutive cars together without interfering with traffic flow. A line of vintage cars already attracts a lot of attention, and I want it to be the good kind; I really hate the idea of my joy translating into someone else’s rage if it looks like we’re lane-hogging for photo ops. So, four or fewer is a good caravan size, and two was great. It was small enough to be as nimble as a 15-year-old gymnast on a balance beam. And, as it happened, Bob and I were both driving green BMW 2002s. His was a newer (1976) car with big bumpers and square taillights. Mine was a 1972 pre-facelift car with the classic round taillights and small bumpers. The sight of the two perky little green cars, just different enough from each other to look like Barbie and her little sister Skipper, got us so many thumbs-ups on the drive that it almost qualified as fuel.

Road-wise, we took I-90 out of Boston to I-84 and stayed on it all the way into Scranton, Pennsylvania. This is a nice route that bypasses all of the old roads north of New York City and provides a lovely drive through Pennsylvania. Then it’s I-81 to I-80, at which point my memory of the last time I made this trek eight years ago proved startingly accurate—folks on I-80 know how to use the “go pedal.” There’s a time and a place for speed, and the way I look at it, if you’re not going to haul tuchus when you’re driving your treasured vintage road car, the traffic is light, the weather is flawless, Waze is clear, and the trucks are running at 80 mph, when are you going to do it? We spent hours with the 2002 engines doing what they were designed to do—zinging along at over 4000 rpm, where the molecules feel like they’re all vibrating together. We followed I-76 to I-71 and overnighted at the halfway point in Columbus, Ohio.

From there, the terrain flattened out as I-70 took us west into St. Louis, then I-44 canted southwest. When we got off the interstate, we boarded the roller coaster of roads bounding over the Ozarks. I’m not certain what tangle of small roads Waze put us on, but the drive was absolutely outstanding. There must be something in the water that caused three generations of Missouri and Arkansas civil engineers to build these flawlessly banked roads. As I said, I’d made this trip once before, so I knew what was coming, but my companion Bob was left practically mumbling and weak-kneed when we stopped for fuel near the hotel. Livin’ the dream. That’s how a trip like this should be—at least part of it.

At the end of the second 750-mile day of driving, there’s nothing like pulling into the hotel parking lot and having zero question that you’re in the right place.

Breakdowns

Louie, my 50-year-old 1972 BMW 2002tii, pounded out the mileage with zero drama and zero downtime. The only “Big Seven” issue was that the nuts and bolts securing the A/C compressor to its tensioner arms vibrated out, so the one time I tried to turn on the air conditioning, there was no cold air because the belt was so slack it wasn’t even engaging the pulley. Hey, at least it wasn’t the fan belt that spins the water pump and the alternator. A trip to a nearby O’Reilly’s set it right.

Three other utterly minor issues played wingman to the loose A/C compressor. It was cold the entire drive down, so I had the heat on, but the blower fan seemed anemic. When I stopped and tested it, I found it wasn’t working at all. It turned out that, last summer, I had stolen its fuse for—you guessed it—the air conditioning. I laughed out loud when I saw it missing. The engine used more oil than I would’ve preferred (like what 50-year-old engine doesn’t use more oil than you’d prefer?), a possible consequence of my having rebuilt the head—the tighter valve seals sometimes put more pressure on the old rings, piston grooves, and cylinder walls and cause oil usage to increase. And shortly before the trip, I’d aligned the front end with a trammel bar. Typically, I’ll do that and then tweak it by feel (these vintage BMWs sometimes need a touch more toe-in than spec), but I ran out of time. From the get-go, the car felt a little darty, particularly on steeply crowned center lanes. When we arrived at the hotel, I pulled the toe in a skosh. It felt much less wander-y after that.

The Event

Whether you’re into BMW 2002s or C2 Corvettes or AMC Pacers (or, for that matter, hobbies that have nothing to do with cars), a shared passion is a beautiful thing, and going to an event with people who share that passion, well, why wouldn’t you love it? All the people there are like you, at least in this one crucial way, and have also driven hundreds, maybe thousands of miles. Of course, you meet great people. Of course, you have great animated conversations. Of course, it’s like being a kid in a candy store when you walk the line of cars like yours except in different colors and ranging from bone-stock to wildly modified. And, of course, you come away with new friends. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

This event, MidAmerica 02Fest, just celebrated its 20th year. Organizer Bo Black and his wife, Barb, hold it in the lovely little town of Eureka Springs, nestled in the northern Arkansas Ozarks just across the Missouri border. Low-key events like this, where no one is prepping their car with Q-Tips and there are no judges in white coats, are my jam. There was a group drive, tech sessions (I gave one on air conditioning), raffles, door prizes, and the coveted “Iron Butt” award given for the most miles driven to the event (I won in 2014; this year my traveling companion Bob bested me by 43 miles), but the meat of the event is really just hanging around the parking lot at the event hotel and talking 2002s with other owners.

Unfortunately, when it’s over, you have to say goodbye to your old and new friends and the parking lot brimming over with seemingly endless examples of your favorite car in the world, and start the part that, well, sucks—the long drive home. Bob and I easily knocked off the leg back to Columbus, but by the second day of the two-day return trip (the fourth 750-mile day), I was toast. Back pain, neck pain, and general fatigue took their toll. When I hit drenching rain, poor visibility, and stop-and-go traffic in Connecticut, a mere two hours from home, I almost threw in the towel and got a hotel room. The only thing that enabled me to gird up my loins and finish the drive was checking the weather app on my phone and seeing that the rain was going to clear.

By the time I got home, I’d logged 3123 miles. Other than the final day, where I hit a metaphysical wall and felt fortunate that I didn’t hit a physical one, it was absolutely wonderful.

In this great big automotive enthusiast world in which we live, there are a lot of choices. For the 40 years I’ve been driving BMW 2002s, I’ve felt that the combination of their perky compact boxy exterior, quintessential 1970s minimalist German interior, road feel, handling, reliability (including the ability to sustain 80 mph without blowing head gaskets), and ease of maintenance has made them a winning package as an enthusiast car. Nothing in the round trip from Boston to Arkansas shook that one iota. Quite the contrary—it was another validation that these wonderful little cars deserve every bit of their reputation.

Life is short, my friends. You own whatever cars you do because you love them. You read these columns because you’ve boarded the escalator of connection with other people who also love cars. Trust me, you’re not going to regret going to an event where your chosen passion is shared by every single one of the attendees. It’s not going to be like the old Groucho Marx joke about not wanting to belong to a club that would want someone like you as a member. It’s going to be the opposite. It’s going to be awesome.

Just maybe find one that’s a bit closer than a 3123-mile round-trip drive.

***

Rob Siegel’s latest book, The Best of the Hack Mechanic^TM: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem, is available on Amazon. His other seven books are available here, or you can order personally inscribed copies through his website, www.robsiegel.com.

The post Livin’ the Dream: Tales from the Big Road Trip appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Once, your narrator rebuilt an old car. The project was intentionally slapdash for the best reasons and chronicled on this site. The first installment in that series of stories lives here.

Surprisingly, people liked the tale! It produced a healthy dose of traffic, and my editor asked me to synthesize the story for the Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. The resulting piece, reprinted below, saw more than 600,000 readers in HDC #72, March/April 2022.

Several of you have emailed, asking about the tii’s condition. It is currently in the rudest of health. A few weeks ago, I took it on a back-roads camping trip with friends. Last summer, I drove to California and back. More work is on the way, but mostly, we just rack up the miles. Hope you enjoy! —Sam Smith

1. The Driveway

To understand all of this, we go back to a moment. The summer of 2020. A Baltimore driveway. The seller, waiting patiently a few yards away.

“I’m sorry,” my friend Paul said, under his breath.

“Why?”

“It’s worse than I thought?”

I shrugged. “I mean, it’d be nice if the subframe were more attached to the car.”

“Floors don’t look great, either.”

“Big rusty tear in each shock tower.”

“Real big.”

“Rockers?”

He made a face.

I was a few months past my 39th birthday. Dozens of used or vintage cars had passed through my hands in the previous 20 years, many of them ugly. The only one bought sight unseen cost just $1800 and was undeniably the worst of the lot. It smelled of swamp and armpit.

In Baltimore, Paul squinted at that very car. “You offered money. You kind of have to buy it.”

“True fact.”

“I’ll help part it out.”

“Who said anything about parting out?”

We both knew it was too far gone to restore. Paul changed the subject.

“I got you into this.”

“Nobody made me pull the trigger.”

“Fair enough.”

“I have a plan.”

“Really?”

I laughed. “Are you kidding? No.”

2. Awful Things and Nice Things

A BMW 2002. Like the ones I owned in high school and college, or the ’69 I raced with the SCCA. This was an early ’72, originally blue but long ago repainted four shades of white. It was also mechanically fuel-injected—a 2002tii, for touring international injection.

Both left and right rockers had rusted to nothing. The rear subframe mounts were mostly air, part of why the car had spent 10 years in outside storage. A deep pothole would have simply ripped the axle loose and left it lying on the pavement. The roof, rear subframe, and trailing arms were peppered with holes. Each inner sill had an oxide gash as wide as your wrist from wheel to wheel. The hood skin and one door skin had rusted loose from their frames. All of this looked like the aftermath of a saltwater flood. Only the engine seemed immune.

It idled like a champ. Paul was the instigator. He found the car through friends, then told me to buy it. This is very Paul. Once, 20 years ago, he was my parts guy at an East Coast German importer. Later, he got a job restoring Mercedes Gullwings and Colombo-engined Ferraris. Now he lives in the hills outside Pittsburgh and ministers to ratty old barn-find BMWs like crazy old ladies minister to cats and Jeopardy DVDs.

Like me, Paul owned nice cars once but has since reformed. Awful sheetmetal can be driven without worry about value or damage. Also, neither of us is made of money, and many of the cars we loved and drove when we were young have now become unaffordable.

On top of that, a certain school of thought says many awful things are better than one nice thing, or at least I am telling you right now that this school of thought exists, so you should trust me on this and totally not assume that I am spewing hard gibberish made up on the spot to justify an extreme and possibly disease-ridden case of hoarding.

Paul acted as go-between with the owner. The asking price was a few thousand dollars. A summary of the telephone negotiation process:

Me: “I have no money. I’m exempt.”

Paul: “OK.”

Me: “Twist my arm. I have $1800 from our tax refund. No way he’ll take that.”

Paul, much later: “I got him to take $1800.”

Me [confused]: “Kismet?”

My wife, walking into the room: “What’s kismet?”

Me: “Nothing.”

Paul: “What’s nothing?”

Me: “Never mind?”

Paul: “Cool.”

Paul had only seen the car in pictures.

I am occasionally so dumb that it passes for smart.

3. Why Meets How

“I kind of want to save it.”

A response not unlike approval emerged from my phone speaker.

Ben is a man of few words. Witty, little tolerance for fools. We have been friends for 20 years. I worked for him after college, as a mechanic at his Chicago BMW shop, where he little tolerated me. Ben is the sort of guy you can hand a bent paper clip and two bucks, and he will return to you $1.50 change and a small nuclear reactor made from said paper clip. Improv and dumb projects are a specialty.

I dropped the bomb. A dumb idea that had come to me on the toilet. “What if we just welded steel tube into the thing until it held itself together?”

Ben made a noise that identified this idea as stupid, if not unappealing.

“Tubes like an exoskeleton until the car holds together,” I said. “Leave the rest awful.”

You know what a great 2002tii is worth these days? Creeping up on six figures. What if you want to drive a car, but the buy-in stands in the way? Rusty and ugly means nothing to lose. Who cares about snow or rain if you should be dead to begin with?

I asked for help. I forget what Ben said after that. It was probably supportive and loving.

Momentum snowballed. I towed the car to Chicago from my house in Tennessee. Ben ordered a pile of tube steel and quietly mentioned the project to friends around the country. Over the six weekends that followed—not consecutive and scattered over months—those people met us in Chicago without being asked. Then they worked on my car while we all laughed and everyone knew the work was for reasons beyond me or my wants.

Ben or Paul or Owen or Matt or Mark or Carl or Tim or Andy or Larry or Joe or Veronica or the rest—at some point, each asked about the end goal. Each time, I deflected. And then we kept going.

4. The Work

Fall of 2020. The shell was stripped that first weekend. I spent much of that time grinding steel or scraping insulation from the floors with a heat gun. It was like watching a school of piranhas skeletonize a cow, from inside the cow.

Paul called it a homecoming. I couldn’t tell if he meant the gathered labor or me owning a 2002 after decades out of that game or what. Ben was something like chief engineer. The first new steel went into the rockers, where unibody cars carry most of their rigidity. On each side, a 65-inch square tube was stitch-welded to the bottom of a round tube the same length, and then the whole assembly was hoisted into the sill cavity, plug-welded in through holes drilled from above. Up front, the forward end of this tube structure was welded to another, vertically oriented round tube that was itself stitched into the lower A-pillar.

In the rear, each tube assembly met newly reconstructed subframe mounts, then another vertical tube tied into the rear quarter. The old subframe and trailing arms were thrown away, too rusty. Good used parts went in.

Some people restore machinery for satisfaction or profit. Others customize cars to make something like art. This was mostly just one dude burning too much cash on cheap steel and too many new parts as he and other denizens with a skewed idea of the value of time aimed slam-bang work at a car that should have been hucked in a dumpster a decade ago.

You ever hear the Stooges song, “I Wanna Be Your Dog”?

I sang that a lot in the shop. But quietly, to myself. Didn’t want to look nuts.

5. The Work, Part II

Weekend after weekend, more people came by Ben’s shop. Friends and friends of friends, socially distant but curious, drawn by … something. A restoration that wasn’t? Sheer spectacle? Maybe, because this was 2020, they were all simply bored.

A pattern developed. Friday night, we’d all stand around talking in the parking lot while quality-checking the contents of beer bottles. Saturday morning meant an excess of donuts and coffee, then bleary-eyed grinding and welding. The whole circus would carry on until late, under a cloud of dirty jokes, and then we’d all wake up late on Sunday and poke at the car before ambling home midafternoon.

The welding began carefully and ended as something else. Even from the talent. Mark was a professional TIG welder from California, and Matt ran a restoration shop in Connecticut. The two men had not met before traveling to Chicago, but each grew up in the Northeast. They became fast friends, welding inches apart while tripping the shop breaker every five minutes and yelling four-letter words.

The BMW consumed an entire wheel of MIG wire. Both shock towers were encased like Chernobyl, those rusty scars left to rot inside a new jacket of steel. The floor holes were patched with the precision of a dog fertilizing a lawn. Some of the beads I laid were actually quite nice, in the way that some parts of a Twinkie are real food.

The car gained structural integrity. The results looked accidental. And everyone kept laughing.

6. Not the End

Late fall. I headed to Chicago one last time and rented a trailer to drag the car south. Back home, over the months that followed, the BMW went from needy (cooling bits, brake bits, fuel bits, electrical bits, interior bits, seats, you know the drill) to serviceable vehicle.

Driveline internals were left untouched, but anything that moved or carried liquid was replaced or rebuilt, or at least cleaned and lubed, or at least smacked with a large hammer for good measure. Most fasteners were seized or stripped. Liquid rust penetrant entered my life by the barrel. Missing trim parts were sourced from the scrap piles of friends. I adjusted the hood with a small sledge and some kicking from my right foot, which is my favorite foot.

Do not, dear reader, consider how much all those parts cost, or how the finished car is worth almost nothing. Should I have spent thousands on new Italian seats—reproductions of the factory Recaros—and a rare 1960s Momo wheel? Or bought a rare period Momo hub, or borrowed rare Borrani steel wheels from Ben?

Probably not. Except when you think about how it matters, what you touch and see and feel in this life. Especially if you actually want to go places in your new pile of ugly and not merely look at it.

I left the front bumper crooked. The right mounting bracket is bent, giving the car’s face a kind of sneer. It fit.

7. A Drive, Somehow

Spring 2021. The first drive was like a drug. Miles! Driver giddy and twitching! Maybe one day they’ll outlaw this sort of thing, or it’ll be viewed as we now view 19th-century doctors prescribing cocaine for a stubbed toe. Are you telling me they fed this stuff to children?

So many cars and motorcycles reassembled in my life. The feeling never changes—new but not new, same but different. A good 2002 is a cheery little thing: an ordinary car designed for ordinary use, made less ordinary by time and culture. After a few miles on a back road near home, I stopped on the shoulder and listened to the idle for a minute.

What would cars think, in moments like this, if cars could think?

Probably something like, “What just happened?”

8. August: Monterey County

Why did I drive the thing to California? Why does anyone do anything? I had to be at Monterey Car Week, in August, for work, for a start. Flying would have been easier and cheaper, but every project needs a destination. Reason matters less than rhyme.

Prep was limited to a lazy assembly of spares in the trunk, then 100 miles of Sunday-night shakedown on a local interstate. The car pointed west the next morning, in the middle of a national heat wave. Most days carried an index of more than 105 Fahrenheit. The trip took four days, with a 1:1 top gear turning nearly 4000 rpm at 70 mph. When it rained in Flagstaff, Arizona, water came up through the floor.

The odometer died near Memphis. When the alternator spat its locknut in Arkansas, I laughed and slapped on a replacement. The motor-mount nut that disappeared six hours later was replaced in a hotel parking lot; when the driveshaft bearing lost a fastener in New Mexico, I fixed it under a tree next to a JCPenney. The engine hoovered oil the first day but settled down to a mere half-quart per gas stop. (Stuck ring, probably, sure, why not?)

n Los Angeles, the main fore-aft brake line rusted through and began leaking right around the time a driveshaft U-joint grew sticky. I stopped at a friend’s shop in La Jolla and fixed both on a borrowed lift, then ordered the shop guys a pizza.

In Monterey, on that beautiful peninsula, co-workers asked to see the car. “This is worse than it looks,” one said. Then I spent $140 to enter the BMW in Legends of the Autobahn, a lawn concours for German cars of no ill repute. The tii met a small amount of appreciation and many raised eyebrows. One spectator frowned at her boyfriend: “Why is this here? Does it even run?”

I would share precisely how much joy I felt in that moment, but you’d never believe it.

9. The Great Return (Just Not on Investment)

Every road trip has a point where you would rather be somewhere else. Even the good ones. Usually on the way home.

Friends texted: Did you die yet? What does monoxide poisoning taste like? The best were always some form of Do you hate it?

No? It wasn’t comfortable. Or was it? Wind noise from rust holes became a friend. Bored with not taking chances, I spent an afternoon cruising at 5000 rpm in fourth. The sound felt seamless and unstoppable.

So many miles covered. By the time I returned to Tennessee, I hadn’t changed my shirt in four days. (“This car,” my 6-year-old daughter said, “smells like people.”)

Long road trips in old stuff leave you familiar with personal ideas of risk and doubt: Why did A or B stop working? Did I bring the parts if C falls apart? Take enough journeys like this, you discover that giving air to those questions only makes the experience more like real life. And if you’re not on the road in some rusty old paper clip at least partly to escape reality, why did you even go?

10. The End, or the Awful Car You Make
(Is Equal to the Awful Car You Take)

In the end, it went from project to not-a-project. As all projects do.

From the start, I had maintained a project log on Instagram, under the tag #weissrat. Fake-German for White Rat. (Get it? Experiments! For science!) This was done mostly to note things for myself at low effort.

To my utter surprise, thousands followed along, there and in stories I wrote for the Hagerty website. Maybe it was the sense of attainability. Car culture is nothing if not exclusionary, gatekept by funding, but a crap car can be had by anybody. Or maybe it was the satisfaction of doing exactly as books say you shouldn’t.

Five thousand miles to California and back. These days, I take the BMW shopping and on trips around the South, in all kinds of weather. A 2002tii is technically a classic, but this is not a jewel under glass, some stationary monument to my own taste. It’s just a car, alive right now.

The odometer is still broken. Gonna leave that for a bit.

A good moment from a terrible year. Too worthless to keep and too valuable to sell. A way to get somewhere. And unavoidably—wonderfully, inarguably—mine.

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

The post Looking back on Weissrat: A slapdash resurrection and 5000-mile road trip in a dumpster-fresh BMW appeared first on Hagerty Media.

You’ll stare so hard you’ll think you’re looking into the future.

That’d be a useful skill for 2CV driving actually, being able to know exactly when you could push the throttle pedal all the way to the floor thus losing minimal momentum for whatever comes next.

Instead though, without the ability to know exactly what’s coming next, you have to stare. Intently, enough that even if you can’t see into the future, you’re at least prepared for it.

Reading the road is important in my Mazda RX-7 or Peugeot 106 Rallye, mostly because it stops things becoming a surprise at speed. It’s vital in my daily-driven Smart, with its 54bhp diesel engine, because lost momentum is anathema to fuel economy.

But in a 1963 Citroën 2CV, like that owned by Oliver Pickard, reading the road is fundamental to forward motion. Fail to anticipate—to get on the gas, to know exactly when not to brake, and to change gear at the perfect time, and you might as well not have left the house that morning for all the progress you’ll make.

I left the house at 4 a.m., though not specifically to drive a 2CV. I’m in France on holiday, and with no set plan, decided to swing by Oliver’s place.

When I say ‘swing by’, I’m actually aiming for the Alps and Ollie’s hundreds of miles west in the Limousin region, but he’s a friend (of that curious social media sort you can go years before actually meeting), I’m selling him a couple of seats for his project car, he’s having a go in my 106 Rallye for his YouTube channel, and in return, he’s offered me a razz in his 2CV. Sometimes detours are worth it.

What I didn’t expect was that while I’m there, Oliver’s father throws me the keys to his Citroën Dyane too. I’ve never driven a flat-twin Citroën, let alone enough of them for a twin-cylinder twin-test. Like I said, some detours are worth it.

The 2CV is what’s known as an AZA, a model built for only two years mixing parts from different generations of 2CV. It lacks the C-pillar windows that came in later. It has no conventional dampers, nor CV joints. It has earlier rear-hinged front doors too. Yet it has a later-style bonnet rather than the rippled job of the 1950s, and a more powerful—18bhp!—engine.

In blue, we have a 1974 Dyane, essentially a more conventional take on the 2CV, and if you’ll excuse the slightly absurd description—it makes sense in context—a more luxurious car.

It has, for instance, such decadent features as dampers, a full 602cc of capacity with 30bhp at its disposal, and separate front seats, albeit replaced in this car by more modern pews from an early Twingo. The doors open the conventional way too, and inside there’s more of what you’d describe as a dashboard.

Ollie’s 2CV starts up with a pulsing thud, two cylinders happily flailing away as their gases exit from a short exhaust somewhere just ahead of the driver’s door. It’s Kubota-esque, and a curious noise to hear emanating from an actual, full-sized car.

The gearchange is one of those things that has gone down in motoring folklore for being weird and undecipherable, but as each and every 2CV owner will tell you, and I’ll soon experience behind the wheel, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

You can think of the rod’s path a bit like a clock face. Neutral is at 12 o’clock. First is towards you at about 10. Second (away from you) and third (towards you) are back on the 12 plane. Fourth is selected from third—rock the knob to about 2 o’clock, then push all the way forward. It’s like that in the Dyane too, and the action in both is as mechanical as reaching into the engine bay and doing it yourself.

The beauty of it is that first is so low you only ever need it to pull away from rest, and fourth, the cruising gear, feels almost like putting the lever in the glovebox (if it had one), since you push it so far out of the way. Second and third meanwhile are used all the time, and it’s a swift, straight shot from one to the other.

To see a 2CV listing along a winding road is hilarious but as the driver, you’re sitting relatively low, so it doesn’t feel quite as jaunty from the seat—a little like the Renault 4 we drove in the 2022 Hagerty UK Bull Market List. Ollie says you almost prepare the car for each corner beforehand and he’s right: turn before you want to turn so the car reacts when you arrive at the bend itself. If you’ve heard of a preselector gearbox, this is more like preselector steering.

He’s driving my Rallye pretty gently in front but it still takes everything the 2CV’s engine has to keep up. The gentlest of hills need full throttle, steeper ones need a run-up and a lower gear, selected at precisely the right moment for maximum power. If there’s a corner beforehand then it must be taken as swiftly as the 125-section Michelins will allow. With tenacious roadholding, that’s usually swifter than you’d think.

And it’s an absolute riot, the whole process enacted with a jackhammer soundtrack, wind gusts coming through the open vents, and the heady thrill of committing your 100 per cent undivided attention to the preservation of movement.

The Dyane could scarcely be more different for a car whose mechanical layout is fundamentally similar. If it sounded absurd to call it luxurious, then it’s even more ridiculous, but no less true, to posit that this is the sporty one of the pair. It’s so much quicker, more precise, less turbulent and more refined (as much the acres of Dynamat as it being a decade newer) that the step is almost as great between it and the 2CV as it is between the Dyane and my Peugeot.

With actual dampers to call upon every movement is checked early, so the Dyane reacts more immediately to inputs. Throttle response is not notably better than the 2CV’s, but the reaction you get is so much more profound it almost feels supercharged. Ollie’s driving the Rallye quicker now but even so I can keep up with half the effort required of the 2CV. I think, but can’t be sure, that we even touched 60mph once. In the 2CV, I’d be surprised if we broke 45mph.

Ride comfort is another legendary quality of these cars, and I … basically don’t notice it. The 2CV sinks like a kneeling camel as soon as your arse hits the seat, but cornering angles aside still doesn’t feel all at sea on the road—its Land Rover-like travel just absorbs everything and keeps you mostly level whatever the road is doing beneath.

The Dyane is more stiffly suspended, in the same way marshmallows are stiffer than jelly. Even with the more modern Twingo seats there’s not a single jolt on Ollie’s tumultuous local roads that you might call uncomfortable—the change in road noise on a particularly craggy section is more noticeable than the change in wheel movement.

In this quiet little corner of France, I can see why the 2CV is the perfect car. Oliver’s experience behind the wheel takes up any slack that the performance can’t handle on its own, and with mostly local trips, nowhere takes too long to get to anyway. Engagement is more important, and short of a prewar car nothing else would keep you so on-the-ball between A and B.

The Dyane’s the car I’d recommend if you like the idea but do need more modern performance. Its experience isn’t as vivid as that of the 2CV, but its extra layer of ability would, in the U.K. at least where we’re not blessed with the blissful isolation of rural France, encourage me to use it more often.

I’d rather like one. With all that staring into the future, I probably should have seen it coming …

Via Hagerty UK

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Justin Bieber likes hockey. Who knew? Well, apparently a lot of people in Toronto, as the Canadian-born singer is a regular at Maple Leafs games. But fellow Canadian slap-shotter Trevor Johnson didn’t know until a few years ago, when he was playing in the Italian national league. A friend approached him about setting up a private hockey game for Bieber, who was passing through on tour. This led to a side gig for Johnson organizing Bieber’s private games, which involves renting a rink, finding players, and booking rooms and catering wherever the entertainer is traveling. That led Johnson to another job they don’t tell you about in high-school career counseling: organizing car rallies.

Which sounds like a pretty fun way to prove your parents wrong about never amounting to anything because you like cars (or hockey) more than studying geometry and French. At least, it is if you enjoy spending hours negotiating with hotels that don’t appreciate their parking lots getting oiled, being on 24-hour call for wealthy folk who are used to getting their way, having contingencies at the ready for a gaggle of cars that might be a century old, and generally ensuring that a weeklong traveling roadshow with a million possible disaster triggers runs on time and without incident. “So far, no cops, no lawsuits,” says Johnson.

He had no idea that hockey would lead to Bieber, which would lead to old-car rallies until 2018, when another friend asked Johnson if he wanted to help with a 100-years-of-Bentley tour being run by a friend of mine, Craig Ekberg, who has put together several Bentley rallies on the West Coast. Ekberg and his co-organizers wanted to step up the rally’s game, with fancier hotels, finer food, gift bags for the co-drivers, and other accoutrements of the good life. “They’re paying you to drive their cars on public roads, which they could do for free, so you need to make it pretty damn cool,” Johnson says. The Bentley run was a hit, and it led to Johnson founding his own travel and events company, the Luxury Rally Club, in 2019.

Since then, and despite the pandemic, he has organized rallies along the old Route 66 and staged a run of 50 Lamborghini Countaches during the 2021 Monterey Car Week. He’s currently working on one-make rallies for the Mercedes-Benz 300SL and Porsche Carrera GT. The challenges can be daunting. Just finding cars with owners willing to pay $5000 to $15,000 to come along is his biggest task. “A lot of these guys don’t have Instagram; they can be hard to reach,” says Johnson. Another is picking the right regions and routes.

Do the job long enough and you’re going to see some stuff. Like the guy on the Countach rally who didn’t know how to put gas in his own car just minutes before the start. Or the Bentley owner who overslept and then loudly demanded that the organizers of the illustrious Quail Motorsports Gathering rip down a fence to let him in late (they did). And the mid-’60s Corvette Sting Ray that plowed into a feral hog at speed near the Grand Canyon, hosing the driver’s wife with pig innards. “She was actually pretty cool about it,” insists Johnson, though we might need a second source on that.

The point of telling you this: There are ways to be involved in and make a living from the car world that may not be obvious to young people of modest backgrounds who wonder if they’ll ever get to see a Ferrari in person. At Pebble Beach, at Scottsdale, and at every car auction and gathering that is more than a cars and coffee, paid staff make the wheels turn. It’s a business that runs on relationships, not on résumés or college degrees, meaning it rewards initiative more than much of the working world. And those relationships often forge best in buzzing auction tents or in hot hotel parking lots or out on lonely roads where an owner needs a flashlight held while he futzes with a Ferrari.

For most of us, this is a hobby; for people like Trevor Johnson, it’s a job—and by the looks of it, a pretty fun one that I wish someone had told me about in high school.

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There’s nothing like a road trip—even if it’s a terrible one. In fact, awful road trips often create the best memories.

In early August 1970, I flew to Idaho to start my freshman year of college. I arrived in Idaho Falls and headed to campus, where I shared an apartment with four strangers with whom I eventually became good friends.

Like so many college kids, I needed a job, and with my experience, it was easy to find work at a body shop. I was soon hired at the Ford dealership for $5 an hour and all the cookies I could eat.

I could walk to classes, but I needed transportation to get to work. One of my co-workers sold me an old Suzuki motorcycle for $50. I rode it all over town, and as fall turned to winter in Idaho, I discovered that motorcycles tended to fall down—a lot—in the snow.

I went home to Connecticut for Christmas break and told my father I needed a car. We found a 1971 VW Super Beetle that had been hit hard in the front. We sourced a good front clip to graft onto the car, and Dad worked with me as we welded it to the unibody in the middle of the rocker panels. I then resprayed the front of the car to match the original silver-blue paint, and it was running and driving within a week. A week later, it was registered and I was packed.

