History

Tourtime

Tour Time
It's that time of year again - the time when Rich and Jean run the New England Tour 1000 and SCI jumps on the bandwagon.

Notebook entry #4: "Can I go fast?" I ask. "Please?" Donna nods her head and grabs the rollcage brace that divides the cockpit of my ’67 Corvette vintage racer. "If you get scared, just yell and I’ll slow down, okay?" Okay. I dump the clutch and head down Route 113, a newly paved corkscrew through a National Forest in Maine. There are no crossroads, no intersections, no traffic and no other people.
In second and third we’re barely running the speed limit on the short straights, but we’re also cornering on the ragged edge of good sense—to say nothing of a 200-foot dropoff—in the curves. The road goes on like this for miles, dodging left, right, up and down through a sunlit birch forest along a mountain stream. If heaven is where you get to do what you want, I have a new scenario suggestion for them.
As we approach a cluster of houses—the first sign of civilization in 20 miles—I take my foot off the gas, let the Corvette coast and look