The VW may have been relatively new, with only about 10,000 miles on the odometer, but it had been in a major accident and was mechanically unknown. For some reason, I thought it was a good idea to drive it 2300 miles to Idaho. Heading out solo, I had my toolbox, an eight-track tape player with four tapes, a sleeping bag, and my clothes. The car didn’t even have a radio.

I aimed the Super Beetle west using an AAA route book to guide me. Along the way, I stopped in Chicago, where my aunt and uncle fed me, gave me a bed, and slipped me $20. I was a poor college kid, so I could only afford one night in a motel. The other nights I slept alongside the highway, bundled up in the sleeping bag and my Air Force surplus coat.

Each morning, I’d scrape the windshield and all the windows—on the inside and outside. On the road, it took about an hour to get any kind of warm air from the VW’s heater box to the defroster vents. I wasn’t too cold during the day when the sun was out, but it got colder after dark. One night, even the carburetor froze, making the Beetle especially hard to start.

While I was traveling the desolate roads of Wyoming, the wind buffeted the VW and I started to see the carcasses of semitrailers that had been swept onto their sides. Wind-driven snow made visibility difficult, and many trucks and cars had pulled onto the shoulder. Suddenly, the wind hit the car so hard that it tilted onto two wheels, and I thought it was going to roll. I stopped under a bridge to escape the wind. When I opened the door, it was ripped out of my hands and slammed forward into the fender, badly bending the hinges. Using a small socket as a fulcrum, I managed to bend the hinges back until I could close the door.

Into the wind, the little car struggled in third gear, and I didn’t know what to do, so I pulled into a truck stop. The waitress asked me where I was headed, and I told her I was returning to school in Idaho. I also mentioned that I was going to wait for the winds to die down. She told me that if I did that, I’d be there for a few months.

Back on the road near Laramie, it was so dreadful I couldn’t get the VW out of second gear. After the cold and difficult drive, I was so excited to hit the Idaho border, knowing that I could grab a hot shower, sleep in a warm bed, and have all the cookies I could eat. Considering what I had put it through, the Bug certainly deserved a cookie, too.

At the close of the school year, a girl I was dating needed a ride home to California, so I volunteered. After getting her there, I sold the VW to her brother and took the fast way home—I flew!

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Howard Stanton’s 1976 Lamborghini Urraco P300 took the long route to Amelia Island, Florida. The looooong route.

Built in Italy and sold by a Lebonese-based Lamborghini dealership to a buyer in Saudi Arabia (Stanton believes possibly to a member of the royal family), it was eventually imported to the U.S. by a Saudi American and went through three more owners here before Stanton bought it through Bring a Trailer last year. And he wasn’t the only one who wanted it.

“Unfortunately, a couple other bidders wanted it too,” he says, “so I felt pretty fortunate to get it.”

If you’ve never seen a Urraco—perhaps never even heard of it—you’re forgiven. Fewer than 800 were built.

Launched for 1973 as a competitor to the Ferrari Dino and Alfa Romeo Montreal, the Urraco—named for a small fighting bull—was the shape of future high-performance sports cars. With a transversely mounted V-8 engine set just forward of the rear axle and behind the passenger compartment, the Urraco continued down the design path of the successful Lamborghini Miura, however the sharp edges and acute angles of the Urraco foreshadowed the yet-to-come Countach and virtually every other Lamborghini sports car made since.

It was exactly what Stanton had been searching for. “I’d been looking for a couple of years,” he says. “I saw some others, but this is a good one—knock on wood.”

Designed by Bertone’s Marcello Gandani, who also penned the Miura, Countach, and Diablo, the Urraco is a two-door sports car with a 2+2 seating design with a small rear seat that’s more useful for stashing things than people. No matter. Not to Stanton, anyway.

“I like the shape of it,” says Stanton, who joined the just-completed 1000-mile Amelia Island or Bust Tour near his home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “You can tell that Gandini loved louvers, as do I, and I just think it has such clean lines.”

He also loves its Blue Notte exterior—he’s owned three other cars with a similar paint job. “That sealed the deal,” Stanton says. “My wife (Kate) calls it ‘Howie Blue.’”

And then there’s the Urraco’s No. 1 attraction: the engine. Power comes courtesy of a 3.0-liter overhead cam V-8 engine that generates 265 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque. Two smaller engines were also offered during the little bull’s production run: the original 2.5-liter mill and an Italian-market 2.0-liter variant designed to avoid the country’s high taxes for anything over 2000 cc. All are mated to a five-speed manual transaxle. Only 205 examples of the P300 were bult, along with 522 of the P250 and 68 of the P200.

The 3.0 engine can propel the Urraco P300 from 0–60 mph in only 5.6 seconds and up to a top speed of 162 mph.

“The best part about it is the sound,” Stanton says.

“It’s also the best thing about following it,” says fellow Amelia Tour participant Aaron Meisner.

“The burbles on acceleration and deceleration …,” Stanton says, “It just sounds so great.”

Other features are MacPherson struts on all four wheels, lower A-arms and sway bars front and rear, rack and pinion steering, four-wheel disc brakes, and magnesium alloy wheels. Inside, the Urraco has air conditioning, suede upholstery, leather-covered bucket seats, a leather-wrapped steering wheel, power windows, AM/FM/cassette stereo with power antenna, and a rear window defroster.

Lamborghini had ambitions of selling 1000 Urracos per year, but its high MSRP—$26,900 for the ’76 P300 (about $133,000 today)—was nearly double that of a Porsche 911. And the oil crisis came along within months of its original release. It was doomed from the start.

Stanton wonders what could have been, but he’s also happy about what is. “It’s so much fun and so cool,” he says. “So many people see it and say, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve never seen one of those!’ It gets a lot of attention.”

And it will likely receive a lot more of it this weekend as Stanton joins thousands of fellow enthusiasts at The Amelia.

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Rob Kauffman isn’t into trailer queens. If he owns a car, you can bet that he’s going to drive it. And he has about 50 of them in his collection. He just doesn’t call it that.

“I don’t really consider it a collection because I like driving all of my cars,” he says. “I’m an enthusiast—I like all kinds of different things; I have everything from a 1901 Panhard to a McLaren P1. I like to experience the different eras and how the technology has changed, and I like to take the cars to events and share them with people. That’s a lot of fun.”

Among the star cars in Kauffman’s Charlotte garage—which is actually a warehouse—is the 1966 Ford GT40 MKII (chassis P/1046) that Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon drove to victory in the ’66 Le Mans 24 Hours. He also owns the Sunoco/Penske 1973 Porsche 917/30 Can-Am Spyder that Mark Donohue drove to the Can-Am Series championship.

There are plenty of beautiful classics for sale at RK Motors in the warehouse next door, too. Among the eye catchers in RK’s approximately 100-car inventory are a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado, a 1972 Camaro Z/28, an immaculate 1963 Volkswagen Beetle survivor, a 1966 Ford Bronco, and a 1964 Land Rover Series IIA.

So which car would Kauffman choose if he could have only one? He’ll take his Silver Blue 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Split Window Coupe.

“On a nice day like today, the Cobra would be a contender, but the ’63 is my go-to car—I’m taking it home today,” he says with a smile. “I’m also a ‘63, so we’re the same age. It’s a good reminder of your roots, and it’s super enjoyable to drive.”

Kauffman’s two-warehouse bevy of classics was the first stop on Day 4 of the 1000-mile Amelia Island or Bust Tour. After taking more twisty roads through the Blue Ridge Mountains and enjoying lunch on Lake Lure—the primary filming location for Dirty Dancing, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray—things straightened out a bit.

The drive to North Augusta, South Carolina, was long, but we broke things up with a 20-minute stop at the humongous BMW factory in Greer. The Zentrum Museum there has a nice display of cars, a gift shop, and the Isetta Cafe.

Tomorrow we cross the Savannah River into Georgia on our final push for Amelia Island. Rob Kauffman and his ’63 Corvette would fit right in.

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In deference to some of the less nimble cars on the Amelia Island or Bust Tour, routemaster Dave Hord offered a reprieve from the twisty mountain roads on day three of the 1000-mile jaunt from Virginia to Florida. He labeled the day’s drive “Touring Day,” which described both the calmer North Carolina route and the amazing stops, which included tours of some legendary NASCAR team facilities.

Technically, the NASCAR tour started a day earlier at the Wood Brothers Racing Museum in Stuart, Virginia, 30 miles from Martinsville Speedway. If you’re new to oval-track racing, Wood Brothers may not be as familiar as Penske or Hendrick, but historically speaking they’re a pretty big deal. Family patriarch Glen Wood (sometimes spelled Glenn) started the team in 1950, making Wood Brothers the oldest continuously running team in NASCAR.

Glen raced through 1964, with younger brother Leonard serving as crew chief, engine builder, and co-founder. Glen, who died in 2019 at age 93, was later named one of the top 50 drivers in NASCAR history, while Leonard—in addition to his engineering skills—is considered the innovator of the modern pit stop.

Twenty of the top 50 drivers in NASCAR history took the wheel for Wood Brothers, a list that includes the likes of A.J. Foyt, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Ned Jarrett, Dale Jarrett, Buddy Baker, Neil Bonnett, Ricky Rudd, Mark Martin, Bill Elliott, and Ralph Earnhardt, father of Dale Earnhardt.

“We’ve been at this a while,” says Wood Brothers’ Bennie Belcher. “It’s definitely more complicated now because technology has taken it to a whole new level, but we’re still doing it. It definitely gets in your blood.”

And it’s clearly hard to slow down. In fact, 87-year-old Leonard still comes to work five days a week.

“He’s very much a mechanical genius,” Belcher says, pointing out miniature running engines that Leonard has built. “He still comes in every day, 8 to 5.”

The museum has dozens of cars on display, including a near-exact replica of the 1954 Ford that Glen raced from the pole at the 1958 Daytona 500, the last race held on the beach.

Glen’s son Len, who hosted the tour and affection calls his father “Daddy,” will be showing one of the team’s cars at the Amelia Island Concours on Sunday.

Day three of our tour began at Team Penske Racing in Mooresville, North Carolina. COVID protocols limited access, but Penske’s huge team shop was open, with dozens of racing trophies on display. The shop’s expansive windows offer a clear view of the work being done on several of the team’s Ford cars, including 2022 Daytona champion Austin Cindric’s No. 2 car and Ryan Blaney’s No. 12.

Rolling past Kyle Busch Motorsports, we stopped for lunch and a tour of Tim Lingerfelt’s Porsche restoration shop, Carolina Coach Crafters, which showed off some impressive metal-working skills. Then it was on to the wide-eyed, jaw-dropping highlight of the day, a behind-the-scenes tour of Hendrick Motorsports in Charlotte.

Founded by Rick Hendrick in 1984 as All-Star Racing, Hendrick Motorsports has won 339 races and 16 drivers championships across all three major NASCAR series. Notable Hendrick drivers include Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kyle Busch, Ricky Rudd, Terry Labonte, and Kasey Kahne. Hendrick is the reigning Cup Series champion, with Kyle Larson taking the title in his No. 5 Chevrolet.

First stop on Hendrick’s sprawling campus is the pit crew area, where the team has just completed its daily practice. At first glance, it’s obvious that today’s pit crews look differently than they did in the early days, and Terry, our tour guide, quickly affirms what our eyes are seeing. “These guys are all former college athletes,” he says. “They have daily workouts, daily training. This is a full-time job.”

He also explains that the speed in which a pit crew can complete each stop is now less than 10 seconds. “Twelve used to be good, now—with the new single lug (on the tires)—it’s nine.”

On the way to the machine shop, we pass a fishing pond with a sign that says it’s open to employees only—catch and release. Terry tells us that it’s stocked with several species of fish, which is likely why they’ve caught trespassers trying to catch some for themselves.

Perhaps the most fascinating part of the tour is top secret, so we’re told absolutely no photos are allowed in the machine shop. “This is the war room,” Terry says. “Can’t let anyone take pictures in here.”

Once inside, we’re treated to a beehive of activity as technicians work on machines that are worth millions of dollars. Terry explains that although Hendrick also leases some of its engines to other teams, “only a Hendrick guy can touch a Hendrick engine.”

We walk past rows and rows of engines in various stages of assembly, along with complete mills that were used in one race and are being prepped for the next. One of the rooms holds a simulator that can be formatted to put an engine through the paces it will experience in a race. Not just any race, but whatever race they choose. Plug in Daytona, it runs the engine just as it would at Daytona.

Back outside, we walk past early Hendrick buildings while Terry points out the many new additions. “It’s just like a college campus. It just keeps growing.”

We’re welcomed inside one building to check out Rick Hendricks’ personal collection—again, no photos allowed. That’s too bad because there’s no way to describe his giant garage and the 200+ cars inside accurately enough to provide a proper picture. It’s so detailed, so immense that you’re bombarded by sensory overload.

Hendrick has designed the garage in a way that serves as a walk through the history of his life. Laid out like a city square, the store fronts along the walls all have something to do with his past. There’s a working Dairy Queen, drive-in theatre, and car dealership. Since Hendrick is a Chevrolet guy, Chevys are mostly what you see, but there’s also a fire truck, Snake and Mongoose drag cars, a Ferrari, a super-rare 1925 House Car, and a police car formally driven by an officer who hounded him as a teenager. The two are now friends. Among the jaw-droppers is a collection 1967 Corvettes in every conceivable color combination.

And the place is not all about cars. Hendrick is also a fan of movies and music. Among the many treasures in his collection are a stage costume that Elvis wore on near the end of his career and the robe that Sylvester Stallone wore in Rocky. Upstairs is a special room filled with autographed guitars from a wide range of pop and country stars—name one, he likely has it. He’s clearly a football fan too, which explains his collection of signed footballs from every winning Super Bowl quarterback.

The last stop is the Hendrick Museum, which displays significant race cars from the team’s history. One is the 2004 Chevy that Jimmie Johnson drove to victory at nearby Lowe’s Motor Speedway one week after the tragic loss of 10 Hendrick family members and personnel in a plane crash. Every victory since then has included a tribute to those who were lost.

It’s just one of the lasting memories from Touring day. Tomorrow brings one more exhilarating drive on twisty mountain roads before the route smooths out for our final push to Amelia Island.

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Those in the know call them “Dave Roads.” Anyone who has ever been on the Amelia Island or Bust Tour knows that’s shorthand for roads that have no lines and very few signs—curvy, undulating, on-the-edge-of-your-seat roads with sharp turns, fast inclines, and sudden drops. Exhilarating for the driver but sometimes a white-knuckle, hold-your-breath experience for the navigator.

These are the roads that course designer Dave Hord lives for. So when he labeled day two of this year’s 1000-mile tour from the Manassas, Virginia, to Florida a “driver’s day,” that meant just one thing: lots of Dave Roads. And he enjoyed them in a 1984 Porsche 911 Targa, the perfect precision machine to tackle roads like these.

“When you drive them well they’re really rewarding; if you don’t drive them well they can be frustrating,” Hord says of this winding section of asphalt through the Blue Ridge Mountains. “Since we have so many different kinds of cars on the tour, some people choose to skip them for a straighter route. But in the right car, they’re so much fun.” Judging from the enthusiasm of his fellow drivers, he isn’t the only one who thinks so.

One of those drivers had to wait a little longer than the others to experience that exhilaration. Aaron Meisner, a four-year veteran of the tour, ran into a little trouble with his 1978 Alfa Romeo Spider before reaching the first Dave Road of the day. But, surprisingly, he wasn’t complaining. He loves getting his hands dirty and fixing a problem himself.

Meisner, who lives in Baltimore, has driven a different car in each tour—a BMW Z4 Coupe, Ferrari 308, Jaguar E-Type, and now the Alfa. Although Hord warns all drivers to test their car with a 200-mile jaunt before arriving for the Amelia Island or Bust Tour, Meisner pushed the envelope a bit. He purchased the Alfa from Bring a Trailer on Christmas Eve—he and his wife hope to tour Sicily in it after their third child heads off to college—and as soon as the roadster arrived he began readying it for the tour.

“Of course, they’re never quite what you’re hoping they’ll be,” Meisner says. “So I tried to address everything I thought might fail. I put in a new alternator, water pump, and LED headlights, sorted the electrical system—just anything I thought was a vulnerable from a reliability standpoint.”

Meisner also wanted heated seats, so he ordered everything that he’d need … while secretly hoping the parts wouldn’t arrive until after he’d left.

“My worst fear was they’d show up 72 hours before I’d go on the tour, because I’d want to put them in, and of course that’s exactly what happened. Having never done upholstery before, I spent three days disassembling and assembling the seats—and finished the night before I left. And I’m glad I did.”

That’s because he immediately dropped the top for the tour, even with temperatures in the 30s. The weather was warmer on day two—a fortunate development, because Meisner had some roadside work to do.

“I started to smell fuel, and in my experience with old cars the smell of fuel is a problem that never goes away on its own,” he says. “So we pulled over on the side of the road. I initially assumed it was one of my own repairs gone bad, but it turned out to be a fuel hose that I hadn’t gotten to service.”

Meisner had everything to fix the ruptured fuel line … except the fuel line itself. Fellow tour participants David Geisinger and Aimee Cardwell came to his rescue, locating a NAPA Service Center, which gave them a 3/8-inch fuel line. They also purchased a couple of clips, and before long Meisner had the Alfa back on the road.

“The line I pulled was clearly labeled ‘not intended for fuel injection,’” he says with a laugh. “The pressure was too much for it.”

Not for Meisner.

“Part of the joy of driving these older cars isn’t just getting to your destination but getting to your destination in a car that no reasonable person thinks will make it,” he says. “It’s infinitely more gratifying having overcome those challenges.”

And in time to enjoy the Dave Roads.

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Back in early 2021, my buddy Harry started telling me about this totally bitchin’ time capsule of a salvage yard he found just outside of Kingman, AZ. If you’ve read some of my earlier stories then you know junkyards are my jam. If you haven’t, well… yeah, junkyards are my jam. Anyways, he shot me over a few photos he had taken while he was at this junkyard and as soon as I saw them, I knew I needed to check this place out. It was just too good to pass up. Now the question was, when could I find time to head to Kingman, AZ just to check out a junkyard?

That’s roughly 5 hours and some change each way in the Battle Wagon (2001 Ford E350 cargo van) from Los Angeles, CA. It’s not like running over to Glendale or Pasadena. This was more like going to LAX during rush hour on a Friday. But with the ever-growing popularity of the van scene, parts that were easy to find 5 years ago are getting pretty tough to track down today. So a weekend junkyard run was starting to sound like a logical thing to do. We just had to make it fun.

A few months after talking to Harry about the yard, he posted this interesting little bar that had been installed in a custom van previously. It was up for sale on Face Book marketplace. By “bar” I mean the drinkin’ kind. You know, they were in a lot of custom vans back in the 70’s for “Entertainment” purposes. This was a pretty legit lil’ setup if I do say so myself; it looked to be out of a 2nd Gen Ford Van. The price was right so I just pulled the trigger on it. I figured I would be out that way sooner or later to check out that yard and I could just grab it then. Harry was cool with that, so I got him paid.

After that conversation and purchase, life just kept moving and I honestly forgot all about buying that bar. You know how it goes. Things come up, other things happen. We’ve all been there. (No, Matt, we have NOT all bought a bar for a custom van and forgotten about it — Ed.) That’s pretty much how it went for me until October of 2021. I got a message from Harry on FB thankfully reminding me about the bar. Honestly if he hadn’t messaged, I’d have never been the wiser. He said he was going to be back in Lake Havasu late January to pack up all his stuff and take it back to Texas with him where he was now living. January is actually a fine time to be in Arizona, so I put it on the calendar. We were making this run. First Lake Havasu, then onto Kingman to check out that junkyard. The trip was locked in.

I was totally excited to get out to Arizona and see what this yard had to offer. From what Harry said, it had quite a few vans in it. He saw some early vans (pre 70’s), some 2nd Gen Fords (1968-1974), Mid Dodges, especially pre 1979 and 3rd Gen Fords and Chevys. In particular, 1971-1977 3rd Gen Chevys, which are really what I’m into. To see a junkyard with more than one of these in it is getting unheard of anymore. Here in Southern California you’ll see one here and one there, but they’re stripped fast and crushed shortly thereafter. These Arizona yards look to be old school, where they don’t scrap the car till it has nothing left to give. That’s rare these days and I’m seriously grateful for it.

There it was, Friday, Jan 28th. We’re planning to head out to Lake Havasu early the morning of Saturday, Jan 29th. Everything was set. We’d take our time driving to Havasu, stop and check stuff out along the way, get there that afternoon, grab the bar from Harry, then head to the junkyard with him to check it out. After that, find a hotel for the night. Then if the yard was really that good (fingers crossed), we could hit it again in the morning. That would still give us time to be back on the road Sunday afternoon, getting back to L.A. early Sunday evening. Nice little weekend. It was a good plan. Was a good plan, WAS…

We got up early on Saturday and hit the road. It was a perfect morning to get outta town. Clear skies, good forecast, we were excited to go. Everything was going to the plan. About half way to Lake Havasu, around 9 AM we got a message from Harry. It said, “I tracked down the junkyard… they are closed today and tomorrow”.

Well, we were too far into the trip to turn back now. All we could do was keep going, get there and see what we could find. We could still swing by the junkyard and see if it was actually closed when we got to Kingman. So when we arrived in Havasu, we took a minute and called and they were definitely closed until Monday. Now what? We searched out the cheapest decent hotel we could find in Lake Havasu for the night, checked in, got online and started digging around. We figured we’d see if there were any other salvage yards around the area. We could hit others while we were there waiting for the main reason we traveled all this way to open on Monday morning. Nope, pretty much everything was closed until Monday morning. It was like being back in the 1950’s. So we killed time in Havasu all Sunday morning, checking out antique shops and really anything we could find open. Then we got on I-40 East and headed down the road another hour to Kingman, AZ.

We just wanted to find a room for the night and figure out where the junkyard was so we could be there right when they opened at 8 AM Monday morning. We were already out on the road an extra day so we had to make the best of it and try to make sure we were back Monday evening at the latest.

I was watching the GPS on my phone as it guided us to the address that Harry gave us for the salvage yard. Originally he had planned to go with us, but he had an eighteen hour drive back to Dallas, TX himself and he had to get on the road.

5 miles, 2 miles, half a mile, there it was. As I saw the sign for the junkyard, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had driven past this place prolly more than two dozen times on cross country road trips. Every time I thought to myself “I gotta get in there!” but was never able to stop. Not this time. Things had just gotten very very exciting for me. After a decade of driving by this place, I was finally gonna get in there. So we found a hotel, got some Arby’s, watched “Roadhouse” on the FREE CABLE TV and turned in early. We had an early rise ahead of us.

Monday morning we were up bright and early. We grabbed breakfast at Mr D’z Route 66 Diner, headed across the street to drive through the KINGMAN, AZ Route 66 sign, then moseyed on down to Dan’s Auto Salvage on Highway 66.

As we walked into the office of Dan’s, it was like a flashback to all the small independent junkyards I grew up going to when I was a teenager in Southern Illinois. I talked to the guys who ran the place and told them what I was looking for. They gave us run of the yard to go look and see what we could find. It was fantastic! We literally looked at every van they had — and most of the cars and trucks too.

I took pictures of the parts I was interested in then we went back to the office to make sure they would sell them and negotiate a price. The guys there were super cool and agreed to sell me everything I wanted except for one thing, which I was totally cool with. So we went to the Battle Wagon, grabbed tools and went to pulling the parts.

By the time we got everything pulled and paid for it was already 2 pm and we really needed to get on the road back to Los Angeles. We loaded the parts, put away the tools and headed West back home.

On the drive home we would randomly check the usual online sale sites like Craigs and Offerup to see if there was anything good. That’s how we scored a staggered set of 15×7 and 15×10 slot mags we just couldn’t pass up.

After we got home we unloaded our parts to see what all we grabbed on this trip. Not a bad little haul. A crank-out bubble window, a set of the elusive Chevy van step mats, a 3rd Gen Chevy slider extender which we needed for one of the project vans up in Washington, some mid Dodge sport mirrors, 71-84 deluxe Chevy / GMC tail lights, one custom van port window, the set of slot mags and last but not least, The Bar which helped instigate this whole adventure. With as tough as it’s getting to find these parts nowadays, this wasn’t a bad lil’ haul of parts at all.

You ever notice how the drive home always seems to take longer than the drive there? It’ll give you time to think about stuff — and that I did. When we started this adventure Saturday morning, I thought I was gonna check out an old junkyard my buddy had told me about and be back home the next day. On the drive home I smiled cause nothing had gone to plan and I’d gotten to check out a place I had been wondering about for well over a decade. It was just as cool as I’d hoped it would be… better, actually!

The post Parts Run: Searching out old van parts in Arizona appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There are a lot of important decisions that have to be made when embarking on a road trip. The destination, route, vehicle, schedule, and passengers are all variables that can make the difference between a drive to remember and one you wish you could forget. Another important variable? Your choice(s) in snacks.

Sajeev Mehta, one of our Senior Editors, posted a question in the Hagerty Community asking for our readers’ go-to road trip snack, and unsurprisingly, we got a lot of delicious answers. People are nearly as opinionated about their choice of grub as they are about their automobiles.

Team Sweet

Chocolate candy was a big winner in this camp, with standard candy bars making a number of appearances. In a hot climate, however, chocolate can spell disaster for your fingers—and eventually your steering wheel and/or upholstery. The natural artificial solution to this predicament is, of course, the M&M. These timeless treats were designed with high temperatures in mind, and their candy shell provides not only a protection from melting but a convenient way to enjoy a small, uniform portion at a time. (We suppose you could also share them.)

Notable mentions: Tootsie Pops, granola bars. Take caution with Fig Newtons.

Team Salty

The MVP here was clearly beef jerky, as the popular protein-packed snack tends to be a lot less messy than chips. Fritos were another suggestion, but the problem there lies with the Honey BBQ Flavor Twists—the undisputed best flavor despite fierce competition from Chili Cheese—are only available in a single serving size, no matter how big that serving size may be. Open the bag and it’s all over. Alas, they’re too good for their own good!

Other popular items in this category were sunflower seeds and pistachios. Another potential messy snack, both of these labor-intensive choices are a road trip must-have for those preferring less processed foods. Finding a place to keep your bottle of empties is just a part of life on the open road.

Pretzels and bags of snack mixes are another excellent go-to, as they’re easy to handle and not messy.

Our dark horse in this category is Sabritones. The crispy chile-lime-flavored wheat snack, hailing from Mexico, may leave your fingers covered in a bit of fine powder, but it’s worth it. Tough to find in some parts, these always make an appearance when the Hagerty team heads west.

Team Both

There were several proponents in the community that advocated for mixing salty and sweet. Trail mix combining nuts, raisins, and the road trip stalwart M&Ms was an excellent suggestion.

Corn Nuts mixed with M&M was another suggestion that seemed strange at first. We must admit, now we’re curious. This could be a game-changer.

Team No Food in My Car

A few community members were staunchly opposed to food or beverages in their car, which is fine. I just now know not to expect an invite from any of these people to ride shotgun. Considering one suggestion of worst road trip snack among this contingent included an alarming allusion to a “chili dog incident,” which—though vague—sufficiently explains cause for caution. People in this camp prefer roadside stops for food at Wawa, Waffle House, Whataburger, and presumably other less alliterative locations. What’s important is that you’re hitting the road!

The post According to you: The essential road trip snacks appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Occasionally, you can achieve a narrow and fleeting kind of celebrity by appearing in a car magazine. As did my 15-year-old nephew Lucas when I wrote earlier this year about his plight. He’s a teenager with an obsession for old things and old cars at a time of life when most kids are preoccupied with social media and its demands for pop-cult conformity. Lucas’s passions have only sharpened as he’s aged, and at a cost; if you want a social life at 15, it might be best to keep to yourself the wonders of Cuphead, an eccentric video game with a jazzy 1930s cartoon theme and soundtrack, or old 16-millimeter newsreels unearthed in antique shops.

Emails flowed in, one even offering a cash donation to Lucas’s future car fund. A beguiling note came from Scott Dorsey at the Freedom Road Rally, inviting Lucas to join Dorsey’s next six-day, 850-mile vintage-car tour, which this year was aimed at the Adirondack hinterlands of New York. Dorsey has been organizing tours under his Freedom Road Rally brand since 2004, and though he makes efforts to encourage youth participation, teenagers are not his prime demographic. Nonetheless, after reading about Lucas, he figured the kid would enjoy a week in the company of like-minded antique-car lovers, especially after more than a year of closeted pandemic isolation. Really, Dorsey had no idea. Lucas was over the fence and around the moon with joy when we told him, and for the next three months, he periodically texted me updates of the number of seconds remaining until departure.

Unfortunately, Lucas is still too young to drive, so the duty fell to your humble narrator to obtain a suitable vintage car and act as chauffeur. Lately, Lucas had been texting me a string of ads for late-1940s and early ’50s cars, so I requested the 1949 Cadillac Series 62 sedan out of the Hagerty garage. It was an unknown quantity, an unrestored original showing 47,000 miles on an odometer that probably hasn’t spun much in the past couple of decades. Thankfully, I didn’t learn until after the rally that the car previously belonged to old friends of the Hagerty family. “Anything can happen or nothing can happen,” summed up our fleet manager, Tony Pietrangelo, and with that, the Cadillac was booked in.

We rolled out from Lucas’s house precisely at 7:00 a.m., just as the sun was starting to cook up yet another muggy late-July day in Detroit. Due to a shipping snafu, the Cadillac had only been trucked as far as Canton, Michigan, on its journey to the rally start in Syracuse, so the job landed on Lucas and me to jockey it the extra 500 miles out (and back), more than doubling our anticipated mileage. If the old Cad was intending to blow, it would have ample opportunity.

By the time we were passing The Glass House, Ford’s aquamarine headquarters near Detroit, Lucas had the tunes up and running, streaming from his phone to a Bluetooth speaker he borrowed from his mom. It started with Kitty Kallen songbirding “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” in 1945 with the Harry James Orchestra, then Bobby Darin belting out “Mack the Knife,” then Sinatra doing it “My Way,” and so on through a collection of brassy American standards. Lucas sang right along, knowing all the words, as we whisked through Motown’s concrete canyons, the wind wings cranked out on the old Cadillac, and, as Kerouac wrote of his own journey in a ’47 Cad, “nowhere to go but everywhere.”

Out on the Ohio Turnpike, Cadillac’s first overhead-valve engine, a 331 V-8 still wearing its original chipped and stained navy-blue paint, inhaled the miles without a wobble. But the four-speed Hydra-Matic was prone to snap our heads with a hard shift, and it was leaving unseemly puddles of ATF at every fuel stop. In a ’49 Cadillac, you pull up the carpet in the passenger footwell to check the transmission dipstick, and it showed full. Actually, more than full (a fact that would become revelatory later), and we figured that as long as the transmission could lube itself, it probably wouldn’t strand us. Probably.

After nine hours of superslab covered at the Cadillac’s most comfortable speed of 63-ish mph, Syracuse finally rose on the horizon. The meet-up hotel was in the process of converting from a Holiday Inn to a Ramada, and it was suffering from glaring lack of upkeep—including a broken water boiler, meaning cold showers for all. While I was in the lot checking over the Cadillac and the other cars in the rally, Lucas texted from the room that there were stains on the walls and some kind of unidentifiable ick on the TV remote. When faced with such situations, with trifling imperfections in the otherwise antiseptic polyester norm of modern highway travel, I always relativize. “Well, it sounds better than a foxhole on Iwo Jima,” I said. Lucas proved immune to this teachable moment about maintaining a broad perspective and instead texted his mother, who then texted me with an offer to pay for a room at another hotel.

“So that’s how it’s going to be,” I ranted to myself with a flash of irritation. When the going gets tough, the kid gets on iMessage with Mom. Then followed the same huffy observation that every adult has made at one time or another since Adam and Eve: “Things sure have changed since I was a kid!”

Dorsey’s concept of a road rally can be summed up as follows: Pick a scenic corner of rural America, give everyone exceedingly clear directions, limit the daily slog to between 100 and 200 miles, and sprinkle in lots of stops at the type of little museums and offbeat roadside attractions that rushing travelers never seem to make time for anymore. While the name of the event, the Freedom Road Rally, seems pregnant with political overtone in this overheated age, Dorsey actually came up with it not long after terrorists in 2001 forever ruined his birthday of September 11. And about four years ago, he declared his rally a “politics-free zone, because we’re all on vacation and there’s no point in arguing about sh*t we can’t do anything about.”

On the first day, our band of old-car rallyists cruised a two-lane back road to our first stop, the historic Fort Ontario, a star-shaped citadel on Lake Ontario that dates back to before the Revolutionary War. It was captured, destroyed, and rebuilt several times, most recently after the Civil War, when gun ports for 32-pound howitzers were installed into a V-shaped cauldron of walls that lead to the main entrance. During an attack, the guns were there to fire canisters full of iron tennis balls at the oncoming enemy, the walls constructed of jagged stone in order to scatter shell fragments for maximum carnage. Fortunately, it was never needed.

After that, we motored on to the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton, New York, a tribute to the golden age of stained and shellacked watercraft from a bygone era in the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River. Among its pristine Chris-Craft cruisers and Gar Wood runabouts is La Duchesse, a 106-foot houseboat built in 1903 as a summer getaway for hotelier George Boldt of the famed Waldorf-Astoria in New York. After years of neglect that culminated in its sinking, the craft has been refloated on a new hull and restored to some of its original, if somewhat musty, grandeur.

The relaxed cadence of the Freedom Road Rally began to emerge. Cars drifted in small groups and with no particular hurry from destination to destination. The $2400 entry fee included all hotel accommodations and venue tickets, but dining was on your own, leaving participants to pick their own poison, whether it be a hurried McDonald’s or a waterside bistro patio with a view of the 1000-foot bulk freighters plying the St. Lawrence. “It’s like leaving the 21st century,” said JoAnn Martinec from Corning, New York, who was navigating for husband George in their turquoise 1957 Chevy Bel Air. “You breathe slower, you breathe easier, there’s no fast pace, and you discover so much about the country over these road rallies.”

People stayed as long or as little as they desired, then moved on. We toured Boldt’s island palace known as Boldt Castle, which the hotel magnate built for his wife Louise and then in despair abandoned upon her premature death. Lucas was enamored by the graffiti on the unfinished upper floors that went back decades, including a visitor from Bay Shore on Long Island who wrote on the wall in 1928. We visited a museum devoted to the western-themed sculptures and paintings of Frederic Remington, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. At a nature park called the Adirondack Experience, we saw otters frolic in a man-made waterfall and hiked an elevated walkway through the forest canopy.

Fans of the original 1960s Star Trek series were bedazzled by a meticulous re-creation of the show’s sets constructed in a warehouse in the unlikely locale of Ticonderoga, New York. Tour guide Drew Malone, a dead ringer for next-gen Star Trek cast member Wil Wheaton, explained how the Federation of Planets flag in Captain Kirk’s conference room was just a lightly disguised Cuban flag, a tribute to Desilu Productions co-founder Desi Arnaz. And how the original Trek was one of the first television shows aired entirely in color, causing set designers to comb hotel and restaurant catalogs of the 1960s for their wildest fabrics. Those are now unobtainable and thus the Enterprise’s original psychedelic bedspreads were remade at great expense by the museum. “This is basically a 13,000-square-foot man cave,” boasted Malone.

In between stops, Lucas would rattle off conversation topics rapid-fire, his head a vast storehouse of factoids about the world’s tallest buildings, the events of 9/11, the history of the Walt Disney Co., the history of the Tucker automobile, and so on. I made him write down each new topic in a notebook kept on the floor of the Cadillac, partly just to slow him down. Entries included:

“Terminal velocity, falling from Empire State.”
“Hawaii plates.”
“T. Dewey Highway.”
“Huntsman spiders.”
“Model T that drove around the world.”
“RHD vs LHD. Why??”

He also called out all the antique stores he spotted (or, those he didn’t miss because he was staring at his phone—sorry, Lucas), and our finned Cadillac dutifully screeched to a halt. The shops ranged in ambience from Main Street resale storefronts full of worthless detritus to ancient old houses with tilting floors and dusty artifacts from America’s past. A practiced shopper of such castoffs, Lucas knew what he was after: any 1980s electronics, and 16-millimeter films to run through his 1943 Bell & Howell projector, which we had lugged along on the trip despite it weighing about as much as a Muncie Toploader.

In one shop, he found one, packed in a canister with no markings. After examining only enough frames to determine that the reel was black-and-white and probably very old, he bought it for 20 bucks and a promise to email the shopkeeper with details of its contents. That night at the hotel, he told our fellow rallyists, gathered around the lobby to watch some of the films that we had lugged out from Detroit—including a Donald Duck short and a news documentary about the 1968 presidential primary—that the new reel would be unveiled the following night. Anticipation buzzed through the rallyists, for by now, Lucas’s evening screenings were legendary.

We were getting to know our fellow rallyists. Bob Oliver and Bill Stryker were two old friends from Jersey crewing a 1964 Chrysler Newport convertible with a leaky power-steering pump. A retired IRS accountant and Vietnam vet, Stryker also drove buses as a side hustle for 42 years and maintains an active interest in them. “I’ll vouch for that,” said Oliver, who worked for the power company, “because we go to every bus show in the country.”

Scott and Shelly Thams of Clarkston, Michigan, were driving a pristine red 1967 Chevrolet Camaro SS, a long-term restoration project. Thams has done the Great Race twice in a 1914 Model T Speedster capable of 60 mph. The difference with the Freedom Rally: “We get to see things; in the Great Race, you never get to see anything.”

Eugene Toner and Ben Renninger were two young mechanics paid by Dorsey to crew the rally’s sag wagon, a Ford F-150 full of tools and towing a flatbed tandem- axle trailer. By day five, the trailer had yet to see use, the worst problems thus far being the Newport and its trail of iridescent power-steering fluid and a 1940 Ford with a small-block Chevy bucking from fouled injectors. The Ford’s performance improved greatly after Toner suggested that its owner try administering a full-throttle Italian tuneup. Toner told me later that loading one or two cars a day on the trailer was normal for a Freedom Rally.

We were happy to stay off of it. At some point, the leak in the Cadillac’s transmission slowed to just the occasional drip, and it simultaneously started shifting more smoothly. We realized that the Hydra-Matic, which holds a voluminous 11 quarts of fluid, had simply been overfilled at some point and was shedding its unwanted excess. It gave us no more trouble for the rest of the trip.

At moments during the long hours, I wondered if Lucas was having any fun. I was doing all the driving, so there wasn’t much for him to do except stare out the window or look at his phone. Some of the stops, including the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Star Trek museum—a sport he has barely played and a TV show he had never seen—were only marginally interesting to him. The buildup to this trip had been so momentous, his parents and grandparents all telling him it was the opportunity of a lifetime and that he would see and learn and change so much. Was I failing him as an uncle? Was this supposed to be like one of those road movies where a musical montage plays while a slow but lasting bonding happens and life destinies are changed?

Eventually, there was a moment of clarity: Lucas has been on this earth for 15 years and I, the uncle who lives 2400 miles away in Los Angeles, was getting him for six days. The main objective was to have a good time on a summer romp, not to make this trip a series of teachable moments. And I realized in my own teachable moment that my parenting skills are dubious (I thought nothing of taking a 15-year-old kid on a 2000-mile drive in a car with no seatbelts, a steel dashboard, drum brakes, and 6-volt headlights) and that it wasn’t my job or Scott Dorsey’s job or the Adirondacks’s job to teach Lucas anything. He would see what he would see and learn what he wanted to learn, and if it was nothing beyond that it takes three pumps to start a stone-cold ’49 Cadillac, then so be it.

On our last night, Lucas loaded up the mystery reel. It opened with none other than Charles Lindbergh explaining the freshly invented wonders of transcontinental air travel, and it followed a group of passengers as they hopscotched across America in a gurgling Ford Trimotor. Coast to Coast in 48 Hours was the breathless title of this 10-minute film, probably shot around 1930, when taking two days to get from New York to Los Angeles was science-fiction stuff. The rallyists watched, transfixed. Then, right after the last bit of film went clacking through the projector, its bulb burned out. Movie night was over, as was our journey.

We parted company from the 2021 Freedom Road Rally after touring the incomparable Northeast Classic Car Museum in Norwich, New York, which constantly churns its borrowed collection of pristine classics to keep things interesting. We also visited the considerably quirkier Wheels in Time Museum in a house across the street. Proprietor Eric Andrade describes his personal collection of 5000 miniature vehicles as “telling the story of American history through die-cast.”

Then we hit the road for home, doing one last slow cruise up Woodward Avenue past the former General Motors Building, the words of that old Johnny Cash song playing in my head: “I left Kentucky back in ’49 and went to Dee-troit working on an assembly line, and the first year they had me putting wheels on Cadillacs…” However, before we pulled into the driveway, we completed one last mission: Lucas slid into the driver’s seat. We did several slow laps around a large hotel lot, Lucas getting the feel of the steering and brakes. He would make a turn, then forget that you have to unwind the wheel if you wish the car to go straight again, and we nearly ran over a hotel staffer sitting on a curb having a smoke break. But she was a good sport about it, and I realized Lucas had never driven a car before. “Nope, this is my first one,” he confirmed. A 1949 Cadillac—it seemed fitting.

1949 Cadillac Series 62 Sedan

Engine: 331-cid V-8
Power: 160 hp @ 3800 rpm
Torque: 292 lb-ft @ 2200 rpm
Weight: 4000 lb
Cruising Speed: 63 mph
Price when new: $3050
Hagerty #2-condition value: $26,500–$38,000

Lucas’s trip, in his own words

The day had come at last. I was so excited, I got up an hour ahead of my alarm and thought about the interesting and amazing things we’d be doing and seeing. The past year and a half had been depressing and restrictive, and I was finally going to be able to go out and experience something besides my house.

On the way to New York, we got quite a few thumbs-up and waves from people passing by. Each time, it reinforced the elegance and beauty of the Cadillac we had chosen, which carried us along without a single issue. Whenever we stopped for gas, people would come over and compliment the car, at which point I would take the opportunity to show them how the gas cap was hidden under the taillight. What a feature, by the way. I don’t think you would see that level of creativity in cars today.

When we pulled into the hotel on the first day, we were met with a parking lot full of different cars, from 100 percent stock cars to ones with overhauled engines and modern interiors. There was a 1950s Thunderbird, which I adore, and a Volkswagen Thing with a nautical theme, including a life preserver and an outboard motor, which was just fun. Going down the road, we saw a red 1951 Oldsmobile for sale. I adore those Oldsmobiles. Something about the little tab under the headlights really ties the whole thing together. We pulled over and I made sure to write down the number—though after chatting with the guy a bit, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t have the money to buy it.

All the while, the Cadillac kept on moving, and (according to Aaron) it handled beautifully. Along the way, we stopped at a few antique stores. One store was full of war memorabilia, and another had a box of butchered car radios and headlights. By the end, I had picked up such gems as an old eight-track cassette, the film titled Coast to Coast in 48 Hours, and a Life magazine from July 4, 1969, titled “Special Issue: Off to the Moon.” When I showed it to another rally participant, he said he didn’t believe Americans went to the moon, and we had quite a discussion.

On the last day of the trip, at the Northeast Classic Car Museum, there was a 1947 Hudson with an interesting-looking grille, a 1959 Edsel (I prefer the ’58; the ’59 is too tame!), a rare Cadillac with a V-16 engine, some motorcycles that looked more like rockets with seats and handlebars, and a Packard with a hood ornament that was so sharp I bet you could cut carrots on it.

But my favorite thing there was a 1956 DeSoto Firedome convertible. I love the 1956 Chryslers. In my book, 1956 was the last year of a prewar era of styles, and Chrysler hit it home that year. Not to mention, this one had the optional built-in record player! It was a sight to see and a perfect ribbon on that whole museum.

I thought I would miss the modern amenities of AC and reclining seats, but wind wings and vents kept the car cool, and the Cadillac’s couch-like seats were plenty comfortable. On our way back through Detroit on the last leg of our journey, the cozy interior and elegant exterior of the Cadillac solidified my love for these classics. I will have one, someday.

The post I took my 15-year-old nephew on an 850-mile rally in a 1949 Cadillac appeared first on Hagerty Media.

When I noticed the advertisement for the Cruisin’ Route 66 Reunion, I couldn’t resist reminiscing about the days when I was accepted to the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, California, and started packing up my black 1950 Chevy Sedan with three-on-the-tree and getting ready to set sail from Brooklyn, New York, along Route 66 to California. My father told me he never thought I’d leave. Since he was a sign man, he made me a plaque reading “California or Bust” for my window, and I still have it to this day.

Yes, those were the days when you would pull into a service station and an attendant would happily greet you, fill up your tank, put air in your tires, wipe your windshield, and check the oil and water. There are plenty who remember those days, so to bring back to life the significance of the nation’s first all-weather highway linking Chicago to Los Angeles, the 8th Annual Cruisin’ Route 66 Reunion ignited full-throttle cruising 22 blocks down tree-shaded historic Euclid Avenue in downtown Ontario, California. The drive took place on September 17–18, 2021.

The music-filled two-day event was free to the public and was created and produced by the Greater Ontario Convention & Visitors Bureau—a non-profit endeavor to promote the region and teach about a piece of Americana that was once a shining example of “free-spirited independence.” Michael Krouse, President and CEO of the Bureau once said, “This is a chance for folks from everywhere in the world to gather and enjoy the nearly mystical passion that is shared by so many and embodied in Route 66. Southern California thrived because of its rich love affair with the automobile.”

Two days of festivities included nostalgic cruising, contests, live music (Johnny Cash Tribute, The Eagles Tribute, Queen Tribute and headlining Don McLean …”American Pie,” food vendors and nearly 1000 classic cars showing off their shine in display off the curb, then revving up, rolling, growling and whirring up and down Euclid Avenue not far from Historic Route 66. Glittering chrome and steel-bodied Mustangs, Chevys, Plymouth Barracudas, Dodge Chargers, Fords, classic trucks, hot rods, motorcycles, and customs fabricated from the dedicated work of the hobbyists—all of it kept thousands of families and friends flowing into Ontario in a steady stream. One exhibitor said, “I restored this Camaro with my daughter for her and now I have two more cars in the garage that I’m working on for the other two.”

For the first time, the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles announced a partnership with the Cruisin’ Reunion and provided an educational platform at the event. Road Trip Across America presented an oversized map of the U.S. so little ones could learn about the glory days of a Route 66 road trip along with a hot rod pedal car and clay materials to create automotive forms.

Route 66 was officially decommissioned in 1985, but the enduring importance lives on in the imagination of millions of people around the world. For example, the British Get Their Kicks on Regent Street event in the U.K. paid tribute to Route 66 in 2018, a day before the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run (oldest running motoring event in the world).

Route 66 offered freedom for motorists who wanted to explore the country, but it started as a trail for Native Americans and was later developed as a stage line before the Civil War. John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath dubbed Route 66 “The Mother Road” in his tale about Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s. In 1960, Route 66 was once again immortalized with the Route 66 TV series starring Martin Milner, George Maharis, and Glenn Corbett; it presented two young drifters wandering the U.S. in a Corvette convertible, encountering various situations surrounding their journey. Then, the pop culture piece that perhaps made the road most famous occurred in 1946 when singer Nat King Cole recorded a hit song, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” written by former Marine Bobby Troup.

Taking Route 66 in its heyday effectively reduced the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles by more than 200 miles, which made the highway into a driving force for the American far west’s transformation from a rural frontier to developed metropolis. For returning American servicemen and their families, Route 66 represented a postwar optimism for the economic recovery of America and brought the freedom of mobility for all citizens who had the means to travel by car.

Now, in the 21st century, traveling Route 66 is a popular driving vacation for Americans and international travelers from the U.K., New Zealand ,and Australia. Many of these international visitors rent cars or motorcycles in Chicago and drive the entire length of Route 66, taking in historical sights on the way to its terminus at the Santa Monica Pier in California.

We approached some apparent baby boomers at the Cruisin’ to ask them about a popular trend: celebrating their 66th birthday with a road trip on Route 66.

“I’d like to plan a 66th birthday road trip on Route 66 for my dad,” said Robin from Covina, California.

Debbie and Melvin showed a ’65 Karmann Ghia that says, “My husband rebuilt this car from a ‘mess’ that we found in a barn about a year ago. He took it down to bare metal and located a 1600 engine and brought it back to life. This is our fourth year here and next year he will be 66 years old and I’m actually planning a trip on Route 66 from Santa Monica to maybe Illinois, since I’m from Missouri. It would be a life experience for him. He’s been a car geek since he was 13 and had his first shop when he was 14 with an old guy that taught him working on Model As and Ts. We would probably take my ’72 AMX Javelin and maybe our RV and trailer. Or we just make the whole trip in the Javelin. We belong to Coast to Coast Travel Group so we could have a plan worked out to visit all the neat Route 66 sights along the way. Even the wild burros in Oatman that come out of the dessert looking for food handouts.”

Danny showed off his shiny ’57 Chevy Nomad that he owned for about three years. “The car was not running at the time but it was that same striking color. I made it my own by changing the wheels, modifying the exhaust, I color sanded and buffed the paint out to bring it to the shire it has. I cleaned and tuned up the 350 motor and the Camaro rear end. I would pack up the Nomad and my wife and I would set sail from Santa Monica and maybe take about two months on the Route 66 road. I’ve been on Route 66 before and remember some of the old towns with neon signs where there’s a lot of history. We’d stop and talk to people and hear the classic stories about the old cafes and motels on Route 66 and experience that Wigwam Motel—a bunch of tee-pee-shaped rooms I’ve heard so much about.”

Eric was dusting off his ’56 Chevy 150, an all-original car he and purchased about three years ago. “The car was sitting in a garage for 20 years so I was very lucky to discover it,” he said. Eric isn’t quite 66 years old yet but told us he “would like to go on a Route 66 trip to experience the history and to preserve the heritage of the U.S. to young people. I’d love to see all the landmarks that have been preserved along Route 66 and the only way to do it would be to start at the Santa Monica Pier and hopefully the Chevy would make the entire trip,” says Eric with an excited smile.

A 1947 Rat Rod Fire Truck caught my eye so, I talked to Grant, its owner. “I built it from a ’73 Ford F250 frame and engine and put the ’47 body on it,” he told me. “I had to widen it 10 inches and shorten it about 30 inches to make it fit. I never did anything like this so it was a real learning experience.” For the Route 66 trip he said, “I would look for a good running ’67 Camaro and definitely take a few weeks to check out all the historical sights and probably go as far as Illinois. I think it’s important to experience the history of the ‘Mother Road’ and the way life was back in the day. It gives us more of an appreciation and understanding of life in the present.”

Many of the exhibitors told us that one of the goals of a car show it to teach their children to respect and enjoy each other’s cars through a common bond.

Some of the awards were:

Mayor’s Award – 1952 Chevy Styleline Deluxe – Larry & Belinda Trinidad

Petersen Automotive Museum Youth Award – 1956 Chevy Bel Air – Joe Lozano

’50s Modified – 1951 Mercury Coupe – John Zepeda

Best of Show – 1931 Packard Super 8 – Jose Chacon

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My grandfather was born and lived his life on a northern Indiana dairy farm. In 1919, he and his brother, my Uncle Willis, bought their first car—a 1919 Franklin Series 9 Touring—for $3000.

The car included the famous air-cooled 25-hp six-cylinder engine and was capable of a sustained 40-mph cruise. My grandmother was aghast at the purchase price and would only refer to his pride and joy as “That Three Thousand Dollar Car.” In 1928, Uncle Willis drove it to Los Angeles and back to visit cousins. A year later, they retired the Franklin, and it became the farm utility vehicle.

In 1936, Grandpa decided it was time for the Franklin to go. My 9-year-old father had other ideas and begged Grandpa to save the car for him. Grandpa relented and put it on blocks until Dad became driving age. Dad then proceeded to drive the Franklin daily to high school and college.

In 1948, he purchased a new Ford, and the trusty Franklin was again retired to weekend use. I then spent 60 years lusting after it until Dad reluctantly gifted it to me. Having total faith in the car’s reliability, I immediately drove it from Indiana to my home in Florida.

One of Jay Leno’s reviews of the Pebble Beach Concours introduced me to the concept of a “survivor” class. The Franklin was a perfect candidate, so I submitted my 2018 application—promising that if accepted, I would drive the car from Florida to Monterey. I was promptly rejected. Unfazed, and upon learning there was a Concours d’Lemons scheduled for the very same Pebble Beach week, I forwarded a similar application. I was promptly accepted!

Had I really just committed to driving a 99-year-old family car from Tampa to Monterey and back? After much consideration, my wife Therese and I decided even that was too easy, so we revised our route to take us north to Lake Superior, then west through the northern Rockies, then to San Francisco, and finally to Monterey.

I drove and Therese navigated. Interstate highways were out of the question for this trip, so we opted for the prettiest back roads whenever possible. Our daily plan was to cover about 225 miles, with at least two sightseeing stops. We loaded our camping gear into the same running-board trunk Uncle Willis used for his 1928 trip and filled the back seat with the rest of our stuff, and the adventure began.

Driving an open car on less-traveled roads at low speeds is wonderful. You see and experience so much more along the way. In Georgia, for instance, we stopped beside the road to take a look at an interesting water wheel. The owner came out to invite us in for a closer look. In Michigan, we had a wheel failure, and while I was replacing it, a trucker stopped to lend a hand and then shared a pizza with us. In Montana, we stopped at a small town’s car museum, only to find it closed. A gentleman walked over from a neighboring business with the keys. He let us in and gave us a personal tour.

The stories like this are endless. The trip, however, was not, and with three days to spare, we rolled down California Highway 1 and into Monterey. Goal achieved!

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The Iron Lords car club is a tight-knit group that favors traditional hot rods. Their idea of a good time is joining a convoy of cars and making the yearly pilgrimage to the racing holy land that is Bonneville Speed Week. This group of six friends from the club have known each other since about 2016 when they met at the Old North State Invitational car show. Sharing a love for vintage race cars, they set out from Concord, North Carolina, and fell in along the way with fellow car nuts from Rolling Bones to create a 20-car caravan of hot rods that look as though they rumbled in straight from 1960.

Of course, making a huge road trip to spectate at one of the greatest racing venues in the world is reason enough to hit the road, but these folks are also competitors. One of the Iron Lords got time behind the wheel of a flathead-powered roadster and is taking on the XF/GR record set by the Jewell Group in 2020.

1932 Ford three-window (Ben Haag and Holly Orel)

This is the second iteration of the car that Haag has built. The first time around was in 2017, when Haag built the car, headed from his home in Concord, North Carolina, to Pennsylvania, and then drove all the way to Bonneville, El Mirage, and back to North Carolina, a 7000-mile christening for the car. Shortly after that trip, Haag rolled the car and smashed just about every panel.

Haag bought a car to replace the coupe but wasn’t sure he’d have it in him to do it all of the work over again on a different car. Then his plans went entirely off the rails amid a cancer diagnosis that landed in the hospital for months. Thankfully Haag had friends, family, and doctors that rallied behind him and he was able to get healthy, get out of the hospital, and return to his beloved pastime of building vintage hot rods.

Haag focused on getting his beloved coupe back on the road. He cut it apart a spent about a year pushing and pulling the metal back into shape on top of a new chassis.

A 292-cubic-inch Y-block was pillaged from a ’59 Ford pickup, given a slight overbore, and put back together with an Isky 505 camshaft, Edelbrock three-deuce intake, and a Mallory ignition. Haag had planned on running a flathead, but ‘50s and ‘60s racers at El Mirage and Bonneville used Ford’s early overhead-valve V-8 as soon as they could get their hands on it, so the latter was perfectly appropriate given the theme of the build. “I was going for a late ‘50s dry lakes car, like the Rolling Bones style,” Haag told us. There was a catch though, Haag had to stretch the hood by about an inch to keep the larger engine from intruding into the firewall.

The plan was to bring the car to the salt in bare metal and then paint the coupe brown afterward. After some consideration, Haag decided to at least spray it in epoxy primer to preserve the body from the harsh Bonneville salt. After spending some time with the car in its flat white state, Haag has a different plan, “I fell in love with it. I’ll never change it now,” he said.

After Haag’s return from the hospital, he opened up Bluefield Vintage Engine Works, a shop that focuses on rebuilding vintage hot rod engines and building traditional-style cars. After spending some time chasing the XF/GR record with Keith Cornell from Rolling Bones, it probably won’t be long before he churns out a race car of his own.

1939 Ford Sedan (Jason and Jake Jacobs)

Jason Jacobs purchased his ’39 Ford sedan in 2016. As best he can tell it had been somebody’s attempt at a hot rod that was built in 1965 or 1966. Unfortunately, the modifications meant to improve the Ford hadn’t been all that successful, but it all worked out for Jacobs in the end. “I pulled the car out of a shed in Mechanicsville, [Virginia]” Jacobs told us. The car’s inspection tags told the tale. It appeared that the car had been parked in 1977. “There was only about 15 miles put on it each year. I figured that was driving to the inspection station and back.” Jacobs deduced.

The car had been stored pretty well, so Jacobs was able to save most of the original paint. The patina tells the tale, as the hood, fenders, and doors still have the original Ford black paint, although the roof has been repainted.

Jacobs is currently a computer network engineer. Prior to that, he was a GM tech and has years under his belt repairing vehicles. He spent about three years rebuilding the car with his sons Aiden and Jake. The trio welded in new floors, rebuilt the suspension, and swapped in a whole new drivetrain. The original three-speed transmission and banjo rear and were swapped for a 1963 Ford Fairlane four-speed and an early Bronco nine-inch axle. The Bronco axle was about an inch narrower than the original piece and had the same 5-on-5.5-inch bolt pattern as the ’39 Ford.

Under the hood, a Chevy 283 small-block was rebuilt to similar specs as a 1961–1962 Corvette. It also dressed the part.

“We did everything ourselves with the exception of the nine-inch third-member,” Jacobs told us. He farmed that bit out to a friend as the trip to The Race of Gentlemen in 2020 was fast approaching. For the latest trip, he and his son, Jake, left their home in Virginia and met up with his fellow Iron Lords car club members in Concord, North Carolina. “It was great until we got to around Missouri and the throwout bearing starting to go bad.” Undeterred, Jacobs pressed on. “By the time we got to Nebraska, it was really bad. I kinda had to Powershift it.” You know it’s a long trip when your markers are entire states. Still, Jacobs carried on with the convoy, which by that point had met up with a huge contingent of Rolling Bones members who had their own traditional hot rods.

When Jacobs and the crew made it to Bonneville Speedway to set up their pit alongside Keith Cornell from Rolling Bones, he finally had time to address the clutch issue and removed the transmission right there on the salt. What better place to work on an old Ford hot rod? “I’ve never been so happy to pull a transmission in my life,” Jacobs told us.

We can report that the trip back to Virginia was less eventful for Jason and his son. They now have more than 10,000 miles on the car, including a trip to The Race of Gentlemen, a trip they plan to repeat in 2021, and are definitely helping the car make up for all the time it spent in that dusty old shed in Mechanicsville.

1932 Ford five-window (Delton and Kelly Russell)

Last November, Delton Russell heard that a friend’s ’32 Ford five-window was hitting the market. The car was just a roller, although it had made slow and steady progress over the past ten or so years. However, the owner’s other projects were getting more of his attention. Due to its condition, Russell almost wrote it off as too nice. “The price tag was higher than what I thought I could afford,” Russell told us. On the other hand, Russell himself had a couple more projects than he didn’t have time for, so he sold two of his own to make room for this coupe in his garage and his budget. He bid farewell to a vintage custom ’56 Chevy convertible and a disassembled ’32 Ford five-window to take on this one.

It was a thrash getting this car ready for its maiden voyage to Bonneville. A new front suspension was installed and the rear suspension was rebuilt. It also got a whole new rear axle.

In true hot-rodding fashion, the car is a conglomeration of parts that help it outmuscle and outdrive an original ’32 coupe. Like the ’39, this Ford is also powered by a Chevy small-block, this time a slightly older vintage. It’s a 1956 Chevy 265 with a later Corvette-spec cam. It’s topped with a Carter four-barrel and mated to a 1939 Ford trans using a ’50 Mercury clutch. From there, power is routed through a shortened torque tube to a 1940 Ford banjo rear axle with 3.25:1 gears.

The parts-swapping doesn’t stop there. The coupe uses ’41 Lincoln brakes, a ’37 Hudson steering box, 682 BLC headlights, and ’39 Ford taillights.

Hudson Joe from the Hornets SCTA car club made the shift knob from a backgammon doubling cube and auctioned it off to help Haag during his cancer treatment. The winning bidder gave it to Haag, who passed it on to Russell as thanks for the help on the coupe.

Even with Speed Week 2021 barely in the rearview, the Iron Lords car club is already looking forward to another pilgrimage to the salt. There are lots of highway miles to cover and there’s always a record that’s waiting to be broken.

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It’s as simple as this: a joke on a social media platform has transformed into a quickly approaching feat of mechanical ability, the cultivation of a friendship, and a considerable amount of money. But jokes are a very good reason to get inspired, and for James Cooperider, an Ohioan with not much more than a modest dream and a little time on his hands, that inspiration has turned into a dedicated mission to solidify a stupid idea into something for “the books.” Whatever that means.

Here’s what’s going down: This coming Friday, September 3, James will be flying to Seattle, where he will be picked up by the current owner of a 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit pickup that has been sitting in a field for 20 years. James, the owner, and an unnamed tractor mechanic will then spend every waking hour of three days to get this thing capable of forward movement. That includes and isn’t limited to: swapping the dead engine for one that is less dead, refurbishing, updating, replacing anything related to safety. This means, suspension, brakes, tires, fuel, and anything else you can imagine. Once it’s been made more roadworthy than not, he will attempt to drive and live out of the VW for the 2500 or so miles back to beautiful Thornville, Ohio.

So how did this come to be? Well, James quit his job a couple of months ago to pursue a life of German car rehabilitation. He bought a remarkably decent 1995 Ford F-250 from his hometown fire station to tow project cars home with. He set up a Copart account. His business model: Fix up old cars, sell them to people who will enjoy them, document the process for the Internet.

I’ll say up front that James is a good friend of mine and that’s best validated by the fact that we both think this, ah, career change is a very good idea. There isn’t much that’s more exciting to us than a car that has been dormant for a long period of time being Frankensteined back into a regular, commuting traffic participant like it’s no big deal.

His YouTube channel chronicles these attempts, and he recently branched out to TikTok for bite-sized versions of his storytelling. It’s there that he posted a video in which he comes across a MK1 Volkswagen Pickup just a few miles from his house. That garnished over a million views, and got him his first taste of the interest he was generating around these weird old trucks. As more and more people stumbled across and shared his page, he gained 40,000 followers and millions of views in a matter of weeks. Which brings us to today, where he decided to act on the excitement around this truck and take it to the next level. That’s where a stranger on a farm comes into play.

The owner of the pickup, Derek Ripley, found James via an Instagram post about his various adventures with MK1 Volkswagens, and they started a dialogue. Derek is no stranger to these cars, as his grandfather passed on the passion to his Dad and then on to him through many years of ownership. As Derek began following James’ shenanigans on TikTok, he reached out and threw out the idea of flying out and getting his truck healthy enough to go transcontinental. Once James took one look at the solid body and original Sunbrite Yellow paint, a deal was done and a dirt-cheap ticket to Seattle was bought.

I cold-called Derek and he gave me the rundown along with some pictures. “The hardest part will probably be getting the electrics working, followed by getting the smell of mouse poop out of this thing,” said Derek. His family farm is home to many of these square German diesels, and due to the favorable Pacific Northwest climate, they’re as solid (structurally) as they came out of the factory.

“That’s one reason I was so happy to sell him the truck: because I knew they were hard to find in good shape on the east coast and I knew he would hold on to it.” said Derek.

He’s right. This might very well be a “forever” truck for James. He’s sure to have a connection to it after sleeping in the bed of it across the country, and addressing any reliability issues along the way. And there’s no denying it: As knowledgeable as he is, James will be tested over the coming week. I’m not too worried about him, though. Derek told me that he’s “just some broke Volkswagen guy helping out another broke Volkswagen guy,” If you were in James’ shoes, what else could you want?

So shout out to Derek, for opening his home and providing his time to a stranger with nothing more to go off of than a few phone calls. But this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when an ambitious idea gets some traction online. People reach out, ask to help, and want to be involved. You can be involved, too, by buying a sticker, a t-shirt, or a hat on his website. You can also follow along on YouTube. If you love these old square Volkswagens the way we do, it might be well worth your time.

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On a warm, drizzly day, the Military Vehicle Preservation Association’s 2021 annual convoy filed into the parking lot of the Hagerty garage in Traverse City, Michigan. A little weather wasn’t about to phase these owners, certainly not after last year’s plans fell victim to the complications of 2020. This year was bound to be different.

“We have been traveling along the Yellowstone Trail, which a lot of people really aren’t aware of,” Dan McCluskey, the MVPA’s commanding officer, tells WJMN-TV. The group was pressing on to Traverse City from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, on day nine of a 24 travel-day excursion that began on July 28 in Aberdeen, South Dakota. “[The Yellow Stone Trail] was developed early in this century and it runs from Plymouth Rock all the way to Seattle through Yellowstone National Park, so we are celebrating that particular nationally named road and following it from Aberdeen, South Dakota to Conneaut, Ohio.”

That may seem like a lot of mileage, but for these ambassadors, the journey itself is what matters. As part of the Military Vehicle Preservation Association, which is 8000 members strong, the convoy cruises America’s iconic byways in historic military vehicles (HMVs) focusing on the flyover country towns, veteran-proud locales that popular culture seems determined to dismiss. This organization pledges to “Keep ’em rolling,” and it exemplifies the motto—History in Motion—down to the letter.

MVPA convoys have proven their mettle many times over, assembling for some impressive feats of distance. Legendary trips include a re-enactment of the 3100-mile 1919 Transcontinental Motor Convoy from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, California in 2009, as well as a 4100-mile Alaska-Canada (ALCAN) Highway trek on the road’s 70th anniversary in 2012.

“A lot of people go to museums to see static displays of vehicles. Well, we are out here showing people exactly how they were used,” McCluskey continues. “We’ll be doing almost two thousand miles on this convoy … it’s our way of giving back to the military and to our public, showing them exactly what it is like to drive these vehicles and keep them on the road.”

The convoys welcome all kinds of HMVs, new and old, from the big boys (5+ tons) down to motorbikes. Arrayed on the rain-slick asphalt, all the vehicles held prestige, but our eyes were immediately drawn to the oldies: a 1918 Dodge Staff Car, a holdover from WWI, and a 1944 Ford Ambulance from WWII. A peek through the Ford’s window revealed a strikingly beautiful dash, which was unexpected yet all the more poetic for a vehicle whose gurney-filled hatch was destined to shuttle the wounded. No less, the convoy contingent was chock-full of countless surprises and personal touches hidden among its ranks. A reverence for these vehicles lingers long after you stroll away.

After a brief stopover in South Bend, Indiana for the MVPA International Convention, the convoy will continue the final leg of its journey through northeastern Indiana and northern Ohio. Festivities at the terminus in Conneaut are set to include the town’s extraordinary D-Day reenactment.

MVPA members are already gearing up for lost time from 2020’s postponement; next year’s route will celebrate U.S. National Parks in the Pacific Northwest, with the Northwest Parks Convoy (NWP’22) traveling through Idaho, Washington state, and Oregon in August.

To learn more about the MVPA, membership, and its convoys, be sure to visit their website at mvpa.org, or consider following the latest route virtually on Facebook.

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“I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” — Robert Frost

There’s no way to know if “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost’s 1915 poem, ever crossed the lips of a group of courageous travelers looking to satisfy their wanderlust in the late 1950s. But the intrepid South Africans exemplified its message.

Today, it has never been easier to get from point A to point B, no matter how far the distance. We consider ourselves adventurous if we fly over an ocean, tour Europe by train, and “make do” only with what fits into a backpack (like our smartphone). Bonus points for sleeping in a hostel.

In 1958, brothers Carel, Marius, and Johan Marais, along with their traveling companions Joan Povall and Audrey Nives, would have probably equated the above scenario with what we’d today call “glamping.” Sixty-three years ago, the fearless travelers drove 13,500 miles from Cape Town, South Africa, to London in a standard rear-wheel-drive 1954 Volkswagen Type 2 Kombi. They brought along small jerry cans of gasoline and water but had to carefully monitor the consumption of both. Without a refrigerator, they ate canned and dry goods and whatever fruit and vegetables they could get along the way. They had none of the luxuries that we now take for granted, like daily use of restrooms and bathing facilities … no outside communication beyond the letters they mailed and received at government embassies along the route … and no roadside assistance of any kind—unless you count the kindness of strangers and their vehicles. Or farm animals.

It would be an understatement to say that the group’s four-month trip across two continents emboldened its participants and forever changed their lives. Carel Marais and Joan Povall grew so close, in fact, that they fell in love and later married. The couple’s daughter, Louise, and her two older brothers heard so much about their parents’ South Africa-to-England expedition while growing up that they too became adventurous travelers.

When Joan Marais passed away in 2018, Carel gave Louise her mother’s diary, and she was so enthralled with the detailed account of the trip that she turned it into a book. Earlier this spring, 1958: Home is a Journey was released by Austin Macauley Publishers.

“It’s an epic story,” says Louise, who now lives in Australia with her teenaged daughter and son. “When you think about just how hard it was … the things they went through to finish what they started. In the back of their minds they had to wonder, will the Kombi break? Will we run out of petrol? Will we run out of water? It was an enormous challenge. What an example they set for us, and what an amazing legacy they left.”

Louise says the family knew about Joan’s diary all along, and they encouraged her to turn it into a book. Louise finally made it happen. “When my dad passed her diary on to me, I knew a lot of those stories already, but it was still fascinating. Since it read more like a travel diary, I felt the best way to do this would be to just let her tell her story. Ninety-five percent of what’s in the book are her words.

“I went through photos for a month to choose which ones I wanted to use. I even quit my job [as a financial advisor] to do it. I figured I had one shot at it, and I wanted to do it right. It was quite a journey.”

So was the trip.

Prologue

“From a young age, my parents’ trip through Africa filtered into our family’s everyday lives,” Louise wrote in the book’s introduction. “Travel, adventure, doing extraordinary things was often our norm. My first trip overseas in 1976 was when I was 6 years old. I had flown my dad’s work airplane and helicopter before age 10, and we could all ski (water and snow) by the age of 10. My dad’s work saw us move around South Africa, and I had changed towns three times by the time I finished high school.

“As kids, we would often watch the cine [film] taken during this trip. Our parents would narrate, with my mum always ensuring factual correctness, (and) my dad only too happy to concede, sparing him the need to retrain ‘irrelevant’ detail. Their trip lived within them, was an expression of their spirit, and was engrained into our lives through the encouragement to do, to take risks, to make changes, to not be afraid of the unknown, and to be eternally bored with the ordinary.”

That was definitely the mindset of the travelers, who planned the trip for months—mostly through the mail—before setting out on their long journey. It helped that Carel Marais and a buddy actually made a similar trip in a small Renault two years before. This time around, Carel suggested that he and his brothers, all engineers, repeat the journey in a larger vehicle and remain in London to look for work. That’s how it started, anyway.

Carel had dated Joan Povall’s sister prior to his first expedition to England, but it was Joan he remained in contact with after that, although the two never dated. Joan and her friend Audrey were also planning a trip to London—by air—when Carel talked the two into joining the brothers on a more adventurous trip. Bringing along two females changed the group’s dynamic, as well as the sleeping arrangements. In a letter to Joan in September 1957, Carel promised that the ladies could sleep inside the Kombi that he had just purchased, and the brothers would camp outside.

Letters back and forth firmed up their plans: schedule, gear, clothing, cameras, passports, and individual responsibilities. Joan was impressed with Carel’s good fortune in securing the Kombi, which had only 1300 miles on the odometer. He failed to tell her that it was painted blue, which seemed more important to her than its mileage or that he had installed a roof rack to carry their belongings. Referring to the VW as die skilpad (Afrikaans for turtle), she wrote, “You silly so and so, why didn’t you tell us what color our traveling home is? Here we are dying to know something about it and all you tell us is its mileage and touring (capabilities). Gosh Carel, you really sound as if you have struck something wonderful.”

Joan also asked if she and Audrey should bring a “gas pistol,” a non-lethal weapon used for self-defense. Carel replied: “It may be good if you take the gas pistol with—you may need it to keep the Maraises in their place.”

The journey begins

Carel (then age 27), Marius (25), Joan (25), and Audrey (27) left George, South Africa, in the right-hand-drive “Flying Bedstead” on December 29, 1957, and Johan (31) soon joined the group. After dancing the night away in Vanderbijlpark on New Year’s Eve, they rested on January 1 and set out early the following day. Joan was properly celebrated on her birthday, January 3—no chores!—while Audrey, an accomplished artist, began painting slogans, flags, and illustrations on the Kombi. On one side, she painted an African hut on wheels pulling a smaller hut to symbolize their “mobile home” with a traveling toilet in tow. Above it, she added the words “Ikaya eli Hambaya,” which in Xhosa (Nguni Bantu language) translates to “the house that travels.” It can also have a more symbolic connotation of “home is a journey,” which Louise used as the title of the book.

Joan’s diary entries recapped each day’s activities, and some noted holidays or when the travelers had taken a dose of Daraprim, a preventative drug for malaria and other parasitic illnesses. Other more detailed entries revealed the travelers’ struggles with rain, mud, heat, wind, desert sand, mosquitos, border crossings, animal encounters, and flat tires, which they had to repair themselves if replacements were nowhere to be found. Getting stuck in deep mud or sand required extended digging, or pushing, or pulling—or all three—and the travelers celebrated their good fortunate whenever a Land Rover or team of horses or oxen would appear and lend them a hand. On more than one occasion, Joan praised the Kombi’s resolve, despite the fact that it was “taking a hammering.”

And that was before January 29, 1958.

Rhinos, mishaps, and close calls

On that memorable day in Kenya, after Joan marveled at the size of the baboons and elephants, the Kombi drove through Tsavo National Park and the travelers saw bucks, giraffes, zebras, and hippos. With an African boy serving as their guide, the group went looking for rhinos—and succeeded. Be careful what you wish for.

“Johan was driving,” Joan wrote, “and all of a sudden, as we came over a rise, the boy shouted, ‘Rhino!’ Well, it was too late—there was a mother and her baby right by the side of the road. “What happened next was so quick that we didn’t have much chance to register properly. She put her head down and charged. I looked up to see about two tons of rhino coming for us. We couldn’t avoid her; Johan swung the Kombi off the road, but she hit us on the non-driver’s side. What a crash; she busted the light completely and buckled the door and front so badly that we can’t open the door. Fortunately for us, she didn’t come back. We found out why minutes later—there was a lion after her calf. Our lucky day.”

On February 3, while in Nairobi, Joan and Audrey went to lunch with friends in the area and enjoyed some sherry at an inn before their meal. In a sign of the changing times, Joan wrote, “I like the idea of a woman being allowed in the bar!” Later, however, she became frustrated with her travel mates, referring to them as “the late ones” and writing that their continued late nights was preventing the group from getting an early start each day. (Louise wasn’t surprised to read her mother’s words of frustration. “Both of my parents were very hands-on doers and never idle,” she recalls.)

After another prolonged trek through mud in Ethiopia, on February 9 Joan wrote, “Up early. Our food is running short. No more bread, will have to make it up with tinned beans, rice, and potatoes.” After driving through several villages, the group stopped to camp for the night, but they slept with one eye open. “The natives sang all night,” Joan wrote, wondering whether that was good or bad. “We were a bit worried.” Their fears proved to be unfounded.

February 24 was a somber day, as Carel, Marius, and Joan said goodbye to Johan and Audrey. Johan chose to fly home to South Africa to be with his girlfriend—a good move considering she soon became his wife. Audrey’s absence, on the other hand, would be temporary. She was traveling on a British passport and wasn’t allowed into Egypt, which was still on high alert following the Suez Canal Crisis. She would eventually meet up with the group in Greece, but in the interim she would miss a lot: floating down the Nile River, visiting the Valley of the Kings, camping on the grounds of ex-King Farouk’s palace, and a harrowing desert crossing in which the remaining travelers used the stars to navigate before they stumbled upon some train tracks and followed them to the next village.

What a week!

Audrey also missed an exciting event on March 2. At the end of a seemingly uneventful day in central Egypt, Carel and Joan sat down for a long, serious discussion—and then he proposed. “I was very happy and hope it will work,” Joan wrote of their engagement, “but we have many difficulties to overcome.”

Two traumatic incidents soon drew them closer and sealed their bond. The first occurred on March 4. “The Egyptians seem to travel down the middle of the road and don’t move their animals or themselves until you are just about to run them over,” Joan wrote. “Driving through the numerous villages was an absolute nightmare … While I was driving through a place called Ishment, a fellow walked out from the side—walked right into the Kombi and I hit him. Fortunately for him and me I was only doing about 25 mph. I never even managed to break or swerve, as we he stepped out so suddenly. As soon as I stopped, a huge crowd gathered, and everyone was shouting at once. The fellow was l laying where the car had flung him, and he looked dead to me. I got such a shock that I couldn’t even get out and help him.

“Carel tried to tell the crowd to fetch the police, but trouble started and he lost two buttons off his shirt. A policeman arrived and told us to move the car to the police station. I didn’t want to, but the crowd was getting quite nasty … What a business; Carel was wonderful and really helped me a lot.”

The man was hospitalized overnight, but fortunately he didn’t suffer any serious injuries. The following day, the police let Joan, Carel, and Marius go on their way.

Just one week later, on the morning of March 11 in Port Said, Egypt, the weary travelers were awakened by three policemen. Joan wrote that two of them were “carrying guns big enough to blast us and the Kombi off the face of the earth.” After checking each of their passports, the police allowed the trio to camp for another night. But an officer returned after dark and demanded they break camp and follow him to the station. After heated words were exchanged, Carel persuaded the policeman to allow Marius and Joan to remain at the campsite if he agreed to go. For three hours, Joan nervously waited for Carel to return (while an unconcerned Marius slept). Accused of being a spy, Carel had been interrogated by a military captain who finally challenged him to an arm-wrestling match. Carel smartly lost on purpose, and the two ended up enjoying a drink together before Carel was released.

“I went nearly mad,” Joan wrote. “I was imagining all kinds of things … When Carel returned I nearly burst into tears.”

On March 13, she added, “I’m so glad and happy that I have got (Carel). Only hope we won’t have to wait too long once we get to London to get married.”

Rough seas, and the home stretch

When March 21 arrived, Joan wasn’t feeling well, but her spirits were lifted knowing they would soon board a ship for a roundabout voyage to Greece (which instead of taking a direct route included several stops, including Beirut). After the Kombi was loaded, the trio retired to their shared quarters—Joan “with two old ladies and a young girl,” Carel and Marius “with three old men.” They were awakened suddenly when the boat began to list in choppy seas and, fighting seasickness, they elected to stay topside until they arrived in Cyprus the following morning. The ship continued its long Mediterranean Sea crossing, finally reaching Greece on March 29. Audrey was waiting at the dock.

The next several days were obviously busy ones, as Joan wrote short entries in her diary while the friends enjoyed Athens. On March 30, she wrote, “Found Corinth and castle.” On March 31, she noted, “Acropolis, Visas, slept airport.” And on April 1, she wrote, “Athens, dinner at Busty’s.”

Heading north, the group seemed to enjoy everything that Europe had to offer. On April 7, they were also amused by an older boy in Yugoslavia, who while on his way to school traded Marius a bottle of wine for two cigarettes—a story that Louise finds “hysterical” for two reasons: “A parent sent their kid to school with wine and my uncle felt it quite appropriate to give a child cigarettes!”

Of course, the remaining portion of the trip to London wasn’t without its difficulties. In Yugoslavia, the Kombi needed to be towed up a hill by a team of horses, and the VW drove through snow in both Italy and France—even getting stuck in a blizzard. On April 17, the travelers reached Paris, and over the next several days they visited the Champs Elysees, Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and took in a show at the Moulin Rouge.

After overcoming a problem with the gearbox, they visited Brussels and Amsterdam before boarding a ship and crossing the English Channel into the U.K. On April 28, they finally reached London. Appropriately, the four did not celebrate the end of their long journey by enjoying a hot meal—instead they ate lunch inside the Kombi.

The trip cost each participant just over £120, the equivalent of about £2867—or $3950.

Epilogue

Less than two months after their arrival in London, Carel and Joan officially announced their engagement on June 19, and the two wed on July 26, 1958. Appropriately, the Kombi was notably present.

Carel later shipped the VW back to South Africa, and in September 1959, having paid £600 for it two years earlier, he sold it in Cape Town for £450. For four long months in 1958, however, its occupants considered it priceless.

“I’m not a car person, but what a car that Volkswagen was—what it went through,” Louise says. “Manual (transmission), no power steering, two-wheel drive … There’s no way someone would try that trip nowadays with that equipment. They’d have four-wheel drive, long-range fuel tanks, long-range water tanks, constant communication. That Kombi was really something.”

The five travelers remained close for the rest of their lives. Carl and Joan moved many times during Carel’s career as head of South Africa’s largest civil engineering company. Audrey—British born and raised—married a South African and eventually became a South African citizen while building a career as an artist. Marius, a bachelor his entire life, worked on roadways in England before returning to South Africa and accepting a job in the mining industry. And Johan and his wife settled in Johannesburg, where they raised two sons.

Carel Marais was the last living member of the group, and he spoke to his daughter every day, confirming facts and dates, while she finished the book. Carel died in February 2021 at age 92, just two months before the release of 1958: Home is a Journey.

“He was very excited that the book was coming out,” Louise says. “I would have dearly loved to have placed a copy in his hands.”

Regardless, she hopes that the travelers’ story will continue to motivate others.

“They had their share of trouble along the way. It was just a matter of them putting their heads down and figuring it out, or digging out—doing whatever had to be done,” Louise says. “They met a lot of helpful people along the way who were probably wondering, ‘What in the hell were you thinking?’ But that trip was—and still is—a real testament to the power of the human spirit, the pioneering spirit.

“Hopefully, it inspires people to get out there and have an adventure. You don’t have to drive across Africa and Europe like they did, just get out there and enjoy the ride.”

The post Two continents, a 1954 VW Kombi, and a life-changing 13,500-mile adventure appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Rallying an old car is one thing. Rallying a 104-year-old speedster is an entirely different one. There is nothing forgiving or easy about covering 2500 miles in the Peerless, V-8-powered Green Dragon. I knew this, but the most recent trip on the Great Race was a reminder that even the most well-sorted cars are still nothing more than a conglomeration of wear items conspiring against the person just looking to have fun. This sounds harsh, but I promise it’s true—and especially so if you are taking the competition too seriously for your own good.

This was the third Great Race my navigator Brett and I have weathered with this car, which means we know enough to be dangerous. The car is a veteran, though. It has been wheeled through a big rally like this every year since 1997. It has never been a true competitor for first place, but the motto “to finish is to win” cemented itself in my head the first time I attempted this event. How hard could it really be to drive around at 30 to 50 mph all day?

Really hard. The odyssey is also quite hard on equipment, which is why I spent a significant amount of time on the side of the road in 2021 despite the Peerless boasting over 150,000 miles of rallying under its wire-spoke wheels.

The Great Race isn’t the sort of “race” most imagine when they hear that word. It’s all time-speed-distance rallying. This challenges the driver to perform consistent, precise actions. The navigator has to not only interpret the sometimes-cryptic instructions, but also properly calculate the time loss incurred by the stated maneuvers. Right turn at stop, hold 40mph for two minutes, accelerate to 50mph, turn at first paved road. Mess up one part of that and you are headed the wrong way real quick. The rallymaster sets checkpoints on the day’s route, and the driver and navigator pair do their best to drive through those checkpoints on time. That is all before traffic enters the situation and conspires to ruin your perfectly laid plans.

Great teams rely on experience and cooperation to handle frustrating situations. Encountering a slow-moving vehicle in a no-passing zone? There are a couple ways to handle that and stay on time; all of them involve communication between driver and navigator plus a good bit of math.

All this shakes down to a game of seconds for those who are really good. The biggest thing to remember is that there are three team members, and each one has to do its job to pull the whole thing together. The driver and navigator could do everything flawlessly, and the car can leave you hanging. Such is the tale of team Green Dragon’s 2021 Great Race.

This run, the start of the rally was San Antonio, Texas. The Peerless V-8 is a big lump of iron that, when worked hard, gets warm and stays warm for a long time. With the lack of insulation on the firewall and the exhaust routing located right under the aluminum floor, the cockpit gets toasty, and quickly. I like to joke that at the end of the day Brett and I are perfectly done turkeys—we’ve been cooked at 200 degrees for 8 to 10 hours. Hydration goes a long way in keeping sane, but we also had a Coolshirt system that helped keep our core temperatures in check by circulating ice water through tubing stitched to a t-shirt. Emphasis on “had,” because on the first day of the rally the innards of 12V pump that pushed that ice-cold relief through the tubes broke. I band-aid fixed it and got it to work sporadically for another day, but by the end of day two it was 100 percent useless.

As we were acclimating to the Texas and Oklahoma heat inside the Peerless, it decided to throw another wrench in our plan. Driving along at 40 mph, Brett called out for me to accelerate to 50 mph as directed by the instructions. I put my right foot down but, rather than the guttural roar the straight-piped, 330-cubic-inch V-8 normally releases with that action, we were met with a whimper, a sputter, and slight backfires. I immediately flipped the two dash-mounted switches to change from the fuel pump I thought was dying to the spare fuel pump that was wired and plumbed in series for just this situation.

It was no help. Any throttle input was met by the sound of an engine trying its best to die. It would idle fine, though, and by the time we had bled enough speed to come to a safe stop I swung into a driveway for diagnosis. Like any 104-year-old engine, the Peerless is simple—but simple should not be confused with bulletproof. After pulling the fuel line from the carburetor and confirming there was plenty of fuel flow, and deciding the car was not acting as though the carb was clogged, I was forced to remember what a wise man once told me: “90 percent of your fuel problems are ignition.”

The original distributor is long gone, with a Ford dual-point unit in its place. The package is very snug to the bifurcated exhaust manifolds, meaning that even inspecting things is an exercise in how many times can you burn your hands before you start cussing like a sailor. Just as I was about to dig in, a truck swung in next to us and a seemingly unimpressed man said, “If you’re having trouble, you oughta just pull down the driveway—the shop is open and there’s tools in there.” An invitation I will never turn down.

The shade gave me a clearer head as I inspected both sets of points, pulled a spark plug, and looked for any signs of arcing or carbon tracking in the cap. Nothing stood out. Cooling things down didn’t help either–which would have pointed to an overheating coil. Then I remembered the humble condenser. A pair of them are mounted to the side of the dizzy, and their failure symptoms exactly matched the car’s current behavior.

Scrounging in our small box of spares yielded a good, used set and another, new pair. Both of the units attached to the distributor had bulged bottoms, a classic sign they had failed. One Phillips-head screw loosened and re-tightened, and we were in business—approximately 34 minutes late, but back in business nonetheless. We thanked Jim for opening his garage to us and kindly denied his offer of a cold beverage and conversation in the hopes that we could still stitch together a decent day of rallying. We arrived at dinner that night happy to be under our own power.

We enjoyed another two days of rallying before problem number three struck. The car has a very simple wiring harness, as it is a bare-bones car. So when a rattle developed on the front of the engine during our speedometer calibration on day eight and the ammeter on the dashboard wouldn’t leave zero, I knew exactly what was wrong. The original generator is long-gone and in its place is an alternator that has been adapted to fit the PTO-style front drive. A new battery was installed not long before the Peerless was loaded in the trailer bound for Texas, so I knew we could probably drive all day since the points ignition really doesn’t require much energy to keep the engine turning. The trouble would be keeping things cool and persuading them not to self-destruct.

There was a set screw missing on the alternator snout, and the custom-machined pieces were attempting to tear themselves apart. Luckily there was a hardware store just off from the gas station where we stopped to get a look at things and we scrounged up an appropriate screw and a few other items to hold everything together for the day. The real issue was that the big 20-amp electrical fan on the front of the radiator, which would suck the life out of the battery in fairly short order. We stared down a miserable day with a Peerless that, without the fan, would be trying its best to overheat. Shutting down the car wouldn’t be an option. Brett and I conferred with each other and arrived at two choices:

1. Call our support crew and load the car in the trailer. We would then be done with Great Race for 2021.
2. Call the Great Race support truck and have them pick us up with their trailer. We would be done for the day, but could patch things up overnight and still finish the rally as scored participants.

We sat in the parking lot in silence. We knew our options, and neither of us would be first to admit defeat. Then I realized there was a third option. We didn’t know what the day might bring—and hidden in that uncertainty was faint hope. There could be a fairly easy day of driving ahead, one that would not overwork the car and thus avoid overheating. Option number three became our clear choice: Rally as far as we could while keeping the car safe. If the temp gauge moved over 190 degrees, we would shut it down and call it a day. We agreed on the plan, started the car, and set out to the day’s first restart point 38 minutes late.

Over seven hours later we arrived at dinner with the car still running. No meltdown. No push starts. A good bit of anxiety filled the day, but some stress is good for the body, right? (I’ll just keep telling myself that.) We put the battery on a charger over night rather than replacing the dead alternator, because logic told us that the last day of rallying would only be a few hours long, and we knew the car would be fine for that amount of time. The chance that something had gone amiss during alternator swap was too high: The wiring was cooked, with insulation falling off in chunks and mismatched connectors peppering the harness. Our strategy was set: Limp it to the finish line and then totally address the problem at home in the convenience of our home shop.

It’s important to balance some of this negative talk with a very important disclaimer: We still had a great time, sort of. That second failure of the car happened during “championship days,” which means it really hammered our score and dropped us from contenders in the Sportsman category to mid-pack overall.

However, the banner over the finish line reads To Finish Is to Win. I used to think that finishing was just a consolation prize; now, with my 66 percent success rate at finishing Great Race, I realize that’s far from the truth. Nearly 2500 miles in vintage machinery is an epic journey, even without the failures and patchwork mechanical fixes we experienced. Friendship is based on shared experience, and thanks to this journey I now have 450 or so new friends that were all part of this fantastic rally.

Maybe I was taking the competition side of the rally a bit too seriously. Very few of us are going to remember the finish order, but we all will recall the laughs, smiles, and miles of scenery. That is what it’s all about.

The post Limping the Green Dragon to the 2021 Great Race finish line taught me a lesson appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As the Covid Pandemic picked up steam through the late spring and early summer of 2020, the reality began to sink in that my family would not be doing our typical vacation travel together. While many of our friends had retreated to National Parks and off-the-grid campsites, our kids were more accustomed to flying to Disney World or Concours car events for our yearly family vacations.

The realities of masked & sanitized air travel and hotels with 6-foot distancing did not sound like a fun time, so how could our family get out and yet stay in our little bubble? A Road Trip, that’s how!

But not just some day trip in the family station wagon, or even an interstate jaunt in a rented RV would do. No, we needed to go big for this one, and really show Covid who was boss. That’s when a crazy, ambitious plan hatched in my head: A two-week, 13 state, trailer tour leaving our home in the San Francisco Bay Area, heading straight across the country, and then meandering back home slowly on Route 66. Even better, the 15-year anniversary of ‘Cars’ was approaching, so why not stop at some of locations on the Mother Road that inspired our story crew when creating the movie? With an RV or trailer, we could stay the night at campgrounds along the way and ‘boondock’ when accommodations were less than ideal… or non-existent. Now the fun part, picking the perfect truck and travel trailer to keep the family as comfortable as possible and maximize the fun. Fortunately, as an automotive journalist, I’m able to access media vehicles, so there were some very compelling options.

The luxury road warrior’s weapons of choice, you ask? How about a 2020 Ford F250 Platinum 4X4 Powerstroke diesel with a Tremor Off-Road package pulling a brand new ’27 Airstream International? Sure, I had a little experience with full size trucks towing car trailers over the years, but nothing even close to this ambitious. Luckily, we could not have dreamt up a better vehicle combination for our epic journey. The F250 that Ford provided was a Crew Cab with copious amounts of leg room for the kids, heated and cooled leather seating, panoramic moonroof, Bang & Olufsen stereo and most importantly, onboard Wi-Fi. The 6.7-liter diesel provided an astonishing 30,300 gross combined weight rating, so there would be no shortage of pulling power with a sub-6,000-pound Airstream behind us.

By the time our ideal F250 Tremor and Airstream were secured for the trip we were well into late September and summer break was over, which actually turned out to be ideal. Although the kids were back in school, they were still remote learning (told you the truck’s Wi-Fi would be important!), but this meant roads would be emptier, RV grounds less crowded, and crucially the weather would be that perfect period after hot and humid days, but before the rainy season began. The local Airstream dealer helped us get the brand new International hitched up to our Tremor and installed a set of Rock Tamers mud flaps to protect the trailer’s smooth aluminum skin in any unsavory road conditions. The slickest part about the Ford Tow Package was entering the trailer size so the blind spot mirrors would then compensate for the overall length when changing lanes. It was now time to head back home, pack up the Airstream and prepare to roll out at dawn! I added a set of small  ‘Piston Cup’ decals to the front fenders and taped a Lightning McQueen die cast on the dash, just for luck.

Day 1: The first day would be a very long leg of the journey at over 600 miles, with the goal of reaching the Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah by bedtime that night. The natural beauty of this massive expanse combined with its saline-bleached foliage feels like you’re camping on another planet! The 27 foot International was a perfect size for a family of four. The layout had a Queen bed in the nose for my wife and I, and a fold-out twin bed from the dinette in the back for my daughter. My son was perfectly content sleeping on the long side couch, mainly because he wouldn’t have to spend time making his bed in the morning!

There’s something special about camping an Airstream. Maybe it’s the beauty of the curvaceous design, the quality and comfort of the interior, or perhaps it’s just the amount of natural light pouring in from so many windows when you’re out in nature. When you see another Airstream on the road, there’s always that knowing nod and a wave as you pass.

Day 2: We lucked out that it was the SCTA’s World Finals, so we were able to watch some cool land speed racers heading out to course. From there we headed straight to Salt Lake City to visit an ‘a-maze-ing’ Toy Story-themed Corn Maze, and ended up staying with old friends at their ranch in Spanish Fork. Surveying the wide open spaces of this country, I toyed with the idea of picking up a new Honda Monkey Z125 for the kids to ride along our trip, but after visiting a local dealer, I realized the retro-style Monkey was much more of a grown-up’s bike that had been shrunk down, rather than a street-legal kid’s dirt bike. The plan changed to look for a decent 1970s-era Honda CT70 at that point, since Honda made 725,000 CT’s for over three decades, I figured there must be a decent Trail 70 somewhere along our journey. We got out of S.L.C. by the late afternoon and headed due east for 500 miles.

Day 3: After a good night sleep and learning how to dump our grey water in Cheyenne, Wyoming, it was time to burn some serious fuel and make our way to my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. This would be our last day of really eating up major highway miles before hitting Route 66 and slowing down. Driving from early morning till late evening we were able to cover that 660 miles in the Tremor. Ford’s Power Stroke diesel pulled like a buttery smooth freight train, and didn’t mind having the trailer behind it one bit. Along the way, I called my KC family to let them know we were closing in that night, and the conversation revealed that our super-long truck and Airstream combo would not fit anywhere at the house. After a few more panicked calls to find the local RV parks were booked, a new plan was hatched with some help from friends: Camping at the Kansas Speedway RV grounds!

Day 4, 5: Hanging out in KC. Waking up on the infield of the empty Speedway was surreal. It was about 2 weeks before their NASCAR big race, so no one had arrived yet. We unhooked the F-250 and went into town for a few days of good BBQ and time with family. I checked on a ’70 Trail 70 from Craigslist but it was an absolute beater. The search continued!

Day 6: This would be the first day to connect with the actual Mother Road for our journey back home. Rather than head straight, we zig-zagged south-east bound on the rolling, scenic Highway 7 (which runs through Tightwad, Mo.) and then on Highway 5 to the little town of Lebanon, right on Route 66. It was a chance to visit more family, eat even more BBQ, then head west on the Mother Road to Joplin for another KOA camp night.

Day 7: This was our first day hitting the towns that really inspired ‘Cars’ starting with the Route 66 Drive-In in Carthage (sadly closed for COVID), then heading across the state line into Galena, KS. Route 66 covers a scant 11.27 miles of Kansas, but this town offers up so much to see, including the gas station tow truck that inspired Mater, and lots of newer ‘CARS’ vehicles added since the town became a bit famous.

From there we picked up some lunch and ate waterside by the Blue Whale, of Catoosa, Oklahoma. Then on to Tulsa to connect with Michael Wallis, who guided our ‘Cars’ story teams on the Route 66 research trips and became the voice of Sheriff in return. Just outside of Tulsa, I found a great shadetree mechanic that only restored Honda Trail 70s and Z50s, and ended up nabbing a very original metallic gold ’71 CT70 with a scant 750 miles on the odometer since new. My only concern with the near-mint bike: Would it actually be too nice for the kids to ride around (and potentially crash)?  We celebrated with lunch at the Rock Café in Stroud, OK where we met the owner Dawn, who’s warm personality inspired some of the loveable Porsche 996, Sally Carrera. She remembers the ‘Cars’ team coming in for lunch 20 years ago in the early research days of the movie. Although the Café had a fire in 2008, Dawn reopened a year later and is still thriving. As she spoke, my kids began to realize how important the movie had been for the businesses along Route 66. Over the past 15 years since it’s release, ‘Cars’ has almost become part of the culture of the Mother Road, and you didn’t have to look too far before spotting yet another hand-painted Lightning or ‘Team 95’ mural.

Onto the town of Arcadia, but unfortunately, we got there late in the evening and the Red Barn was closed. We fueled up on diesel, topped off the DEF, and as a consolation prize, grabbed a 6 pack of drinks at Pops 66 Soda Ranch, before setting up camp for the night.

Day 8: We really enjoyed staying at the wonderful El Reno KOA just outside of Geary, OK. The kids got to take turns riding the Trail 70 for the first time, getting their balance and working on shifting and braking. We headed 2 hours to Shamrock, Texas, for the U-Drop-Inn Conoco station (the iconic architecture inspired Ramone’s House of Body Art). From there, we made our way further down Route 66 to McLean to see one of the oldest Phillips 66 gas stations (1929) and a marble copy of the Ten Commandments (Understandably, the kids wanted to pass on the Devil’s Rope Barbed Wire museum in town). Next up was Amarillo for family selfies at the Cadillac Ranch and souvenir shopping at the Big Texan steak house.

Day 9: Woke up across the road from the Mid-Point Café in Adrian TX, more dirt bike riding, then on to visit the neon-clad Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico. We were very excited to stop in Santa Rosa for a cool dip in the “Blue Hole” swim spot, which was sadly closed for Covid. The beauty of the Airstream was a clean bathroom and cold drinks were always on hand! Then we drove on to Albuquerque for antique shopping and to visit an old friend.

Day 10: Woke up at the Grants, NM KOA, played on fields of volcanic rock, then over to Gallup for lunch at the El Rancho Hotel. We visited Holbrook, Arizona including stops at Joe & Aggies, The WigWam Motel (reminds me of Sally’s Cozy Cone), the Rock Shop, then the amazing Jack Rabbit Trading Post in Joseph City. The whole family stood on a corner in Winslow, AZ, had a fuel stop in Flagstaff, before stayed the night in the charming old west cowboy town of Williams, AZ.

Day 11: After a morning of dirt bike riding in the RV park and shopping in Williams, we headed to Seligman, AZ, which is one of the most iconic towns along Route 66: Delgadillo’s Snow Cap, Angel Delgadillo’s Barber Shop, The Copper Cart Restaurant (which is now a tourist shop and the owners vintage motorcycle collection), then ended with lunch at the Roadkill Café. There was a stop for drinks at the Hackberry General Store (perhaps some inspiration for Lizzie’s Curio Shop?), fueled up in Kingman then across the state line for a camp night at Desert View RV Park in Needles, back in our home state of California.

Day 12: Drove to Amboy for the gas station picture, visited friends in LA for dinner at ‘The Idle Hour’ in West Hollywood.

Day 13: Camped with family on Central Coast then headed home up 101!

As we approached home, it was bitter sweet. Every day of the trip was it’s own adventure: The charming little towns we visited, the friendly people we met everywhere, and the laugh-out-loud fun times we had together, as a family… All strung together on a very special strip of old asphalt called Route 66. There’s a moment in ‘Cars’ when Sally takes Lightning up to a bluff and explains the history of Radiator Springs and how traveling was before the Interstate went in, “Cars didn’t drive on it to make great time. They drove on it to have a great time.”

Indeed.

The post The journey is indeed the reward appeared first on Hagerty Media.

A Kansas sunrise is one of the most beautiful things in the world. The way the sky bends as orange and yellow blossoms far and wide is nothing short of a spiritual experience. You know what else is beautiful though? Watching the curve of a road constantly dive and flex out of view in a never ending array of apexes. That is pretty darn rare in my home state. It’s not rare in southern California though, and now I want nothing more than to quit my job and endlessly explore the winding mountain roads of SoCal. (Wish granted! This is your last day! — jb)

That wouldn’t make much sense, mainly because I have my job to thank for taking me there in the first place. The powers that be here at Hagerty decided more motorcycle content should grace these pages, and it should surprise no one that Michigan is not exactly a hotbed of motorcycle riding, so when that call rang on my phone it also included the note that the coverage would require a trip to California. Having never ridden motorcycles on the west coast, the reply to accept the invitation might have come out of my mouth before Jack Baruth even finished explaining what he had planned for the four of us who agreed to hop on a plane with no destination in mind after landing at LAX.

The joke was on him though, as he accepted my enthusiasm before understanding that despite my decent riding resume, 99 percent of it came behind the bars of equipment that was at least a decade old. This trip was set up to get out riding impressions of four motorcycles. Four brand new, on loan from the manufacturer, motorcycles. New roads, new bikes, new experience, new anxiety?

As the date approached I had to sit back and laugh at the thought of getting to do all this for work despite my feeling of under-qualification. Motorcycles today are fantastic machines … but if I could ride an aging two-stroke enduro across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan without hurting myself or the bike, surely I could ride around some canyon roads on a brand-new bike with all the bells and whistles. Or at least that was what I told myself in the airport.

Right off the plane, I met Sam Smith in the hotel parking where he tossed me the key to the black Ducati Monster so we could go grab some dinner. He sat astride the BMW R 1250 GS as we dipped in and out of traffic, his mental GPS recalling street names and directions from his years of experience both living there and routinely traveling to the area. I on the other hand was internally baffled as I learned the ins and outs of lane splitting on the fly, acutely aware that the Monster had the narrowest physique of the four machines we had gathered. Its powerband was not as punchy as I expected, but it was still the perfect weapon for squirting in and out of gaps while following Sam around as we diced through surface streets.

Over a greasy hamburger from that place that tells you how to use a door, Sam gave me another reality check. He knew the roads the group had roughly agreed to ride, and also the stories of folks who had gotten in over their head out there. There were positive endings to a few of them, but the general theme was that a good day in the canyons could rapidly become a very bad day. It set a tone for me, and really all of us, for the entire weekend. Respect the roads, the bikes, and each other, and we would all have a good story to tell.

Now thoroughly afraid of the adventure I was already in the middle of, we saddled up at 7 a.m. the next day and headed for the hills—only to find I was scared of nothing. Yes, it was easy to get in over your head, especially on that gorgeous Kawasaki H2 SX that would happily goad you into twisting the throttle and braking later with each corner. However, it was also just as easy to sit up, ride within my limits, and enjoy the dance of never holding the bars straight for more than the flick from side to side.

The capability of each bike and the risk tolerance of each rider made for fun interactions and thoughts at every stop. The roads just seemed never-ending. I left my phone in my pocket despite being constantly tempted to look at GPS and figure out where we were in the world, but in the end, I knew I didn’t need to know that. It was superfluous information. The luxury of guides who knew the area and where we should and should not go were at my disposal, so there was no need for me to get in the way trying to navigate. Just enjoy the ride—literally.

And enjoy I did. The fear of running off the road or sending myself headfirst into a rock wall slowly melted away as hour by hour the hypnotizing enjoyment of just riding a motorcycle set in. Despite spending time scouting out curvy roads in the multiple states I have lived in, all my previous experience paled in comparison to the curves and corners that more or less led to nowhere. We spent three days riding in a giant circle and not a second of it felt like wasted time or a drain. Quite the opposite. It was recharging, invigorating. Now I want nothing more than to go ride around in circles endlessly. Not because of the new motorcycles, though I have to admit that was really cool (and I look forward to sharing my impression of all those machines in future articles), but rather because there was a level of escape that I had never found before. Despite being spitting distance from one of the largest cities in the U.S., I was in the middle of nowhere—and I want to go back. (Alright! You’re rehired — jb)

The post A Kansas rider in Southern California’s motorcycle playground appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If there was one thing made painfully clear by recent events, it was that self-contained exploration of this grand country cannot be over-valued. As the nation tried to figure out how to escape its own four walls without endangering the neighbors, camper and RV sales went through the roof. Airstreams were the new Airbnbs, and one way or another, those who could traded wings for wheels and set out on road trips to anywhere else.

Although it was already growing in popularity prior to the world’s sudden stop, “overlanding” rode the pandemic lightning to new heights. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, think “backpacking meets 4x4ing meets the normal side of doomsday preppers.” It’s as self-contained as can be, with sleeping quarters either atop of or inside vehicles built to flatten forest roads, desert trails, and harsh terrain. The journey itself sets overlanding apart from the other forms of camping.

Like so many cooped up inside during quarantine, I had become quite taken with the idea of an overlanding rig. Moving to Northern Michigan, with its endless green forests and gorgeous lakeshores, only compounded that interest. Without the stack of cash I’d need to just head over to a dealership and scoop up a new 4×4, I spent more time than I should have scouring classifieds for the right candidate. Problem is, the vehicles best suited for these sorts of activities have become immensely popular (my grand fascination was anything but original), so used ones were either gone in a flash, or grossly overpriced.

My search began where many used car searches do—Toyota. The 4Runner and Tacoma are some of the most universally loved vehicles in existence, but the Toyota Tax is real. Perhaps a Jeep XJ or maybe even a four-door Wrangler? The former didn’t pass muster with the wife, the latter was still too pricey. Here’s an option: a Lexus GX470, which was basically a cushier 4Runner, right? Not a chance. When the soccer moms sell them, there’s a line out the door; I was priced out of every one I looked at. Still. My most recent fly-and-drive experience in a 1997 Lexus LS400 cemented my love for Japanese cars, and save for the perfect Wrangler, I really didn’t want to venture elsewhere. Slowly, the envelope of appeal widened, and the Mitsubishi Montero came into play.

Disregard the marque’s woeful current state and consider, for a moment, Mitsubishi around the turn of the century. The late 1990s were arguably the zenith of the company; the preceding decade brought motorsport glory in every dirt-based racing discipline the brand contested. In 1998, Mitsubishi finally captured its first World Rally Championship constructor’s title, at the hands of the inimitable Tommi Mäkinen, who notched his third of four consecutive WRC driver’s championships, all behind the wheel of the vaunted Lancer Evolution. That ’98 WRC accolade fit neatly in the cabinet next to the four Dakar Rally trophies that the marque had amassed by then. It would take its fifth title in ’98, and clock-off seven in a row from 2001–2008, making Mitsubishi the winningest manufacturer ever at one of the world’s most grueling—and occasionally tragic—off-road races.

That motorsports success trickled into the showroom. In 1998, you could walk into a Mitsu dealership and see a bold twin-turbo V-6 grand tourer in the 3000 GT; a lithe, four-pot sports car in the Eclipse and Eclipse Spyder (both of which would be immortalized three years later with the release of The Fast and the Furious); or the Montero, a more road-worthy take on the Land Cruiser formula backed by years of motorsport development.

Here was a tried and true, globally-adored 4×4 with plenty of capability for the adventures I had in mind. I knew that Hagerty Editor-at-Large, Aaron Robinson, owned a second-generation Montero that was looking for a new home. The seed was planted. As quarantine dragged on and the itch to overland grew, I began to badger him about the Montero; questions and bi-monthly check-ins to see if he was willing to relinquish the keys yet.

Not long after the world told 2020 to kick rocks, a message from Aaron: Replacement truck found, let me know when you want to come. Within the day, I booked one-way travel to Moab, Utah, where he kept the Montero for high-desert hijinks.

The truck was even better than I’d hoped. Navajo Green over Munich Silver, with paint that had seen a lifetime of adventures chasing vast skies and red dust. Atop its roof, a fold-out tent flanked by a retractable awning, both from a South African company with the slogan, “Keeping you out of the food chain.” Inside, a real, wobbly handle for Mitsu’s Active-Trac four-wheel-drive system, which employs a viscous coupling center differential to eliminate that pesky hopping while turning in four-high. Seats, worn thin from butts sliding out of them to getting a better glimpse at the majesty their occupants had trekked to.

Moab feels like a cheat code. The tiny village carries a year round population of roughly 5000 people, but in the spring and fall that number can balloon to over 20 times that. Every vehicle stores mountain bikes, camping gear, or meaty tires meant to help you eschew pavement in favor of burnt orange rocks. Passion for the land—easily some of the best public off-roading in existence—hangs in the air thicker than the red dust.

With just two-and-a-half days to explore this grand area, we decided to be conservative and take the paths more traveled. When you’re within a 40-mile radius of two of the greatest national parks in existence, neither of which you have seen before, you swallow your own pride and line up at the gate, happy to pay an entry fee for the chance to feel small.

Arches National Park is just five miles north of Moab on Route 191. Its 76,519 acres of high desert tapestry are punctuated by rock formations that look like God’s dribble castles, protruding proudly from a hundred-mile horizon. Vehicle-wise, there’s nothing taxing about exploring the park; you could do it in a Prius, or an Odyssey, or a Tesla. But we were in the Montero, a plodding vehicle happier at 45 than 70. We loped along in our tippy green toaster content as could be, marveling at what we saw out the upright windshield. A suggestion: If you’re coming from the east coast, stay on eastern time and pull up to the gate at 6:00 a.m. Moab time to guarantee that you won’t get caught in the throngs of people who have also (rightly) decided the place is worth seeing. The parks are dealing with insane visitor numbers and occasionally have to suspend entry in the afternoons because they’re so full. The early bird gets the generic, crowd-free picture at Delicate Arch—the park’s signature feature.

If Arches is a park for specifics, Canyonlands National Park is a park for scale. On a previous excursion involving Japanese SUVs and Canyonlands, Aaron himself said it best when he described the park and surrounding area as “Mother Nature cranking the volume up to 11 and breaking the knob off.” There are arches, rock formations, and hikes aplenty throughout each of the park’s four regions, but mostly, you’re seemingly never more than 15 minutes from the edge of a cliff with miles of canyons snaking out towards the sky. In the gorges below, side-by-sides—the new steed of choice for thousands of Moabites—slithered along trails such as the fabled White Rim Road. We wanted to join them, but had neither the time nor the right provisions to do so. (Another tip: Dead Horse Point State Park, the next-door neighbor to Canyonlands, is equally as impressive. Visit both, they share a common access road.)

Between the hikes and the short jaunts down dirt paths simply because curiosity demanded so, I had plenty of time to think about our new vehicle. Turn-of-the-century Japanese automotive engineering is some of the best to ever exist. Offerings from the likes of Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, and Mitsubishi were compelling, full of value, and sensible no matter where you looked. In 1998—the model year of our new Montero—you could buy a brand-new Mazda Miata, Acura Integra Type R, Toyota Land Cruiser, Lexus LS400, Mitsubishi Montero, or Toyota Supra. Some twenty years on, all of these cars boast some level of collectible status. The Montero is lagging behind the others mentioned above; it’s not as recognizable today as the Land Cruiser, and it never had the lore of the Integra. But there’s a budding community of enthusiasts and aftermarket support springing up for Monteros, full of smart people developing work-arounds for common problems or helping fellow owners scour other countries for replacement and region-specific parts. It’s an invigorating group to be a part of, and I’m just getting started.

We camped for three nights in Moab, the first two of which were in camp grounds—once out of a desire to ease into the rooftop tent life, once because of a planning error on my part. On the third night, we finally got the hang of what these Bureau of Land Management grounds had to offer. We didn’t think it was real at first. Just pull off the road down a trail and you can camp wherever free of charge, so long as you leave your site as good or better than you found it. We meandered down what felt like a goat path headed straight towards some cliffs with the La Sal mountain range in the background as the moon chased the sun from the sky. Once we found a suitable site, I positioned the Montero just so and we began setting up camp, which by then was down to a 30-minute endeavor. Within the hour, we had a small fire going and cold beverages in hand, reveling at what was around us.

Before the light had completely gone, my wife flipped the tent cover open and snapped a photo of what we’d be greeted by the following morning. That picture—the grungy desert foliage showing green against a dusty red ground with massive snow-capped mountains just out of view—is among my absolute favorites from the trip. It would be topped later that night, when I awoke randomly and climbed out of the tent, just to see what absolutely zero light pollution could feel like in a place already too beautiful to process. There, spanning the entire width of the sky, was an arm of the Milky Way galaxy, clearer and more vivid than anything I’d seen on a screen. Although those kinds of moments can be few and far between, they’re too good to miss, and part of the allure of overlanding. I climbed back in bed, drifting off to dreams of adventures to come in the months and years ahead.

The highways headed east on our journey home revealed that, yep, this was still a late ’90s SUV. Despite the independent front suspension, the Montero proved wobbly in crosswinds. Not unmanageable, but certainly not helped by the rooftop tent and the truck’s two-inch suspension lift. Following behind semi trucks was a handful, as was any speed north of 75 mph. Over the next two-and-a-half days, we traded the deserts of Utah for the mountains of Colorado, where we climbed the fateful Eisenhower Pass on I-70 using of all four of our transmission’s forward gears. Eventually the mountains gave way to the ranch and farmland east of Denver, scenery that kept us company all the way to just east of Joliet, Illinois, where we split off I-80 and headed north to Michigan. We made it home without much issue, tired but fulfilled by what we’d seen, and smitten with our new rig.

There are a lot of ideas rattling around in our heads for what to do—and where to go—next. Park something outfitted for exploration in your driveway, and every day not spent doing that can feel somewhat wasted. Real life beckons, naturally; we’ll be lucky to get away more than handful of times this summer. It’s still comforting to know that no matter what sense of normality returns in the year to come, we now have the keys to a vehicle well-suited to escape it all. Lots to do and learn. Even more memories to make. We can’t wait to get started.

The post Montero in Moab: Growing to love an overlooked 4×4 in the age of escape appeared first on Hagerty Media.

This is the second half of our Hunting Jets With Camden Thrasher feature. For a more detailed look at the Land Rover and Jeep tested on this trip, check out Sam’s reviews of the Wrangler and Defender here. Enjoy! —Ed.

Naturally, the next day, we sat on another mountain for eight hours and saw a grand total of bupkis.

We had slept the night before on a dry lake near Death Valley, a few miles from a small town. I folded the seats in the Land Rover and unrolled sleeping bag in the back. The next morning, the sun rose as it does in the desert, a blue-pink glow that crept lazily over the hills before erupting into a wash of golden light.

Shortly after dawn, Camden and I loaded our gear into a couple of backpacks and climbed a 400-foot pile of boulders at the valley’s edge. For the rest of the day, we sat around 200 feet up, waiting, with a 270-degree view of the land below. It felt like fishing, minus the smell and any kind of mucking about with hooks.

I spent the first 20 minutes on that pile getting settled. Organizing gear, poking around the boulders, arranging snacks. When I finished, I sat down on a rock the size of a Volkswagen and watched a lone cloud amble around the peak of Mt. Whitney. Down on the desert floor, on a gravel road, where humans do not regularly report their speed as a Mach number, a minivan trundled past, trailing a long cloud of dust.

Nothing else happened for hours.

Not that the air was silent. Jet noise was audible all day, echoing over the horizon. Two days in, the sound felt something like a call, the heading of a Mecca to face. You could follow a rumble across the land, listen as it circled from west to east, the reverb splashing across valley. All that air rolling and tumbling. I watched heat shimmer across the lakebed and tried to picture the violence met by an air molecule in a turbine: suck toss tumble burn, then shoosh, you’re out. For almost no reason whatsoever, I also found myself thinking on mistakes, how a single poor choice can cascade into other poor choices, until you’re spit out the back of your own train of bad decisions, attempting to process what happened.

Around 11:00, two F-18s came rolling across the desert, dark and menacing, so low that they disappeared into the heat distortion rising off the sand. A moment later, each airplane flicked into a climbing roll and pitched up almost directly over my rock.

I had many thoughts about the world in that moment, and none were suited for a family website.

From a certain perspective, sitting on a pile of rocks for hours, simply for a chance to watch rare airplanes, is ridiculous. What, exactly, are you accomplishing by driving a small truck into rural America, sitting for hours or days, doing little more than collating your thoughts while eyeballing the panorama of creation?

From another perspective, what aren’t you accomplishing, doing that?

Viper 1, your bandits are set

Much of Death Valley National Park looks as you might imagine, baked and empty. Parts of the western border, however, are lush and rolling, like a lumpy comforter painted with trees. On our third day in the desert, Camden pointed us up a route in those foothills—graded gravel at first, then gnarly two-track. At one point, the Jeep’s inclinometer indicated a whopping 14 degrees of slope.

The road ended at a small plateau, a shale-covered flat surrounded by trees and gifted a virtually uninterrupted view. The rocks grabbed and tilted my boots as I walked, clinking against each other like porcelain. Below us, the land tilted and folded, losing elevation rapidly, foliage tapering as the desert rose up to eat it.

Camden set the scanner on the Jeep’s hood, then opened the Wrangler’s trunk and began rummaging through luggage. A quarter-mile away, a branch snapped audibly. The Wrangler itself was covered in silt; when Thrasher shut the rear door, the thunk of its closure dislodged a cloud of dirt that billowed over the hood, coating my face and gear. After three days without a shower, I didn’t care.

“I came up here one time before, stayed most of the day,” he said. “Saw nothing. There’s a road that leads up the hill to an old mine, though—I poked around that a bit. Google Maps says it goes a bit further.”

The scanner was a lot more active in that spot, likely because we were facing more broad and open terrain. High above, some sort of flight exercise carried on—the radio merrily burbling things like “Viper 1, your bandits are set,” and “hostiles up high, 29,000.” A small group of pilots communicated with each other, with one voice, more authoritative than the rest, choreographing and managing the whole thing.

I muttered something about the strange nature of boredom, how a human can sit idle for hours in certain locations without wanting to leave but five minutes in the dentist’s chair is occasionally too much. Camden squinted at the horizon for a moment, thinking. Then he kicked a few rocks down the hill with his sneaker and proceeded to spend thirty seconds telling a story about the time he was out chasing jets and got in a fight with a squirrel.

“He made noises at me the whole day. Just, like, squeaking. Then I threw a rock at him, and he left.”

I said nothing, chewing on possibility.

“I didn’t know what his problem was,” he said. The words left his mouth in a way that both suggested genuine confusion and implied the exact opposite.

“Well,” I allowed, as deadpan as I could manage, “people say you’re good at what you do.”

An hour passed quietly, then another, and another after that. High above, two condensation plumes swept across the sky. The machines that produced them were so distant as to essentially be invisible. Camden pointed them out, then poked at an app on his phone. “Contrails—not an airliner. They’re doing something.”

“I wonder what.”

“GE has a 747 they do engine tests on. I think it has one giant engine from the triple-7? That was floating around yes—”

A wall of noise cannoned out behind us, drowning him out. Two F-22s burst from a seam in the land, a few hundred feet over our heads, then flicked down lower, batting into a shallow set of ridges. Camden, caught off guard, whirled on a toe, yanking his camera into a pan. The shutter’s motor drive chattered away, somehow audible over the blare of the jets, until just before they popped out of sight.

Movement on the ground nearby caught my eye. It looked like a shadow of an airplane but turned out to be a bird, a small jay of some sort, biting at a bit of grass. I watched it for a moment, unable to look away.

A moment of immense failure

To find the canyon at the end of the Jedi Transition, you leave the tourist burg of Lone Pine, just down the road from Mt. Whitney, and drive southeast down a two-lane highway that seems to end at the horizon. This visual trick repeats a few times, the road’s “end” being nothing more than the visible curvature of the earth, and then you are winding down a series of descending S-curves and dropping into the low and ancient graben that is Death Valley National Park.

Death Valley exists because of an immense fault in the earth. A graben is a depressed and sharply defined block of land, rarely small, born where the planet’s crust has pressed up against itself with such force as to produce a wide and relatively even change in elevation. Picture a godlike footprint the breadth of a county. In addition to being the lowest place in North America and the home of a spectacular park, the Valley has hosted military flight training since airplanes were built of doped fabric and wood. We went there the morning of the fourth day, to Rainbow Canyon, simply to see the place.

Military aircraft no longer fly through Rainbow Canyon because Rainbow once held a fireball. The idea can be difficult to wrap your head around in the abstract, and it’s even more difficult to process when you’re standing mere feet from literal scorched earth. Humanity has spent much time and effort shaping inherently dangerous practices so as to eliminate or drastically reduce the chance of a tornado of blooming flame. You have to work real hard these days to make fire happen inside a race car, and the phenomenon is now so rare in civil aviation as to make motor racing look positively foolhardy.

The limits of our striving grow safer every year, and for good reason. Which is why the shock of our intense failure can be so … shocking, so intense.

The canyon itself is bigger than it looks, a V-shaped gutter in the land that ends suddenly, its end a maw aiming into the valley below. The internet is littered with first-person accounts of plane-watching here, blogs and posts from ordinary people who rose before dawn and drove for hours simply to secure a parking space and a seat. Before the crash, an aviation journalist dubbed the place a “Mt. Everest and the Louvre” of plane-spotting, a hotbed of “white-scarf, stick-and-rudder flying skills.” There was, he said, nowhere like it in the world, and you cannot stand there and imagine the flying while doubting that claim.

I leaned over the railing and looked into the chasm below. It seemed too shallow and narrow to hold anything like a jet. Camden was quieter than usual.

“Sometimes they’d run it backward,” he said, softly. “You could stand on that ridge”—he pointed to the left—“and watch them come straight at you. There were so many ways and places to shoot it in one place, you were so close …”

Forty feet away, in a nearly empty parking lot, a middle-age woman in a Chrysler Pacifica sat talking on the phone.

Eight-figure hardware and human accomplishment, in your face and spectacular. Gone now and unlikely to come back, like how we used to run the Indy 500 without catch fencing or let F1 photographers stand inches from passing cars. The F-18 accident here came toward the end of the route, on the canyon’s southern wall, the scorch mark 40 feet below what the National Park Service calls the Father Crowley Scenic Overlook. There is a pit toilet at the end of the lot, a few feet away, and several places where a person without much sense of risk could simply walk along the unguarded canyon edge.

According to a Navy investigation, the pilot, 33-year-old Lieutenant Charles Walker, descended through 4000 feet in full afterburner. Then he simply made a mistake.

“You need to be very cautious of your own biases,” the F-35 test pilot had told me. Most of our 20-minute conversation had orbited thought process and risk. “Your own susceptibility. Realizing that you could be disoriented. What kills most pilots [who die in the airplane] is unrecognized spatial disorientation. They just don’t realize it.”

The art of being aware, without thinking too hard about the act of being aware, because too much of that kind of thinking could pull focus from the task at hand and very much possibly bring an abrupt and permanent end to any kind of awareness whatsoever.

One hundred feet off the deck, I asked—is it uncomfortable?

“Very unnerving,” he said. “You just can’t afford to screw up at all—you need to realize you’re literally a tenth of a second away from killing yourself, at any moment, right? And you can’t just trust your eyes. What looks like a tree at 600 mph could actually be a bush. If you think it’s a tree, but it’s a bush, you’re … way too close, if that makes any sense.”

He used the words “wary” and “respect” a lot.

Some things are simply a certain baseline of appealing, no matter what we have to do to chase them, and the work to get there is often half the draw. The definitions and justification vary with personality, but an inarguable truth remains: If you have the chance to witness something remarkable, then you know what it was like to be there, in that moment, on that day. Which is more than you knew before.

I turned to Camden. Was it better to come here, I asked, when the canyon was jumping, airplanes every few minutes, or would you rather spend hours sitting in the woods, waiting, as we had for most of the week, with all the detective work and hope?

On the hood of the Jeep, the scanner squawked one more time: “Two F-15s over dry lake, off Jedi Transition, proceeding north.”

Camden thought for a moment. He shrugged, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, in a way that did not suggest an answer. One hand went to a pocket as the other picked up the camera. Then he turned once more, looking and listening, back to the sky.

The post “An immense fault in the earth”: The hunt for jets continues appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There is no sound, at first. They bank in silently under the ridgeline and below your feet, precise and deliberate little motions, slower than you expect—matte-gray shapes, dirty-looking, too distant to make out and then seemingly close enough to touch. The noise comes an instant later, various gases being burned and shoved aside, deafening and metallic.

At 9:00 that morning, before the sun had driven the chill from the air, we parked the Jeep and the Land Rover at the base of a trail in the high Sierra and began to hike. Forty minutes later, we were 4300 feet above sea level and maybe 1000 feet above the trucks, standing on a rocky outcropping that hung over the valley like an opera balcony.

Camden Thrasher set his backpack down and began fiddling with a hand-held radio scanner. He glanced up at the sky for a moment.

“Last time I was here, it was 105 degrees. This is nice.”

Camden is a professional motorsport photographer and friend. He lives in Georgia but grew up in Washington State, where airplane culture is as old as Boeing and Navy jets carve low over alpine lakes. In his day job, Camden has shot the Baja 1000 and the 12 Hours of Sebring and pretty much everything in between. He has a delightful habit of saying profound things in an unprofound manner and is easily bored. A few years ago, during a particularly quiet off-season, he picked up a welder and turned his BMW 2002 into an off-road mutt with tall knobbies and a six-cylinder swap.

Around the same time, apropos of nothing, he decided to start spending his vacations hiking into the backcountry to photograph military aircraft flying balls-out at low altitude.

Once, a while back, I asked him why he did this.

Afterburner jets, a few hundred feet off the ground, close enough to spit at, he said.

I suddenly felt big stupid for asking.

Come along, he said.

Twist my arm, I answered.

And so one day last fall, we drove into nowhere California and watched Air Force and Navy pilots do low-level training runs—500 mph and a few hundred feet off the deck, in all manner of fast airplanes. Because nowhere is usually off the beaten path, we borrowed a Jeep Wrangler and a Land Rover Defender. The connection seemed obvious: Purposeful hardware and speed are powerful drugs, regardless of form; car people are often airplane people, and vice versa. For me, the blame for this form of infatuation can be traced to my father, a former professional pilot who once told me that he got into flying “for the airplanes.” One of those subjects that just remains permanently novel and intoxicating, no matter how old you get.

The wind rustled in the trees. I threw a furtive glance east, toward the mouth of the valley. Camden, head down and adjusting something on his camera, waved, dismissive.

“When you’re looking for jets, everything out here sounds like a jet.”

“Oh.” My shoulders fell. “Do you get any warning?”

He shrugged. “In theory, they’re supposed to make a radio call saying they’re entering this route. Whether they actually do or not is a mystery, and whether we can hear it on the scanner is another thing entirely.”

Twenty minutes passed. I grew tired of standing and sat down on a large rock. The hunt, Camden had told me, was half the fun, and it began with hours upon hours of research, at home—digging up military training routes online and locating them in the real world, but never knowing when or where the airplanes would actually show, because the American government doesn’t make a habit of publishing military flights, because of course it doesn’t.

“Lemoore, Fresno, China Lake, Nellis, Edwards,” Camden had said, as we hiked, that first day. “Five air bases within 100 miles of here—who knows what they’re doing. We could sit on a mountain and see nothing from sunrise to dark, or we could wait an hour and have 40 planes come through. It just depends.”

“What do you end up doing if you don’t see anything?”

“I dunno? Sit. Think.”

To the south, a small gray wedge popped out from behind a mountain. It snapped into a bank, then disappeared into a carpet of haze. An instant later, the wedge was below my feet, slicing through a gap in the landscape. The right wing passed my toes almost vertical.

“F-18,” Camden said.

The noise came an instant later. That feeling where your inner ear seems to boil.

I stood up, blinking. At the bottom of the mountain, our trucks sat there, as they had moments before. Only this time, they looked very small and very, very slow.

THE FIRST CLIMB

The scanner crackled: “400-plus knots, 500 feet.”

My skin tingled. An F-18 passed below, same as the last one, its gray underside canted up like a cat asking for a scratch.

Over the next six hours, that feeling recurred 20 times. Twenty-one, if you count the prop-driven Beechcraft King Air that ran the canyon almost too high to see. A King Air is not nothing, but it is also not a jet. Not the reason these routes exist.

According to the Air Force website, the American military uses “some airspace below 10,000 feet for training operations.” In combat, it says, “many aircraft will operate at altitudes as low as 100 feet and at high airspeeds to defeat ground-missile radars and avoid sophisticated [defenses].”

In order to fly $67 million worth of jet at 100 feet and 600 mph, you need skill, and in a modern military environment, skill means training, which means hours in the cockpit and the kind of intensely manicured pilot proficiency in which the United States government has long specialized. The American military certifies pilots for low-level flight by degree, with an aviator’s low-altitude permission based on individual rating, and that rating based on altitude and aircraft—if you fly an F-35, for example, there is one rating for 500 feet, another for 300, and another for 100.

These ratings are qualified for and maintained through frequent bursts of simulator and flight time, and the attendant safety and proficiency protocols are serious as cancer. Many military pilots are rated for 500 feet. Very few are allowed to see 100. Nor do most civilians see these jets this low, period. In the continental U.S., low-level flights take place only in limited, charted airspace, generally where humans aren’t.

The FAA and Department of Defense maintain hundreds of Military Training Routes, or MTRs, for this exact purpose. The most famous of these routes live inside the R-2508 complex, over the southern Sierra Nevada and upper Mojave Desert, but similar training occurs in places like Idaho, the Cascades, and the West Virginia mountains. A YouTube search will show you what those routes look like from the cockpit, but the easiest shorthand is to simply picture the Death Star X-Wing runs in Star Wars, then replace the X-Wings with something from McDonnell-Douglas.

During background research for this story, I interviewed a handful of military flyers with low-level flight experience in afterburner aircraft.

“It is fun,” an F-18 aviator told me. “Oh hell yes, is it fun.”

“Fantastic to fly,” said another, an F-35 test pilot. “But… intense. You can’t afford to screw up, at all. At 100 feet, any error is going to be fatal.”

This kind of skill can be intoxicating to witness—so much precision shotgunned through such a small space—but the practice is not widely beloved. Conservationists protest the wildlife impact. Rural towns complain about noise. And above all, any time you have an airplane flying near the ground, especially an extremely fast airplane, there is risk. The single most popular jet-chasing location on earth, an overlook in Death Valley National Park, was officially closed to low-level flight in 2019 following an F-18 crash that killed the jet’s pilot and injured seven tourists. If you ever visit that particular overlook, the crash will seem remarkable, but not as remarkable as the fact that events of this nature are exceedingly rare.

The similarities to car racing are not small, but apart from the obvious differences, there is one crucial separation that can make this pastime compelling for a spectator with an automotive bent. I have for the last two decades covered motorsport as a journalist, studying how skilled individuals think and react in extraordinary situations. I have also watched as more than a few international sanctioning bodies squeezed the life and spectacle from an otherwise breathtaking and spectacular practice.

Spend enough time watching one of your lifelong loves grow weak under the boot of bureaucracy, you get ideas. One of those notions centers around how getting your nose booped by a 600-mph airplane makes for a far better weekend than, say, trudging off to watch an F1 race where a bunch of oligarch scions compete to find out whose aerodynamicist is smarter and swimming in a larger pile of money.

I JUST WANT THE AIRPLANES

“I’m not an expert by any means,” Camden said. This in spite of having chased jets for several years, living out of a rental Jeep in the mountains for weeks at a time. He makes a habit of driving into the backcountry on short notice, bringing little more than a scanner, a camera, and several days’ worth of food. He went to Reno once, to shoot next to one of the air-race pylons. (“It’s kind of hard to get good stuff there, but it was neat to see what 500 mph looks like from about 50 feet away.”) He once kicked off a ten-hour drive on a day’s notice because a sympathetic pilot found him online and allowed as how his jet might soon be passing through a certain geographic region, perhaps, unofficially, ahem, cough, at high speed, yes.

You meet people like this, you ask why. Even if you know the answer.

“I don’t really have a good reason,” Camden said. “I just got into it after watching a bunch of videos online. I like the adventure aspect, hiking and road trips. You have to go find this stuff, it doesn’t find you. It takes a lot of work to figure out where the routes are, where they’re flying, and how to get to these places people don’t normally go. Which is kind of the point. And military airplanes are just impressive to watch.”

The government flies jets low all over the country, but the west coast is uniquely equipped for this sort of hunt. Credit a unique mix of spectacular terrain, millions of acres of public land, and a dense concentration of air bases. America long ago discovered that empty land and abundant sun made for good defense airfield, and so a lot of them got built, in greater density than much of the rest of the country.

Around lunchtime, the mountains grew quiet, air traffic gone. We talked for a bit about airplanes, how they can be like any other obsession. What it feels like to sit at a desk, engrossed in working and trying not to think about more exciting things. How my father was once a flight instructor but quit when I was young, after he realized that he couldn’t support a family without a much different job.

I mentioned Chuck Yeager’s autobiography and The Right Stuff, how the greatest test pilot in American history nearly died over the Mojave in an F-104 not far from the mountain where we sat. This somehow segued into a discussion of the much-delayed sequel to the Tom Cruise movie Top Gun.

Camden laughed. “Top Gun. I wish they would just release all the aerial footage. You know, like a ski film. I don’t want the plot. I just want the airplanes.”

Ski films are basically just hours of lavishly shot downhill footage set to music, no dialogue. The most widely known analogue in the car space is the Steve McQueen movie Le Mans, which is basically just a ski film for the Porsche 917K. You don’t get goggled athletes dropping into remote runs by helicopter, but you do get 1970s prototypes cranking 200 mph in the rain for hours with gut-punching audio and almost zero dialogue. Years ago, on a particularly obsessed and rainy Sunday in college, I watched that movie four times in a single afternoon.

“How long do you usually stay out here?” I asked, at one point, when things were quiet.

“As long as I can,” he said.

Then the scanner again: “500 low-level on Jedi Transition.”

“Star Wars Canyon,” Camden said, sighing, a little wistful.

Star Wars Canyon is where that 2019 F-18 crash happened. Low-level flight is now prohibited there, military aircraft limited to a minimum of 1500 feet above ground level. The site is also known as both Rainbow Canyon and the Jedi Transition, though that last moniker is lightly misleading; the canyon itself is merely the tail of a larger restricted-airspace route that appears on military charts under that name. As with a lot of jet-chasing sights, YouTube holds tourist footage, and even a few seconds watching that canyon online can give you chills. Nowhere else on earth do supersonic jets essentially burst out of a hole in the ground and fly right through your lap, a few hundred feet from a parking lot.

I once stood trackside at Indianapolis for a story, inches from a corner, during practice for the 500. That kind of access took special dispensation from Speedway officials, but it also produced Dallaras howling five feet away at 200 mph. It was one of those situations where you have to remind yourself to breathe, and that there are live humans in the machine, flinging through the air, pushing themselves, balanced between flight and the exact opposite.

“That was Rainbow Canyon,” Camden said. An easy button, he called it. A good week might offer 50 or 60 jets a day. The fireball that bloomed into the parking lot stopped all that.

A few F-16s danced by. They were followed a minute later by two F-18s, which were in turn followed by two T-38s—older, two-place supersonic trainers—banking back and forth in a series of playful feints. Two differing flight styles on the same path: the trailing pilot was abrupt and sudden, while the leader was more gentle, one attitude change bleeding into the next.

I opened our tote of hiking snacks and found a peanut-butter sandwich in a Ziploc bag. An F-18 snarled past my knees, close enough to show the pilot’s legs through the top of the canopy.

Long ago, you could see people in the cockpits of race cars. Not just helmets but body parts. A reminder of something. The F-18’s fuselage wore the letters VFA-22, for a squadron out of Naval Air Station Lemoore. It was only when the air went silent that I realized I had been gnawing on the sandwich mindlessly, mesmerized, so distracted that I had begun chewing on at least part of the plastic bag.

“You can hike to one of those peaks,” the scanner squawked. A pilot. “That outcropping. Though I didn’t see anybody up there.” Then he talked about how he drove down there bird hunting a while back and blew up the radiator in his truck.

I wanted to yell a response. What does every kid yell at pilots? Hey! I’m down here! Do a barrel roll!

I looked at Camden. “You ever wonder what it’s like to retire from the pinnacle of something? From the peak of a game, as an athlete, in fighter jets, F1 cars, anything? You’re young and you think this great part of life goes on forever, no other high even comes close, and then one day, the world decides that you don’t get to do this anymore. You’ve aged out of your prime at the ripe old age of … I don’t know, 30?”

He raised an eyebrow. Below us, the valley was quiet for a moment.

“You think you’d miss it?” I said. “Or would it be like Michael Jordan and Jackie Stewart, where you leave a pinnacle of human achievement, are just like, I’m done, I lived on that edge, enough?”

Camden chuckled but didn’t answer.

“Is that when you start … buying superbikes?” I said.

Full laughter. “I never really had much desire to be a pilot,” he said, shaking his head.

Because the internet is the internet, talented civilian photographers will occasionally find their contact information posted on some squadron bulletin board. Pilots will fly—unofficially, of course, and entirely unplanned—near a certain location on public land, and they will occasionally, say, bank a certain direction at a highly convenient moment, following the lure of Saint-Exupéry or some unstoppable song in their heart. If that photographer and that pilot are later lucky enough to, say, stumble onto each other’s email, as you do on the internet, JPEGs will be exchanged, in the same way that you might attend a track day and feel compelled to buy a picture of your car in a certain corner, even if you’ve seen that car in that corner and bought the picture a billion times before.

Never underestimate the immense and inexplicable human draw toward any machine that lets us move faster than a run.

The lull quickly passed, and the sheer volume of flights grew overwhelming. By 3:30 that the afternoon, 22 airplanes had buzzed through my lap. F-18s, mostly, plus several National Guard F-15s (menacing and stripped down, but moving more tentatively), that King Air, three evil-looking F-16s. Time began to crawl, but pleasantly so.

“You know, they have other jobs when they’re not flying the jets,” Camden said.

Makes sense, I thought.

“I’ve made it a point,” he said, “every time I talk to someone in the military, to ask them about their jobs. Because it’s a lot more interesting than just pilots, right? They have desk jobs.”

“I would have a hard time not sticking a Dymo label on the office microwave that just read REHEAT,” I said.

“One guy I know, he’s in charge of squadron scheduling. He’s only in the jet when he’s not at his desk.”

“You think that comes across as benefit or bum deal?” I asked. “Like, ‘We’re going to let you do all the afterburner knots in this multimillion-dollar hot rod, inches over the desert, basically every kid’s wildest dream, it’ll be rad, I promise. And also, uh, please collate these TPS forms. You will get paid the same for both jobs, which is enough but also not very much, so if you want money, go work for Facebook.”

The chuckle.

Then the noise again. After a while, you stand, Pavlovian, on hearing it. Late in the day, as the sun trudged toward the west, the landscape went from a gradient of dark pastels to a stark carpet of trees in haze. The contrast annihilated visibility but the airplanes kept coming. Most ended their run through the valley by popping low over a nearby ridge and breaking hard to the left, snapping beneath the land as if batted out of the sky, vaguely primal, under a tapestry of heat shimmer. My legs went weak.

Is this what birdwatching is like?

Don’t tell me if it’s not.

***

Update: Part Two of this story was published a week later. You can read it here. Sam’s reviews of the Wrangler and Defender from this trip can also be found here.

**

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Recently I got to thinking about the canceled events I truly missed last year. In normal times, I’m everywhere on weekends to attend concours, rallies, tours, you name it. A year ago, one event I had tentative plans to try again was the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. Sadly, it didn’t happen.

London-Brighton is on a lot of people’s bucket lists. The November event celebrates the 1896 repeal of oppressive motor vehicle regulations. I’d thought about participating for years until 2014, when I finally decided to do it. My buddy Ralph, always up for a good auto adventure, signed on to be my co-pilot. We just needed an eligible car, which meant one built prior to 1905.

After our attempts to buy a 1904 Ford Model A at auction failed that spring, a mutual friend offered us his 1903 Model A. “It’s done the London to Brighton run twice,” he told us.

After little more than a test drive that summer, I had the two-cylinder, four-passenger Model A delivered as soon as we arrived at our London hotel in late October. With temperatures in the 70s, the festivities began with a Saturday car show on Regent Street, which showcased about 100 veteran cars. For the run on Sunday, the temperature dropped into the 40s and it rained. The Ford had no weather equipment, so we used an umbrella, raincoats, and plastic garbage bags in our futile attempts to stay dry. We arrived at Hyde Park before sunrise, and soon 300 cars were lined up for the 7 a.m. start. The cars were released on the route oldest to youngest; our 1903 build date put us roughly in the middle of the pack for this great adventure.

Armed with a route map and hoping to follow other cars, I tried to figure out how long 54 miles would take in a car barely faster than a brisk walk. Ambling through London was fantastic, however, particularly as we passed Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and the houses of Parliament.

Things went south from there.

About 4 miles into the run, the Ford lost a cylinder. We pulled over to diagnose the problem. The spark was weak due to a failing charging system, and one spark plug was fouled. We figured out how to bypass the charging system, but the battery was already dead. One gentleman stopped and offered to help, and when we told him we needed a battery, he promised to be back in 10 minutes, then scurried off. Soon he appeared with the battery from his vintage Mini—and he refused payment. A Royal Automobile Club (RAC) serviceman also stopped, and he put the original battery on a charger in his van while we continued. Still, as we encountered hills, the Ford struggled.

Soon, with our weakening battery, the rear spark plug fouled again. After I crawled under the car to pull and replace the plug, we got going again, but the Ford started to overheat in traffic. As fluid spilled everywhere and rain pelted down upon us, the clutch started to slip. By then it was already 1 p.m. The run officially ended at 3 p.m., and we were barely halfway into the trip. We continued to struggle up hills and we pushed when necessary, but with 10 miles and 40 minutes to go, the battery gave out again. Thankfully, the RAC truck with our original battery met us in minutes, so we made the swap, topped the radiator with water, and carried on. But it was not to be.

The car slowed as we descended an incline, just 4 miles from the finish in Brighton, so we pulled into a parking lot at the Jack & Jill Inn, where I crawled under the car in the mud. With coolant pouring all over me, I realized we’d blown a head gasket and our run was over. As fate would have it, from where I lay, I could see the pub’s OPEN sign, and I resolved to retreat to its warm embrace and drink to defeat.

Ralph and I faced plenty of challenges that day and were cold and wet the whole time, but as we sat there, we were already plotting our next attempt of the world’s oldest motoring event. With any luck, we’ll start and finish in 2021.

The post Carini: Eyeing redemption at the London-Brighton run appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If you’ve been following along with our stories, you may remember Jeff Milburn, a stunt driver we interviewed who was in the epic film Ford v Ferrari. Jeff, knowing I’m a van guy, called me up one day and said he had a problem. His dad had this 1965 Dodge A100 that he had shipped out from California a while back, and it had been sitting half apart for the last six years in his warehouse. He wanted it out of there and asked me if I knew anyone who might want it.

When he told me the price I was definitely interested. After some haggling and some Honey-Do’s, we struck a deal that I couldn’t resist. So now I had gotten myself in a little pickle. This van came with enough parts to put it back together and also enough extra parts to put two more of ’em back on the road, according to Jeff. How in the hell was I gonna handle this? Knowing Jeff has one of the nicest personal shops in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I asked him if he would mind if I came out there with a buddy, and we’d try to slam that van back together and drive it back to Los Angeles. He said it sounded like a bitchin’ idea, and we could even crash in one of the buildings he has across the street from the shop while we were doing it.

This whole deal was really starting to come together. After hanging up with Jeff, I thought “Sh*t! We’re in the middle of this pandemic, and the world’s falling apart. Who the hell is gonna think this is a good idea?” So I called my buddy Adam and said, “Hey dude, I just bought this ’65 A100 in Dallas that Milburn had. Wanna fly out with me, put this thing back together, and sleep on the shop floor until we’re done? Then pile in it and drive it the 1500 miles back to Los Angeles?” He was in immediately.

Reality was setting in. This was happening. I sourced airfare and started coordinating the adventure we had before us. On October 16, 2020, at 1:30 p.m., we boarded Southwest flight #0148 outta Burbank, California, east bound and down for Dallas, Texas, with backpacks and sleeping bags on us, and that was it. The rest we were gonna have to figure out. When we got to Dallas, Milburn grabbed us from Love Field, and we all headed straight to his shop to see what we had gotten ourselves into. Lucky for us, Milburn had towed that van over to his place from his dad’s a couple days earlier. We were able to get in town and dive right in.

We got to his shop, dropped our gear, and went right to putting a plan together. First thing’s first. All the parts in the deal were piled inside the van. So we started gutting the van, making and sorting parts into piles. After that we could really see how apart this van was. It also helped us to see what we had and what we were still going to need so that we could make the journey back across the desert to Los Angeles. Now, fortunate for us, Milburn’s a Mopar guy. If you know Mopar guys, they’re kinda fanatical about their Mopar stuff. Jeff being no exception to that claim, he pretty much had three of everything we were gonna need, in stock at his shop and on the shelf. So with the exception of having to order a new carb and things like a battery and fluids, he had the majority of the parts within arms reach.

So here we are, sleeping on a concrete shop floor, working from dawn on each day putting this old Dodge van back together—replacing or repairing what it needed and all the time having to figure out how it all went back together. Ya see, when you take it apart and then put it back together, you kinda have an idea and remember what needs to be done. When you get it in boxes of parts, it tends to soak up a little more time sortin’ and sifting. Figuring out what’s what and what goes where. One of the things that saved us quite a bit of time was the fact that the chassis on this van had been done already. When I say done, what I mean is the brakes, rear end, fuel system, suspension, steering—pretty much the whole underside of the van had been gone through and was fresh. She was fresh down to the stickers still being on the new tires. That left us dealing with putting the ol’ slant-six back together, all the wiring, throttle assembly from pedal to carb, etc.—checking it all twice and just throwing whatever parts it needed at it.

As we got going on reassembling this van, it crossed our minds that we were gonna need some tools along with us for the drive back. What tools, you ask? Well, we asked ourselves the same question. We figured pretty much every tool we used to put it back together should be in our kit, if possible. So our first stop was at Lowe’s to look for a Craftsman set. Anyone else notice they’re not the same quality tools since Sears? Anyways, we procured a set of sockets and wrenches along with a full set of screwdrivers, paid the cashier, and headed back to Milburn’s shop.

This is the part of this story when I need to stop and thank “Oliver Peck” for loaning us one of his mini vans while we were in town on this mission. At first we had the cheapest rental car we could find for running errands, but it was still adding up quick. Oliver had stopped by Milburn’s shop to drop off some parts for one of his projects that Milburn was working on. He was also checking out how we were doin’ on putting this ol’ A100 back together. That’s when he just offered the use of one of his mini vans to help save dough for the trip back. That’s just the kinda good dude he is. Always down to help. Thanks again, Oliver.

So we got back from our Lowe’s run and started to figure out what we were still missing, tool wise. Milburn told us about a really good swap meet in Grand Prairie, Texas, across from Yello Belly Drag Strip, that would likely have exactly what we were still looking for at a fraction of the cost. He was right. The next day we headed out there and scored pretty much every missing tool on our list, along with a few other things we could use, like mechanics wire and a half role of duct tape for 25 cents. When you’re on the road like this and it’s self-funded, every cent you save helps. It all adds up.

After leaving the swap meet, we split from Milburn and headed to Hurst, Texas, to meet up with our buddy Miguel Veliz. He and a bunch of the guys from “Texas Boogie Vans” had put together a little Show ’n’ Swap over off Pipeline Road. By this point, we pretty much knew what parts we did and didn’t need. What better opportunity to make a little side cash for the trip back than to sell off some of the parts we knew we weren’t gonna need? We were there from noon ’til about 4:30 p.m. getting deluxe sunburns, sippin’ some suds, and meeting all the fine folks who came to check out this little get together. We even had some curious passers-by who stopped in to see what was happening. It was a damn fine time.

For the next three days, we wrenched nonstop from dawn to dusk until finally at the end of the day on October 21, she felt tight and right. We had ripped her around the neighborhood, nothing fell off, everything was working like it should. Hell, we even sorta had gauges. Yep, we were as ready as we were gonna be for the 1500-mile shakedown run from Dallas to Los Angeles. What could go wrong? At 8 p.m. we drove the ’65 A100 down to Fuel City for their famous tacos with the van topped off and fully loaded. The tacos were fantastic, but the Lot Lizard who approached us wasn’t. We finished our tacos, said goodbye, threw this thing in gear and hit the highway. We figured if we made it the first 100 miles, we were gonna be OK. That first night we made it 250 miles to Colorado City, Texas. We could have gone farther on that stretch, but we were battling high winds as soon as we got out of the city. They were pushing that little cargo van all over the road, and it was getting pretty hairy. We saw a Super 8 sign in the distance, took the next off-ramp, and got a room for the night. Success!

The next morning, October 22, we were back on the road. We topped off the oil, ATF and guzzolene, grabbed a gear and got ’er going. That little 225 slant-six ran pretty happily between 60–65 mph from what we could hear and see on the tach we put on it. So that’s how fast we trucked along. Going that fast, cross country, is pretty much like the slow blur that was traveling during the Reagan years of the 1980s. You know, back when the speed limit was 55 mph. Sammy Hagar couldn’t drive that fast, but you bet your britches we did. We put about 550 miles behind us by the end of day two, which landed us in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Now, normally that drive would take the average Joe around 8.5 hours. But for us it was really more like 11–12 hours or so. And that was just fine because, honestly, we were still surprised we were making it at all.

Friday, October 23, started at the diner across from our motel. We went over there to put together a plan for the day and grab some breakfast after checking the fluids in the van. We knew we were about 275 miles from Phoenix, which was our next stop. We had to stop there for a couple reasons. One was that I had to grab some parts I had at a buddy’s house. Two was another Phoenix friend wanted to buy the extra 8 3/4 rear end that came along in the pile of extra parts we got with the van. So it was an easy day of driving to see some old friends and make a little dough on the road, which we desperately needed by this point.

We rolled into Phoenix just in time for happy hour, which was perfect for us because that meant cheap eats. We met up with our friends at their local watering hole, grabbed a picnic table outside, and munched down on the local cuisine. After eating our way right through happy hour, Adam was feeling rejuvenated and suggested we just get back on the road and cannonball. I was feeling the flip side of that coin and my food comma was kicking in. I told him if he wanted to take the wheel and was cool if I slept for a few hours while he drove, well, then let’s hit it. And that’s what we did.

At 9 p.m., we hopped on the I-10 and started the last leg of our journey. The home stretch. We filled up one last time before that long desolate section of desert road, made sure our Jerry Can was full (just in case), and went for it. We took that last stretch kinda easy. The winds were gusting pretty good all night, pushing us all over the road, so we kept it around 55–60 the whole time. Last thing we needed to do was get pushed off the road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. So we figured slow and steady was going to win this race.

At 8:30 a.m. on October 24, we pulled into the parking lot of Cabazon, California, to see the world-famous dinosaurs. We had done it. We were back in our stomping grounds. This ol’ slant-six,1965 Dodge A100 had pulled it off. After sitting half apart in a warehouse in Dallas for the last six years, this little engine that could, did. As I stepped back to take a photo of the van with the giant T-Rex, I remember hearing Milburn say, “You guys won’t make it outta Dallas in that thing,” laughing the whole time. Well we just did that and more.

We hopped back on the I-10 and stopped in Pasadena to celebrate with In-N-Out Burgers and shakes and ultimately rolled into my house at Shadow Hills, California, at  high noon on October 24, 2020. We had been gone exactly seven days, 22 hours, and 30 minutes on one of the funnest adventures of my life. And we saved a 1965 Dodge A100 while we were at it.

Let’s do it again!

The post Dallas to L.A. in a Dodge A100 that we had to rebuild first appeared first on Hagerty Media.

My mom turns 70 this year. Now, it may be unpolite to share a lady’s age in public, but I’m writing under a pseudonym so it’s cool. She’s a tremendously kind and loving person, provided you don’t cross her. I have vivid memories of her chasing a teenaged brother down the hall, tackling and placing him in a headlock before applying knuckle noogies with what appeared to be no small amount of force. It was hysterical.

I still laugh remembering mom going ballistic on a doctor for brushing her off and not providing the care another sibling required. Years later, my own wife would apply this same tactic, stalking down the corridor after the doctor who dismissed her concerns about a lump in her neck. “Look at the MRI again, I can feel the lump right here!” Less than two months later, a surgeon pulled an olive-sized tumor out of the location my wife indicated.

With their 50 year anniversary not far off, my parents’ relationship still represents #Goals, as the kids say. There is one trait about which my scientist father has gently teased my mom all these years: Her endearing quality of anthropomorphizing inanimate objects. She comes by it naturally; her father would say “Houses are alive, they have souls.” Talking to her cars and thanking them for what they do is normal for her, and she is sad when they are sold (pretty sure she loves me more than the cars; not sure the same can be said of the brother upon whom she dispensed noogie justice all those years ago!). There are a lot of my mom’s qualities I love, but I especially love this one, likely because zygote me picked out the same trait at the gene store.

—

They say your first airplane is always your favorite.  Having been qualified in four fighter jets (including one currently), plus another jet trainer, I perhaps have a better perspective on this than many others. That said, the fact that my first combat fighter was the undisputed best in the world (just ask anyone in the know) makes it easy for me to affirm the adage’s accuracy.

My average combat sortie lasted 6 hours and 20 minutes, with my longest being 9 hours and 20 minutes. That doesn’t include time in the jet on the ground before and after the flight, which is an additional 60+ minutes. What’s that like, you ask? The best approximation would be to sit on a dining room chair and not get up for at least seven hours. All eating, drinking, and bathroom-breaking is done in that chair; no napping allowed. Also, no picking a soft chair, as in the event of an ejection a soft cushion would allow the seat to accelerate before starting to rocket you out of the aircraft; a result firmly located on the bad side of the good/bad scale. The forces in ejection are astounding and the effect on your back would be worse with a padded seat.

After so many hours airborne, it’s hard not to be grateful to be safely back on terra firma. That post-flight gratitude also extends to my jet, and I’ve never failed to pat her nose in thankfulness for bringing me home. After two decades of flying, the sentiments I feel towards my aircraft are legit and logical (to me). I have no doubt that then-Captain Bob Pardo felt a mix of gratitude and sadness for his F-4 when he finally had to eject from her; after all, she gave everything she had to save him and three others, literally pushing his and his wingman’s F-4s out of enemy territory on a single functioning engine. I won’t pretend to have experienced anything like Captain Pardo, but, like his, my jets have gotten me out of every jam, tough spot, and pickle, with each combat bomb I’ve dropped hitting exactly on target.  Hard not to love a girl like that.

—

As I write this, my wife and children are crossing two states in our 2006 Honda Odyssey enroute to my in-law’s. Before arriving, the van will crest 240,000 miles. We bought it new on March 25, 2006 with 75 miles on it (it was transferred to our dealer for us, thus the miles); our out-the-door price was $34,601.36. It was very much a stretch purchase, but we’ve never regretted it. I may be a fighter pilot, a career field that eschews emotion (I don’t care how you felt during a target attack or your emotions as you merged with an “enemy” aircraft; it’s about making rapid, fact-based decisions, with no room for feelings), but I’m not afraid to say I love our Odyssey.

The average distance from the earth to the moon is 238,855 miles, meaning our lunar excursion only took us 15 years. The captain’s chairs in our Odyssey are way more comfortable than those in my fighter, and are heated to boot, but I couldn’t sit in them for 15 years straight!

With the earth’s circumference at 24,901 miles, we’re about 9,000 miles short of ten laps around our home planet. While we haven’t actually driven around the world, that van has driven over a good chunk of it. I’ve been on active duty for quite some time–longer than we’ve owned the Odyssey–and we’ve had thirteen duty stations. Those moves, along with our love of road trips, have taken us through essentially the entire continental United States (45/48 states) as well as much of Europe and South Korea.

Unlike the typical 15 year-old, and my current 15 year-old is our fourth child to reach that age so I know of which I speak, the van is terrible at photobombing.  Excluding pictures that have my family in them, I found fewer than 20 pictures of the van. Based on pictures alone, one would think that this machine, so integral to our adventures from the Golden Gate Bridge to Acadia National Park’s Cadillac Mountain to the sugar sand beaches of Florida and beyond, simply ghosted us. I found more pictures of Jeepster carburetors, Korean seafood pancakes, and moving trucks than I did of the van. Yet, without its stealthy presence, our adventure list of the last 15 years would be significantly curtailed.

While stationed in Germany with five children, flying around Europe wasn’t really an option as renting a vehicle at our destination that fit seven people would have been prohibitively expensive, if there even were any that size to be found. You think having five children in the US is unique? Psssh, we might as well have been a family of sasquatches for all the stares we collected in Europe. We once had an entire outdoor café in Switzerland freeze, mouths agape mid-chew, to stare at us as we walked by. While unique, our reception there wasn’t even close to all bad; a favorite memory involves walking single file through an outdoor market in Firenze (Florence)–wife in front, four kids, then me with the baby on my back–a vendor saw us and joyously counted, “Uno, due, tre, quattro bambinos!” I immediately pivoted so he could see the baby on my back and replied, “No, cinque.” Grinning ear to ear, he held up both hands and said, “Awwww, cinque bambinos!”

Our Odyssey has driven us across Germany, to Prague and back (that was a sketchy border crossing!), up through London and the UK, across the Netherlands, and much of western Europe. There are dents on the fenders from just barely fitting into a car elevator at a Paris hotel, stickers on the windshield showing road tax paid in Austria and permission to drive into German cities, and a roof rack that’s carried paddleboards, redwood slabs for woodworking, and our family dog (totally kidding on the dog; who do you think I am, Mitt Romney?).

At a parking garage in Firenze, after being held up in traffic by a driver who stopped his delivery truck in the middle of a busy city road to take a smoke break (no emergency flashers, just feet on the dash and long pulls from his sigaretta), I reluctantly tossed the keys to a parking garage attendant as we went to see the city. Said garage didn’t have dedicated spots, they bumper-to-bumper’d cars through the entire structure, thus the need to leave your keys so they could move your vehicle; they played reverse tetris to get the van out after we returned. In Austria, the van was just short enough height-wise to fit in another garage, but in every garage other than the one in Florence, the van’s length dictated we pull it as far into the spot as we could. Most garages’ spots were so narrow we had to enter and exit through the sliding doors or the back hatch.

As we didn’t live overly far from the Nürburgring, I was tempted to take the van out for a lap (with the kids in the back watching Cars, naturally, though something with Steve McQueen might have been more appropriate for the occasion than Lightning McQueen). I did drive the ‘Ring, but whether or not I took the van (and the kids) is a story for another day. The stretch of autobahn nearest our home didn’t have a speed limit though and we verified she’d go above 100 mph.

Korea was great, if you could handle driving more suited to Darwin than KonMari. I was grateful to have our van there, even if we put most of the miles on a Kia minivan with cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die actual linoleum flooring in it. Driving around Seoul was a level of insanity I had never experienced, and, as mentioned, I’d seen an Italian truck driver stop in the middle of the road to smoke a cigarette. Seeing drivers make left turns from the right turn lane (as in, you’re turning right at a light so you’re in the rightmost lane, but you then decide to turn left across 8 lanes of traffic), completely ignore traffic lights, and freeway traffic that makes LA’s 405 look like a barren backroad, made the Kia van a lifesaver. Number one, I didn’t care if it got beat up as it was old and thrashed when we bought it (it died, violently, shortly before we returned stateside when it threw a piston through the engine block; I learned at the mechanic how to say “That’s your problem right there!” in Korean). Number two, our Odyssey can seat eight, but the Kia could seat nine. Vehicles with nine seats were allowed to drive in the bus lane, allowing us to fly past those poor souls slowly inching their Equus, Genesis, and Carnivals down the freeway.

Our blonde and red haired, green eyed children were rock stars there. Our baby was held by kindly Korean grandmothers, our daughters’ long hair was endlessly caressed by strangers, and I was slightly weirded out by all the picture takers. We loved it and we covered a good chunk of South Korea in our Kia. Special shout-out to Jeju tangerines, whose equal cannot possibly be found in all the world. Conversely, I have no love lost for red bean paste, especially in desserts. #SorryNotSorry

Even if it wasn’t the vehicle we primarily used in Korea, I was grateful to have it there. Although, as a taxpayer, I shudder at what it must have cost to ship it from Germany to Korea. As far as I could tell, it was trucked to Hamburg, carried across the Atlantic, trucked across the USA to Oakland, placed on another boat to Busan, South Korea, then trucked to Seoul. (That was after being shipped to Germany for our assignment there, but before being shipped back stateside after Korea.) All told, that’s an easy 18,000 miles the Odyssey spent on various transports.

In all those years and travels over three continents, it’s only left us stranded once (not including a dead battery three miles from home). We were in Montana to mountain bike the Hiawatha Trail, and at some point over the five miles of dirt roads to the trailhead we caught a rock in the radiator fan which eviscerated the radiator in a clean, efficient arc. We didn’t notice said disembowelment until after our bike ride, but we limped the van to the freeway (and cell service) by pouring lots of water from strangers and roadside creeks into the radiator, all the while blasting the heater to try and cool the engine. A tow to the dealer in Coeur d’Alene and we were up and running the next day with no ill effects.

Each time we pull into our garage following a long road trip, I gratefully pat the van’s dash and express my gratitude to it for safely carrying us home. My wife and I talk about what will replace it, though I’m always embarrassed to do so in the van as I know it’s listening. With two kids out of the house, soon to be three, we don’t require a minivan anymore, but this one carries all of my favorite people, loads of stuff, tows a trailer, swallows whole sheets of plywood and sheetrock, and starts. Every. Single. Time. Why replace a vehicle we paid off over a decade ago that still runs well and is ridiculously cheap to insure?

Per various websites, selling the van would bring a pittance. Potential buyers will likely see the scars from the Paris garage as flaws, or the dent in the side door from a paddleboard incident and devalue it more, or look at the slightly grimy interior and wonder if our last name is Porcine (it isn’t). I see those imperfections too, but to my eye, much like the streaks of gray in my wife’s hair, they are beautiful. Those “flaws” remind me of cross country moves, narrow roads near Pisa, trips full of laughter and pizza, and that one time I threw a Princess and the Pauper DVD across a parking lot because I couldn’t listen to it one more time.

We have to be a bit more gentle with our Odyssey as she’s aged. She needs to warm up for a few minutes in the cold and flooring it will likely result in some protestations. She has a slow oil leak caused by some rough winters that isn’t worth fixing; I just check the oil frequently and put a piece of cardboard down on the garage floor under her. Admittedly, I do a bit of triage prior to every repair, debating if it makes sense to put more money into her. Thus the oil leak is allowed to continue and many of the HVAC controls’ lights don’t work, making it tough to set the desired temp at night, while she has new brake pads, rotors, tires, and recently repaired sliding doors.

How do I thank the fighter jets that have always brought me home no matter the engine issue, gear problem, electrical fire, or enemy fire? On the post-flight walkaround, my hand drags slowly over her shapely nose, down the curve of the wing, and lingers near the still-warm engine nozzle(s) on cold days or nights (something I also watched my maintainer do just this week). She is beautiful after all, and I routinely turn back to look at her as I walk away.

How do I thank the van that’s carried my wife, children, and I to the literal moon with nary a complaint? I drive her easily, look past the scrapes and bumps we’ve inflicted upon her, tell her thank you, and plan to keep her as long as she drives. Our Odyssey has shredded my knuckles many times as I tried to administer figurative noogies to strut mounts or power steering pump bolts, but I still love her.

My father will scoff somewhat at my mushiness when he reads this, and that’s understandable; I’m cool if you ridicule my droll sentimentality. On the other hand, my mother will love our van even more and will tell it so the next time she sees it; to me, this reaction isn’t merely understandable, it feels right.

I’m happy to report our van now has over 240,000 miles and my wife and children safely made it to their destination. When they return, I’ll smile at the odometer and think of the moon, check the engine oil, and convey the gratitude I have for its service by a gentle pat on the dash. Maybe we’ll even throw it a 15^th birthday party on March 25^th. It is, after all, a member of the family.

The post A fighter pilot’s ode to an around-the-world (Honda) Odyssey appeared first on Hagerty Media.

January 10 marked the ninth anniversary of a Van Run known as the “So-Cal Slow Ride,” put on by the California Street Vans club. Unless you’re in the van scene, of course (and we’re not talking about trust fund kids living their “#vanlife” in the fashion magazine stories), you may not know what a “Van Run” even is. According to a thread on Vanning.com, one of the oldest continually running custom van forums online, a member asked the question, “What is a Van Run supposed to be?”

A variety of opinions appear in the responses. Member “Hotrod AL” in Columbus, Ohio, talks about Hot Bands, Cool Vans, and Cold Beer. Member “Starlord” in Wichita Falls, Texas, speaks the gospel of like-minded people getting together to have fun, checking out the vans, and meeting folks. Essentially, a Van Run is anytime vanners get together in their vans and go do van stuff together, whether it be a one-day cruise or over the course of many days. The “Slow Ride” could be considered a Van Run or a Van Cruise. Again, it’s subject to interpretation.

The first So-Cal Slow Ride took place back in 2012, and the event has steadily grown ever since. It generally starts at an unsuspecting grocery store parking lot somewhere in the Torrance, California, area. Vanners from SoCal and beyond start flooding into the parking spots by 10 a.m. to meet up with new friends and check out the attending rigs.

Then, at 11 a.m.,  engines start firing up and everyone heads for a cruise along the water through Palos Verdes. Along the way there are generally two or three photo-op stops where Vanners and spectators alike quickly document the gathering before getting back on the road.

As the cruise goes on, people slowly peel off, but there’s always a good number of folks who stick with the Run all the way to the end of the line. The Slow Ride route’s destination is usually the Korean Friendship Bell in San Pedro, but that’s subject to change, as was the case for the 2021 event. The stop spots along the way, ya see, are generally public parking lots. If it’s a nice day out those areas can be already filled with non-Vanners, and that’s where it helps to have a Plan B. That information, as needed, is normally posted to Facebook post, so Vanners ensure that their phones have plenty battery (or a car charger) in case they you fall behind or get stopped at a light. Nobody wants to leave a van behind.

California Street Vans member Jim Thompson says this was one of the group’s biggest turnouts yet. The final count: 116 vans in total attendance. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

For more info on So-Cal Slow Rides, click here.

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The holidays let us reflect on the friends, family, and items we cherish that make our lives better, even if they may occasionally rub us the wrong way. Such is the journey of Conner DeKnikker and his 1986 Ford LTD Country Squire LX, traversing multiple states to ensure that promises are kept.

Conner is no ordinary young gent; raised with Ford Blue running through his veins, he’s now a Customer Service Division Zone Manager for Ford’s Dallas Region. Ensuring the ideal dealership experience is one thing, but Conner also owns a Bronco, two MN-12 Thunderbirds, an SN-95 Mustang GT, and this Country Squire wagon. The latter is notable because Conner inherited it from his grandparents. Perhaps it’s better to hear the story from the man himself:

My grandparents, Marie and Albert, gave me the wagon in July 2019. I made the 1660-mile trip from Texas, where I revived it after over a decade of sitting in their barn. My grandmother told me she always wanted a wagon like the Country Squire LX, as it was a symbol of achievement (Panther Chassis wagons weren’t cheap), and it seemed appropriate as a mother of five kids. I suppose she felt it would allow her to travel in comfort, transport grandchildren, and be more involved in their lives. She passed away last month, and my grandfather was grieving especially hard for the loss of his wife of nearly 70 years. It was made worse because COVID-19 prevented him from having a funeral service. That’s when I decided to ensure her car would be there for Thanksgiving, since she firmly believed the wagon could bring the family together.

The decision to take the trip was truly last minute. The only person I told was my dad, for two reasons: My mom would worry, and I also wanted the visit to be a surprise for my grandfather. In his time of loss, I felt that my presence would be more meaningful if I arrived unexpectedly, especially with the wagon.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. As Conner’s last-minute decision meant he needed to get the wagon ready for the highway. The list included fresh Synthetic blend oil, coolant, belts and hoses, DOT4 brake fluid, new U-joints, and an axle service. Conner also ensured he had enough entertainment in the form of vintage cassettes and a USB phone charger to keep himself sane throughout the journey.

Day 1 (Sunday, November 22): Conner left for Amarillo, Texas, and enjoyed the sun setting over the Texas Panhandle. The vacuum-operated cruise control held up like a champ, but the vinyl split bench seat’s lack of lumbar support was aggravating his back. Luckily he found a comfy angle, sitting sideways in this V-8-powered living room as if he was sitting on his couch and binge-watching something on Netflix.

Before leaving town, Conner visited a Ford/Lincoln dealership in his territory for an impromptu photo op. Yes, during his vacation. If there’s a higher watermark for a Division Zone Manager than this, I’d like to hear it.

Day 2 (Monday, November 23): Conner left Amarillo in hopes of reaching Grand Junction, Colorado, before a snowstorm hit on Tuesday. The wagon made it without incident through Texas, the top of New Mexico, and into Colorado across the mesa known as the Llano Estacado.  The LX-grade wagon meant Conner had Ford’s multi-function “Tripminder” trip computer keeping tabs on him, which caught him using over 110 instantaneous MPGs on certain downhill runs.

But the wagon quit running as the sun set below the mountains and south of Westcliffe, Colorado. Coasting off the highway, Conner felt confident that he was ready for this moment: the wagon had the tools, extra parts (like the well-known Ford TFI ignition module), a sleeping bag, blankets, food, and water. A little inspection into the crank-but-no-start issue was concerning, as Conner couldn’t hear the fuel pump running. Luckily he had cell phone service and a roadside assistance subscription; a tow company dropped the wagon off at the local Ford dealership in Cañon City. This is also where our weary, road-hardened protagonist found a hotel and called it a night.

Day 3 (Tuesday, November 24): Since Uber or Lyft haven’t reached rural Colorado, Conner grabbed a taxi to the dealership. Perhaps they took pity on a stranded Ford employee, as they squeezed the wagon into their busy work schedule, verified the problem but could not find a fuel pump locally. Getting a part from Denver was impossible due to a snowstorm, and parts stores in the area only use 2WD trucks. Conner reached out to his network of Ford dorks friends, and we recommended using a readily available Fox Body Mustang fuel pump. And $480 later, Conner’s wagon roared back to life. Unfortunately, he missed his window to make it before a snowstorm over the Monarch Pass on US50 to Grand Junction, so he chose the longer route: north through Wyoming. But remember that phrase about the best-laid plans? 

Just before sunset the wagon died once again, south of Colorado Springs. The fuel pump was silenced, so Conner swapped a fuel pump relay—to no avail. Standing/freezing on the side of the road, he had plenty of time to marinate on his decision to travel by 34-year-old station wagon. Hoping for the best, Conner popped in a Lindsay Buckingham tape  and enjoyed “Holiday Road” as thousands of faceless Coloradans whizzed by his wood-festooned wagon. His tow truck arrived an hour later and unloaded the wagon at Phil Long Ford of Colorado Springs.

Day 4: (Wednesday, November 25): Closer to civilization this time, Conner used Lyft to visit the dealership at 7:30 a.m. An apologetic service advisor informed him they were booked until Friday, so Conner’s mind went spinning. He even considered renting a car and going back home to Dallas. That’s when, like any loyalist spending time at a new car dealership with a classic from the same brand, he got creative and a bit lucky.

Conner asked the service advisor if he could borrow a fuel pressure tester. “Why?” he was asked. Conner suggested that knowing if there was 30–40 psi at the fuel rail would determine if there was a problem under the hood that he could fix without assistance. By then, a veteran technician named George Gillian emerged with a fuel pressure tester and volunteered to help. Gillian has worked at Phil Long Ford since 1979. Ironically, that’s the first year of the Panther Chassis, which underpins Conner’s wagon. Small talk commenced and a vintage Rotunda “Super Star” code reader emerged with familiar two-digit codes right behind it. Gillian added, “I remember these codes, but I couldn’t tell you what I had for dinner last night.”

Gillian noticed that the fuel pump relay would click on when he touched the ground at the negative battery terminal. He noticed the poorly completed splice (fixed in the photo above) made by Ford’s Division Zone Manager and gave him some well-deserved grief about his commitment to Quality is Job 1. With fuel feeding the wagon, Conner left for Wyoming with only $75 less in his bank account.

Our protagonist then hit I-25 through Denver, Fort Collins, and into Laramie. There’s nothing quite like seeing America through a hood ornament, something that’s lost behind the wheel of a more modern automobile. Conner’s goal was to reach Salt Lake City, but after filling up in Laramie, a gaggle of concerned citizens hollered, “Your car is leaking!” Conner hoped the problem would lessen as less fuel was in the tank. Mercifully it did, to the detriment of the wagon’s cruising range. Many fuel stops later, Conner arrived in Salt Lake City, where he crashed at the home of a friend and fellow Ford enthusiast.

Day 5: (Thursday, November 26): Conner reached the Idaho border, where the wagon’s impressive hood matched the snow-kissed hills and flatland prairies. The heater did its job commendably and the ride was effortless down I-15 and I-84 as he neared Boise. Conner whipped out his box of cassettes and let the stylings of John Fogerty, Simon and Garfunkel, and even Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving classic “Alice’s Restaurant” take him home.

Evening had arrived when Conner reached his grandfather’s house in Cambridge, Idaho. Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner, Conner greeted his father, aunt, and grandfather to celebrate as a family.

Conner’s 88-year-old grandfather cut the Thanksgiving turkey, and the photo proves that the family’s wagon accomplished its mission: Everyone was home for the holiday, but Conner still hadn’t visited the other side of his family.

Day 6: (Friday, November 27): Following his dad from Idaho, Conner headed to California to see his mom. What’s normally a nine-hour trip was extended by Dad’s need to motor well under the speed limit to save on fuel. Conner had enough of that in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and passed Dad in the big wagon, ensuring he wasn’t riding the brakes any more than necessary on the downhill slopes. Turns out Conner’s concerns about his mom not approving of this wood-paneled road trip were unfounded, as she was supportive of his gesture.

Day 7: (Saturday, November 28): There’s something wonderful about traveling without a timeline, no? Conner visited Bob, the town’s local barber and friend of the family. This wouldn’t be noteworthy except for the fact he was closing his business, Continental Barbers, after 57 years. Today was his last day. It’s unfortunate to see American institutions like a local barber shop come and go, much like the popularity of the wood-grained station wagon.

Day 8: (Sunday, November 29): Unlike some family members with reservations about the old wagon, this day began with a McLaren following alongside and a pretty young blonde girl shouting, “Clark Griswold!” out of the supercar’s window. The unexpected Vacation movie comparison surprised our protagonist, much like this unexpected visit to see his mother’s parents. Conner’s previously discussed apprehension to travel because of COVID-19 was on everyone’s mind, but Conner’s loss of his other grandmother ensured that he appreciated any opportunity to visit family.

Day 9–10: (Monday and Tuesday, November 30–December 1): Conner made a futile attempt at addressing the fuel leak when full, dropping the tank and installing a rubber gasket. The original gasket (which should have been replaced alongside the pump) was indeed leaking, but the fix only reduced the severity of the problem. The real problem wasn’t found until he reached home (crack in the return line), but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Again. Our protagonist still had a ways to go, arriving in Kingman, Arizona, by 11 p.m.

Day 11: (Wednesday, December 2): Conner visited Mesa, Arizona, to help a fellow enthusiast with a five-year newer version of his wagon. One fresh starter and new vacuum lines later and the 1991 wagon came back to life after a two-month slumber. The attention that these two received while cruising down the streets was beyond impressive, as these two relics of a bygone era are even the same color.

Conner then travelled to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and noted there were just barely enough gas stations in southern New Mexico to make the trip, given the wagon’s restricted fuel range.

Day 12: (Thursday, December 3): The last leg was only 685 miles, but the wagon proved that older cars can be just as reliable as newer ones, provided you treat it right and remain vigilant when issues creep up. The journey lasted 12 days and covered 4200 miles, a trip that cars like a Panther Chassis Ford were born to devour. There’s no doubt that 1986–91 Country Squires are incredible bargains for reliable, fuel-injected family transportation with a vintage aesthetic. Is it any surprise that Conner gets more looks driving his Grandmother’s wagon than in his latest company car?

***

From all of us at Hagerty, we hope you enjoyed Conner’s story, and we wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Editor’s note(s):

1. Conner remained socially isolated while working from home, and he wore a mask and socially distanced when traveling.
2. This is a good time to mention that Ford mandates its dealerships follow COVID-19 protocols, which you can read about here.

The post How a Ford station wagon brought three generations together for the holidays appeared first on Hagerty Media.

No pain, no gain. That’s the phrase that springs to mind as I contort myself into the tiny aperture between sill and roof that purports to be a door. The rain is lashing down, the windscreen is fogged, and my son has just kicked the other door off its hinges trying to install himself in the passenger seat. Our soaking wet tents are strapped to the back of our Caterham Seven. Our sodden clothes, sleeping bags, and boots are jammed under the luggage tonneau and today we will be sharing a single pair of driving shoes. Max’s got waterlogged in the storm that kept us awake all night and continues this morning.

This is a critical moment, testing our commitment to this father-son quest to drive seven of Britain’s best roads in the Seven, in seven days or less. The plan was to turn right out of the campsite and take the Kirkstone Pass, one of the most dramatic roads in England’s Lake District, but the cloud is so dense that I can barely see beyond the hood. Do we press on, or pull a U-turn and hope that we can outrun the weather?

The Caterham is just about the most basic sports car ever made. Essentially a continuation of the Lotus Seven which dates from 1957, the car is the epitome of Colin Chapman’s “simplify and add lightness” philosophy. An engine, four wheels, two seats, and a steel spaceframe barely clothed in aluminum panels. Since Caterham took over the Seven’s blueprints in 1973, there have been a number of different powertrains provided by Vauxhall, Rover, Ford, and even Suzuki.

Our 2010 Roadsport has a 1.6-liter Ford Sigma motor, with a few tweaks to send around 140 hp to the rear wheels. That may not sound much, but the whole vehicle weighs just 1210 pounds. It wears sticky Avon CR500 tires on 13-inch alloy wheels and will see 60 mph from a standstill in five seconds, if you can manage the wheelspin. It is a track day weapon and just the thing for a quick Sunday-morning blast. A grand tourer it is not. Nonetheless, that is what we’re asking of it as we chase the last days of summer. With judicious use of bungee straps and the narrow slots behind the seats, we manage to pack everything we need for a week away.

Days before our foggy fork in the road, we set out on our adventure. Nineteen-year-old Max is actually up and ready before me. Want your teenager to get out of bed before noon? Dangle the keys to a Caterham. We leave our home in London behind and breeze along with the sun shining, passing the monoliths of Stonehenge and make good time over the 200 miles. It becomes immediately apparent that no father-son bonding over conversation will be done at speed. On the way to the first road on our list, the A39 from Porlock to Barnstable in Devon, we communicate very little, yet Max’s phone remains in his pocket as the sights and sounds captivate us.

The Atlantic Highway

Known as the Atlantic Highway, the A39 is anything but a highway as it leaves Porlock. One of the steepest roads in the country, it snakes quickly up on to Exmoor in a series of switchbacks. It would be fun if the path is clear but tedious if you’re behind one of the many motorhomes that are out for a final summer Sunday drive. Fortunately, what the Seven loses in practicality it makes up in performance. A quick blip, a downshift and we’re doing multiple-motorhome fly-bys, one eye on the shift-up lights, one ear on the roar of the sidepipe that exits by the driver’s right hip.

Soon the road stretches out over Exmoor, undulating and weaving between the hills, yellow gorse and purple moorgrass providing a warm blur of color through the narrow windshield. Dipping down off the moors and hugging the coast, the view across to the little seaside town of Lynton is stunning. As I scramble up a bank to grab some photos, Max gets his first turn behind the wheel. A week ago he drove (and drove well) at a track day, but there’s no run off here and barely a straight in sight to get familiar with the car.

He clambers in, adjusts the four-point harness, thumbs the starter, and heads off down the hill to find somewhere to turn around and head back for a hero shot. He is gone a long time. I’m perched high on the hillside, with just my parental angst for company. It’s the first time he’s driven the Seven on the road, the first time I haven’t been sat next to him.

Just as I’m about to call him or check Find my iPhone, I hear him. I’m guessing about 5000 rpm, so not full throttle, which is a good sign. I see him through the viewfinder. His face reflects deep concentration.

We get our shots and pause for a moment in a park lot to ogle the gaggle of supercars sprinting by in close formation. Definitely a popular spot.

A little too popular. We double back along the coast to make our way towards Wales, overtaking more RVs and sightseers on seemingly every straight. By the time we reach our campsite on the South Wales coast, we’re thankful for the pop-up tents that are within seconds ready to receive our tired selves.

Black Mountain Pass

Day two begins with a short sprint on the M4 motorway to Swansea, where we jink north to pick up the A4069 from Upper Brynamman to Llangadog—a route known as the Black Mountain Pass. It’s still early, so we have this stunning road to ourselves. The recent addition of a 40-mph speed limit would reduce the fun in most cars, but the Seven sits so low to the ground that anything above a walking pace feels fast. The Seven owners’ club magazine is called Low Flying, which is a pretty accurate description of piloting the Caterham as we whip between the mountains, taking curve after curve, trying not to be distracted by the views.

There are so many photo opportunities that Max gets most of the seat time to drive for camera, tearing up and down, getting more confident with each pass. There’s one particular corner that fans of Top Gear’s Chris Harris will recognize from his days of YouTube fame. It’s a tight left, uphill, and there are plenty of tire marks left by Harris and others who have powered through on opposite lock before us. At this point I elect to get back behind the wheel to take us north. It’s part parental perogative and also the fact that I’ve been missing all the fun.

The A483 isn’t on our official list of Great British Roads, but it is a fabulous way to cover the miles to Chester where we pick up the M63, M56, M60, and M67 motorways towards Manchester. Four hours or so from the Black Mountains and we’re at the A57 Snake Pass in time for a couple of runs before the sun sets.

Snake Pass

The pass runs from Glossop to the Ladybower reservoir and, once again, the local authorities have clamped down, introducing a 50-mph limit. In the Seven, our senses are heightened as we fly through the beautiful Peak District. Open to the elements we can smell the fading leaves on the trees, feel the moisture on our faces as we clip through patches of mist. With 25 percent gradients, Snake Pass can be a real test of brakes, but the Caterham is so featherweight it never struggles to slow, even on the steepest sections, while also making light work of the climbs.

Another night under canvas beckons, and COVID-19 restrictions limit our dinner choices to a sorry-looking sandwich, but nothing can spoil this truly excellent day.

In the morning the skies are still clear and we make the two-hour journey towards the Yorkshire Dales with the roof still down. For some reason, this is the only part of the trip in which I just don’t gel with the car. The wind buffeting is exhausting, I can’t settle in my seat, and so I’m very pleased when we make it to Hawes and the beginning of the Buttertubs Pass.

Buttertubs Pass

This is another road popular with Top Gear alumni. In this case, Jeremy Clarkson described the pass as “England’s only truly spectacular road.” He is not wrong. It really is spectacular—and surprising. Initially you climb up onto the Dales, the road meandering gently, giving plenty of time to soak in the scenery. Then, out of nowhere, it becomes an insane roller-coaster ride, dipping and climbing, dodging and weaving, forcing concentration, with only a few scarred cable barriers preventing our “low-flying” Caterham from taking off.

It’s an astonishing drive, and Max does brilliantly behind the wheel. I’m a terrible passenger at the best of times, but he’s really focused as he smoothly, calmly tackles the ‘Tubs, blipping for downshifts and keeping his eyes up for the next surprising twist.

By now we’ve dipped into Cumbria, and that means the Lake District, a scant 50 miles from the Kirkstone Pass. When we arrive, however, there is nothing to see. The fog is so thick that even if we weren’t stuck behind a bus, we could go no faster. Fortunately, our campsite is placed just at the bottom of the pass, so we can try again in the morning.

The foul weather declines to yield us this redemption. Instead, as you may recall from this tale’s beginning, we are faced with a choice. Together, we resolve to press on and point our rain-drenched noses to the west in pursuit of the Honister Pass.

Honister Pass

The eclectic topography of the Lake District means there are pockets of different climates, and by the time we reach the town of Keswick the air is completely clear. The pass begins with a very steep, narrow, tortuous climb that makes us glad to be in a car as diminutive as the Seven. Then, it opens up to a valley full of surly locals who think they own the road. Sheep stroll casually onto the asphalt, unbothered by the speeding machines and short braking distances. They give you a little side-eye and slowly wander off, oblivious to your pounding heart still recovering from a horrific panic stop. Caution is required, but it’s still a corking drive and, as we finally begin to dry out, we’re hoping for even more excitement to come.

As we slog up the M6 and into Scotland, the clues that we’ll get our wish are already manifesting. This must be the most beautiful stretch of motorway in Britain, cutting through the mountains on the border. It’s significantly colder now. Because the Seven has no heater, we keep the half-hood in place, put on more layers, and make the most of warmth that finds its way from the exhaust to the footwells.

The hood keeps some heat in but does nothing to deaden the unrelenting noise at highway speeds. Yet, despite the impossibility of conversation I feel closer to my son than I have for a while. Obviously, we are close, the car’s dimensions see to that, but I feel the bond of an experience shared. I glance over occasionally and catch him smiling. Just being in this car together is good for the soul.

We camp near Loch Lomond. It’s our first real chance to stretch our legs in days and walk into the little hamlet of Drymen for a warming pub dinner, where discuss the pros and cons of the Caterham experience. We agree that on paper the impracticalities and discomfort outnumber the advantages of performance and handling, but on the right road–or track–we can’t imagine another car that would offer such a pure, visceral thrill.

A82 to Glencoe

When we wake, there’s frost on the tents and the car. Thankfully it’s drying up as we pack up and tackle the sixth road on our list, the A82 to Glencoe. For miles we hug the banks of Loch Lomond, snaking along, our progress hindered only occasionally as we steal glances at stunning vistas grabbed between trees. It’s a beautiful drive and the 50-mph limit is plenty given the amount of water still on the road, the chill in the air, and the rubber compound of the Avon CR500s tires that needs some heat to properly grip. Wheelspin in third gear is a wake-up call this early in the morning.

Leaving the lochs behind, the A82 eases out with long straights where two or more cars can be dispatched with a downshift and a dose of full throttle. Other drivers have the same idea, and we’re buzzed by a Hyundai i30N and an A45 AMG that pop and bang rather artificially; the Seven’s sidepipe and its authentic acoustics, even after days without relent, sounds better to Max and me.

Nearing Glencoe we enter a valley of such scale and spectacle that it appears pre-ordained for Instagram—no filter does it favors. The road itself is fast and varied, so it entertains almost as much as Mother Nature.

Applecross Pass

The Applecross Pass (Balach na Ba, as the locals call it) is our ultimate destination. Everyone else’s, too, it seems. This crazily narrow, bumpy and twisty climb was once a sheep drovers’ road and frankly hasn’t been upgraded much since. It is a constant stop/start, a race between passing places to get to the top. But when we get there it’s worth the struggle. The view down the pass and across to the islands of Raasay and Skye beyond are the most mesmerizing we have seen so far.

I send Max off for some final photos. The road, the car, and even the weather all come together for the perfect shot, but we are both a bit frustrated at having covered 1400 miles and potentially leaving Scotland after a last drive that’s been more photo-friendly than driver-friendly. Max looks frazzled by the effort. “Well, that was certainly an experience,” he muses.

That night, storm clouds gather. By five in the morning our tents are being battered by wind and rain. It’s impossible to sleep, so we catch the shortest break in the tempest and pack up. The sun is just rising through the mist as we reach the Applecross Pass again.

It is ours and ours alone. We encounter not a single car as we charge through its 11 miles in what feels like a blink. Just the two of us and our Seven—the most minimal, most engaging machine we could have asked for, deep in its element on one of the seven best roads in Britain.

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After being cooped up in my garage for six months, I was itching for a good opportunity to pack my saddlebags, hop on a motorcycle, and ride anywhere but the grocery store. A plan began to form over a few beers during a Zoom happy hour with a few friends. The American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA) was hosting a race 2.5 hours south. We couldn’t get on track, but why should that stop us from getting as near as we could to full race-prepped, go-fast motorcycles and sharing a few beers with other enthusiasts?

In a normal year, my friend and I would spend a decent chunk of our time on the road for both business and pleasure, and 2020 had us feeling more stationary than ever. We had the gear to get out of the house, so even with short notice we went for it.

Our plan was thinly veiled as taking two retro-inspired machines to a vintage race. My friend strapped a tent to a Kawasaki Z900RS, and I lay my saddlebags over a loaner Royal Enfield INT650. Despite the romantic thesis of the trip, our actual objectives included a bit of scouting, a healthy dose of learning, and a lot of relaxing.

We laid a “blue highways” route, keeping off the super slab as much as possible as we motored from Traverse City south to the 2.21-mile circuit located just outside South Haven, Michigan. A leisurely ride, really—some straight-shot roads mixed with a few fast-sweeping turns that interrupted the monotony of 55-mph cruising. The relaxed ride itself was part of the escape. When we arrived at GingerMan, we ate brats purchased from the paddock food stand and took a stroll to see what interesting machines and riders had congregated in southwestern Michigan.

The race weekend was hosted by the American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association (AHRMA), which meant the vast majority of the grid was filled with bikes that had survived at least one scrap drive in their life, if not two or three. The grid was a bit smaller than usual, due to the the global pandemic, but the AHRMA road racing group is very tightly knit and often forms a veritable convoy between events. Follow a 7×14 trailer with a vintage Honda sticker on its side and you’re more than likely to end up at an AHRMA race.

The range of financial investment in the paddock was wide. A toterhome with five prepped Ducatis sat across from a group of four guys with tents pitched in the grass behind a late-model pickup hauling a Honda CB160. The contrast was eye-opening, but it also suggested that the barrier to entry was lower than I had expected. As I chatted up racers and mechanics that night, vaguely hoping to be handed a free beer, the most dangerous thought in racing flitted across my mind: “I think I can do this.”

I reminded myself that my riding partner at this very event had gone to a different race and become so caught up in the experience that he bought a CB160 race bike that needed an engine rebuild. Two years later he sold it, still with no engine in the frame. Even the “minimal” race efforts were not cheap, I told myself; I’m no magician who could make a race machine appear out of thin air for $20. To go racing would take dollars, and in the end would make little sense for me.

Or would it? A counterargument began to congeal. Everyone I talked to over the course of the weekend was having a blast. Maybe it would be worth my money just to go and have fun a few weekends a year. Particularly appealing was the LeMans-start class, which kicked off the racing on Saturday. Class rules dictate that the rider stand on one side of the front straight, their bike held by a friend on the opposite side. When the green flag drops, said rider hustles to their machine, starts the engines with a running bump start, and takes to racing.

As was only appropriate, we stayed up late drunkenly trying to solve the world’s problems. The pea-shooter exhausts from the small-bore practice group became our alarm clocks, and for two days we sat and simmered in a motorcycle haze comprised of a 50:1 mix of Castrol pre-mix oil and glassy-eyed, two-wheeled dreams. We imagined our knees skipping along the pavement, rolling on the throttle exiting onto the front stretch. Thoughts of making the leap from spectator to participant were never far from our minds.

Surprisingly, our dedication to trying to making that transition reality has not waned. Winter is approaching faster than the superbikes climbing into GingerMan’s turn three, and we have some time to sit on an idea that just might hatch. Even if that plan is stillborn, a weekend at the track was a welcome reprieve from real-world responsibility. We will be back, either on two wheels or hauling two wheels.

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The usual growling in the bowels of my Lada Niva’s gearbox recently became louder … rattlier … thrashier. Its previously endearing mechanical whine gradually grew to the point that it began exciting new resonances in other parts of the vehicle. Lucky for me, I was able to order a new gearbox for less than $500, along with a tracking number to check every 15 minutes. After all, an idle mind would just mean more shopping online for parts.

Like my cat who brings me live bats, birds, and mice now after I gave him a treat for killing a horsefly, these damn algorithms have figured me out and will offer a steady stream of long-dead things for me to buy. The 1958 Moskvich 407 I recently dragged home is in constant need of extra bits, which means daily online searches and more fuel for The Platforms.

Before long, I agreed to purchase the remains of—get this—a rear-ended-and-Camino-ized East German-export-market Moskvich 412. The prior owner, who sold the various bits for 120 euros, was an 80-year-old gentleman living on a farm in Thuringen, a few hours away from my place near Stuttgart. Why did I double down on Moskies? This car has the holy grail of Soviet four-cylinders: the UZAM-412, which is an alloy-block 1.5-liter four-cylinder allegedly reverse-engineered from the fabulous BMW M10. The engine made its debut in 1967 under the hood of the Moskvich 412.

Though there are a number of key differences that suggest the Bimmer motor was more inspiration than outright blueprint, the similarities between the two engines are sufficient to warrant close consideration. The slanted position (okay, they’re 10 degrees different), the near-exact displacement and power output, the recognizably Bavarian finned aluminum oil pan, the hemispherical combustion chambers and valve arrangement, the five-main-bearing crank, and the rough bore/stroke ratio make a convincing case.

Compared with the outgoing, Opel-based OHV motor Moskvich used, the UZAM-412 engine was a massive leap forward. It was like acing the final exam after getting Ds all semester. The initial, M115 version of BMW’s venerable M10 (used in the BMW 1500) was the supposed starting point for the Soviet four-cylinder. Talented designer Igor Okunev’s handiwork for the 412 included an aluminum block with steel liners, a split exhaust manifold, and—my favorite touch—a hand prime handle on the fuel pump. (The handle is potentially a great upgrade for my 407 … but more likely garage art.)

The 412 was located three hours away so, of course, my plan was to tow it home with my ailing Niva. With 83 hp and a basically half of a Soviet sedan-cum-pickup to load, this was a Goldilocks scenario—the trailer had to be no larger or smaller than absolutely necessary. It was, blissfully, perfect. My wife and I loaded up for a family road trip with the dog, tools, snacks, water, and the requisite transmission anxiety. I had over-filled the gearbox with thicker oil in a vain attempt to help curb symptoms. I use this method—overfilling thicker oil in something making horrible sounds—extremely sparingly after once launching a connecting rod in the direction of a jogger (and in the process starting a moderately-sized fire) on Stadium Boulevard in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this case I felt it was justified. Fire response is fast here in Germany, and running on the Autobahn is strictly verboten. I committed to leaving the transmission in fourth gear as much as possible to relieve the long-suffering bearings. Beyond that, I prayed to the patron saint of countershafts.

Driving the Lada on the highway at 110 kph (69 mph) with a trailer requires a Nostradomical amount of foresight for hills, wind, and the roughness of the pavement. Every single factor matters. Being nice to the gearbox also meant fourth gear at 4100 rpm, and thus a colossal noise and vibration. The racket meant our dog’s bathroom request went unheard, leading to the Niva’s back seat and passenger area filling with urine. Quick break.

Other coincidental factors influenced our delayed arrival time. Assuming that it must be the guy we were arranged to meet, we followed a mustard yellow Moskvich and then navigated to the provided street name, only to find out we were in entirely the wrong town. Upon our late arrival at our intended destination, the situation proved simply impossible to explain to all five thickly dialected men, so I pulled out my ever-useful language barrier card.

The trailer was just the right width, and the old boys already had the heavy parts—the subframe carrying the engine and gearbox—halfway up on a lift. It slid right in at a slight angle on a sturdy, rather indispensable dolly. I experienced a vivid flash-forward day-terror of the subframe digging into the floor of the trailer, myself tugging hopelessly as the rental company’s return deadline came and went, and vocalized my dire need for the dolly.

For that, I paid dearly—twice. Once with cash, and a second time with my remaining dignity as I overheard one of the old men guffaw to two others that I was willing to cough up 50 euro for a clapped-out dolly. Clearly, these guys had never paid late trailer fees.

One of the fellers there felt compelled to make it a better deal and invited me to whatever I wanted out of the junk pile. I scored a few gems. Where to keep this massive, growing inventory of parts that belong to cars I don’t own? Better question is how long until The Platforms serve up a Moski 412 with missing front fenders, grill, radiator, engine, gearbox, subframe, gas tank, and instrument cluster. Until then, I’ll relish the space I have; I’ve got a Lada Niva transmission to install.

The post The BMW M10 lookalike engine my Lada transmission told me to buy appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We’ve introduced you to Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0 already, but for those just joining us, we participated in a five-day, 1300-mile torture test across multiple state lines, with a drag race at the end of each day of road tripping.

This kind of drag race enduro format tests the limits of street cars by pitting traditionally high-strung machines against both the toughest conditions at the track and on the street. The mission: To settle the score on defining the ultimate street car.

Rocky Mountain Race Week in many ways mirrors the masochist’s holiday widely known as Hot Rod Drag Week, which was cancelled earlier this year, taking racers across Oklahoma and Kansas, pinging between Tulsa Raceway Park, Hartland Park, Thunder Valley, and Great Bend, with Tulsa Raceway Park serving as the final day’s stop.

While there are classes in which participants can jostle for dominance (and a $15000 cash prize for the overall winner) most drivers are out here to for the joy of competition more than anything else. Of course, that didn’t stop several heated battles from brewing throughout the week. Let’s get into it.

Day 1

The sun rose over a cool and misty morning at Tulsa Raceway Park as racers trickled through the entry gates. The inflow was a mixture of tow-rigs trailering Race Week weapons, with a handful crazy enough to drive from across the country with the vehicle they were also racing, meaning that mistakes had very real consequences as far as getting home. Given the bleak outlook regarding events in general this past spring and summer, folks were happy to see their extended racing family and, naturally, newcomers were hardly strangers once they shared the stories of their builds. The morning homecoming was swift, as the compact five-day format started competition runs that first evening, leaving available test-n-tune time to the lucky few who weren’t slamming their projects together at the last minute.

Tulsa served as home base for Race Week 2.0, where drivers left their trailers while bouncing between four other tracks before boomeranging back across the countryside to Tulsa for the last day of racing on Thursday. The transit stages between tracks amounted to 1300 miles, which meant the street manners of every car were certified in spite of the unbelievably-low ETs we clocked throughout the week.

With dozens of Drag Week cars all dressed up with no where to go after the Hot Rod event was cancelled, Race Week 2.0 was like an all-star home coming for some of today’s fastest names in the street car world. The two big guns, Royce Payten and Tom McGilton, came from different sides of the endurance drag racing fence. Royce’s maniacal, screw-blown Mustang offered an interesting juxtaposition against the Tom’s relatively sedate twin-turbo Camaro ZL1 (which still had functioning A/C, nav, and OnStar).

The Race Week 2.0 field reflected that same spectrum of performance, with the dozen or so classes allowing for anything fast enough to prove its worth within the rule set largely defined by Drag Week tradition. Organizers broke out index classes for cars slower than 10.0 seconds, while consolidating many of the classes that are defined by chassis details into simpler powerplant- and tire-size-based classes. This allowed the Drag Weekers to fall into competitive classes without significant changes to their machines, and vice-versa for Race Weekers who may have ended up at the big show.

True Street is a class which allows for a wide spectrum of performance machines, splitting vehicles into ET indexes, with the idea being that you run as close as possible to that indexed time (10.0, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0, or 14.0 seconds) without going faster and breaking out of your assigned niche. Other classes, like Limited Street, are technically an index class due to the ET limitations of their roll cages; the limit is an ET of 8.50 without the addition of a Funny Car hoop to the cage, which is a vital structure for driver containment at the track. (The hoop is often viewed as a compromise to the vehicle’s usability and safety on the street, due to its closeness to the driver’s unhelmeted head. Many drivers focus on hewing to that 8.5xx edge of the tech limit in order to avoid to hoop.)

Racing began promptly 4:00 PM, with all 10 staging lanes packed full of candy-colored street machines. Given that this was the first pass, most runs were fairly conservative. At least 1000 miles lay ahead, and the wise who ran more big-power setups ratcheted the madness down to ensure endurance over the five-day haul. Many cars were making their first-ever passes in anger, however.

True Street was called to the lanes first, so that the bulk of the field could knock out their runs. Entrants spanned everything from a ’84 Mercury Colony Park woody “Family Truckster” wagon (tucking away widened factory alloys with ET Street radials) to a street-legalized no. 3 Craftsman Truck with a swapped LS, demonstrating the plethora of home-built hot rods of every flavor.

The action kicked off with only minor delays. Lanes filled up with the various class cars, staging the week’s biggest battles for Unlimited, Pro Street, Limited Street, Outlaw Street, Rowdy Radial, Ultimate Radial, Hot Rod, Gasser Stick Shift, NA Big-Block and NA Small-Block. Remember, in the mix here would be the overall winner of $15,000. There were predictably heavy hits from Royce (7.41) and Tom (7.35). Real Street’s pair of Mark IV Supras checked in with their singing, single-turbo 2JZs driven by Jared Holt and Geovanni Castillo, posting formidable runs within a tenth of 8 seconds and leading their respective classes in Outlaw Street and Unlimited Radial right out of the the gate on Day 1.

Doc McEntire posted up NA Big-Block’s best ET of 8.03 with his mountain-motored 1968 Chevy Camaro, packing 672 cubic inches. That was a mere few ticks off its 7-second potential. Cleetus McFarland’s twin-turbo Vette kart, distantly inspired by Hot Rod’s own project ‘Vette kart, locked into first place in the Stick Shift class with an 8.25—the most conservative time slip of the week for the stripped-down C5 Corvette known as “Leroy.” Another Drag Week regular, Randal Reed and his turbo LS-powered ’93 Ford Mustang set the pace in the 8.50-locked Limited Street with an 8.51, though the top five at the end of Day 1 for Limited Street would be within a tenth-of-a-second of Randal.

Day 2

Monday was the first drive day, a relatively short jaunt to Topeka, Kansas and Heartland Park. The checkpoint in Independence, Kansas was under a retired F-100 Super Sabre fighter jet that memorialized Vietnam-era veterans. They served a dual purpose of giving racers photo opportunities and certifying that they stuck to the route each day.

Heartland Park proved to be the toughest surface of the week; prep just wasn’t holding down the power that everyone was harvesting as temps dropped and the cool Kansas air became denser. After trading a few runs, Tom and Royce were within eight thousandths of a second of each other for their best ETs on Day 2, keeping the old-school Mustang’s blower square in the OnStar-equipped mirror of Tom’s ZL1.

True Street was starting to shape up, with the second set of runs showing who could buzz the index limit consistently. Randal Reed continued whittling down to an 8.504, but Aaron Shaffer had found the missing hundredths he needed to enter the fight thanks to a 8.509 pass that began to pull him from the back of the pack. Brian Havlick slid to second in the 10.0 index with his 555-cid ’67 Chevy Nova, which was being co-driven and raced in NA Big-Block by engine builder Frank Beck. Michael Swank scraped in by two hundredths with a 10.06 to Brian’s 10.08 average on Day 2. Travis Boltman and Kevin Waltman split their 12.004 tie from Tulsa in the 12.0 index with a 12.04 and 12.056, respectively.

With the war of attrition taking hold and cars more slowly trickling into the lanes, there was plenty of time for repeat runs on Day 2, with some drivers stashing 10 time slips in their pocket by the end of the night. For most, two to three runs were enough—it was still early in the week, and while several classes had battles tight enough to chase a number, others were settling into fairly foregone conclusions … assuming they could make it to Friday. Already there was one engine rebuild back in Tulsa, with “Red Hat” Scotty and his maroon Fox Mustang slamming the new long block back between the fenders during an all-night thrash before making it to Topeka. Meanwhile, Robert Williams had scrambled to repair a torched cylinder head for his turbo LS-powered 1977 Chevy Nova, with the help of some locals who had offered to weld and re-machine the flame-cut hole created as the head gasket failed.

Day 3

The next trek took our horsepower horde to Norman, Oklahoma’s famed Thunder Valley Raceway: the home of the 405. The track is known for being fast in any state of prep, and they had the track glued like fly paper. Tom ran his fastest pass of the week so far at 7.31, and Jared’s Supra dropped the hammer with a near half-second drop in ET to 7.55. This put fellow Outlaw Street competitor Doug Cook square in his sights, too; Cook had also ran his best of the week with a 7.823. Limited Street became a 8.50x bar fight between Randall, Aaron, and Jerome Courtney with a 8.503, 8.507, and 8.509, respectively. On the flip side, Royce and his mental Mustang overpowered the surface, pedaling the violence on its last two runs for a 8.325—a painfully slow time slip in the battle for the overall win.

The aforementioned war of attrition took its inevitable toll before long. Ruby, a turbocharged C6 Corvette piloted James Taal as a part of the Cleetus McFarland fleet, had a replacement turbocharged expressed shipped by Precision to the hotel, reaching the grease-covered Race Week 2.0 bellhops as breakfast was wrapping up. Valvetrains began to suffer the constant thrash of the highway with deteriorated lifters. Unexpected failures, like a pinched brake line that failed in Tom Stark’s ’55 Chevy wagon, kept the flow of incoming racers making their first runs well into the night.

Dale Gebhart, in his nitrous-assisted big-block Chevy AMC Gremlin, ran a 9.824 on only seven cylinders after a lifter wiped the cam lobe. He didn’t have time to swap lifters after arriving so late and made up for the dead hole with spray, and the car sounded horrible as it leaked compression out of cylinder one with the lifters tied up. But, it survived the hit and drove back to the hotel where they eventually made repairs.

For the most part, though, Thunder Valley was fast and sticky for racers, with several setting their best ETs of the week. Camron Thorpe’s 6.0-liter LS-powered Volvo wagon churned out a near-perfect run in True Street 11.0, with the LSA-blown truck motor hustling the Swedish brick to a 11.004. His father, Rich Thorpe, showed where the family tree came from with a spot-on 12.000 in his Pontiac G8 for True Street 12.0. In a showdown between both Real Street-built Supras, Geovanni churned his best ET of the week with a radical 7.242, taking the best ET of the week from Tom McGilton’s Pro Mod-based Camaro ZL1, while Jared pulled out the similarly brutal 7.552 with both 2JZs harmonizing into the Oklahoma country air. The night ended with a grudge race: Drag Week champion (and ET record holder) Tom Bailey, with his slammed Chevy ice cream van, got gapped by the Kona Ice truck driven by Joey Barry. (Barry’s Pro Street Firebird broke out of competition earlier in the week.)

If you’ve ever placed cash bets on an ice cream truck, please stand up.

Day 4

The longest days were ahead as we turned back north for Great Bend, Kansas, and the Sunflower Rod and Custom Association (SCRA) Dragstrip—one of the nation’s oldest strips still operating today. The ex-B29 bomber hub became home to the first NHRA Nationals championship race in 1955, but it wound down in the ’80s as major events moved to Kansas’ larger cities. We were greeted with an all-volunteer team that rescued the air field and its historical drag strip in 1993. Race Week 2.0 competition once again kicked off at a steady trickle as teams slowly funneled into the track after the 300-plus mile road trip to Great Bend.

Late in the week, some people knew who had a target on their back. Others started to figure out what number they needed to hit in order to make the next (and last) day count in their favor. The range of mechanical sympathy was all over the place with those kind of stakes. Some of the field nursed along a wounded machine while others are found their groove, pushing more and more aggressive tune-ups into the mix.

Few reflected that on-kill attitude more than the John Dodson-tuned Camaro driven by Aaron Shaffer. At Great Bend he nailed a perfect 8.500 on the tech limit of Limited Street, pulling him into a trajectory that could pull him into the the lead if Randall Reed slipped up. Like a lame hand in blackjack, Randall’s 8.515 wouldn’t bust out, but it wouldn’t win the round outright, either. That bit of daylight gave Aaron just enough room to set up for an upset victory if he could belt out another 8.5ox run tomorrow.

Oil downs were becoming more common as abused motors hit their breaking points. It’s not unusual for a drag race to have one or two scattered motors, but in endurance drag racing events like Rocky Mountain Race Week 2.0, they become routine later in the week. As the sun set, the course was closed for half-hour as Royce’s Mustang dumped oil, managing to pedal through the slick trail as it ran over its own fluid, but it was like trying to close a the dam during a monsoon. The staging lanes became packed with antsy drivers looking to throw down some of their first passes, while others were starting to chase a number in order to get ahead in the class.

The Nova, driven by Brian Havlik and Frank Beck, was bitten by the lifter bug, pushing out of the lanes in a scramble to diagnose the noise and whether or not the motor would need to be uncapped so that the offending lifter could be tied up. But in a strange twist of luck, it had seuzed itself in the bore in a perfect spot that kept it away from the cam lobes, yet still in the correct spot to pass oil through the galley. They made their seven-cylinder passes and stayed in competition.

Despite having come back from the torched head and creeping up on the Outlaw Street class, Robert Williams had a tiny steam vent leak that sidelined several attempts at a second pass. It didn’t matter how big or small the issue was for racers on Day 4, tensions were high as Wednesday’s racing came to a close in Great Bend.

The anxiety was in the air as the fleet left for SCRA that night. There was still one day of long-haul driving, and while the temptation to go full-ham right out of the gate was significant, the need to post a safe and solid time on Day 5 was equally pressing.

Day 5

Lunacy is the word we’d use to sum up the feeling upon the morning of Day 5. The racing started an hour earlier so that awards could still happen at a decent hour, and there was still a healthy run back to Tulsa filled with several hundred street miles ahead. A few well-prepared folk rolled out of the hotels before the sun’s warm rays break through the morning’s low clouds, but otherwise, the beehive of choppy idles later rose almost in a panic.

While it’s hard to ever say that racers lose their humor as they wear thin, there emerged a slightly more serious atmosphere at the strip as both exhaustion and subconscious competitiveness took hold. There was also the lingering reality that hell week was almost over, and despite its challenges and stress, this is what everyone signed up for.

While it would take an absolute fluke to secure the overall win, Geovanni’s blast at Thunder Valley put him three-hundredths of a second ahead of Royce’s screw-blown Mustang, and less than a half-second behind Tom McGilton. Thankfully for Tom, he was able to keep that $15,000 dangling in front of the Supra with a 7.240 against Geovanni’s bewildering 7.367. Any mistake by Tom and the stock-block Supra might’ve taken the mighty “Why Not” Camaro ZL1, with its 540-cid twin-turbo big-block.

Still, the tired backup motor secured Tom’s second Rocky Mountain Race Week win this year with a wicked-quick average ET of 7.2816, adding a nice $30,000 bonus to the year’s earnings.

The hotly-contested Limited Street saw an upset victory, as Aaron Shaffer printed out another perfect 8.500 ET, bouncing him around Randal Reed’s 8.524 average in the final hour. It came down to the final runs of the night for these guys, who were essentially deciding their exact plans of actions right up until the start, adjusting launch boost and shift RPMs to really dial in that final number without wasting a run to a break-out. Jerome Courtney ended up just a few tenths behind the pair’s Fox and F-body, in a Silverado that compared to the pony cars was more or less a flying barn.

The True Street index classes were all within hundredths, but few were as narrowly won as Ernie Raile in the 14.0 index. He finished with a 14.0252 in his chopped ’48 Chevy coupe, compared to Brian Thornton’s turbocharged Silverado and its 14.0268. Ernie also churned out the most runs of the week, hot-lapping the green hot rod until the lanes closed every day.

There was also a host of personal bests and (loose) class records. Jason Tabscott’s ’72 Camaro in Drag Week trim became the first NA Small-Block car into the 8s, with a personal best of 8.99 at 151.1 mph. Wally, the hooptie Grand Marquis driven by James Schauer that runs an 18v Milwaukie power tools battery to bump fuel pressure to match the jerry-rigged nitrous kit, broke into the 12s with a shocking 12.988. Not that it was especially fast, but who would think that with a janky wet-spray nitrous kit, sticky tires, and an impact wrench-assisted diet of body and interior parts that a tired Grand Marquis could knock down a stock modern sports car?

All told, 173 racers finished out of the 225 who started—approximately a 23 percent attrition rate over the course of the week. Those failures and successes can’t be easily quantified by numbers alone, so we’ll report some of our favorite Race Week 2.0 tales in the week to come. In the meantime, you can catch day by day highlights thanks to 1320 Video, and BangShift.com has the entire live stream hosted on YouTube as well. But first, flip through the mega gallery of Race Week action here.

Thanks to Cole Reynolds for his photography. You can check out Cole’s Instagram here.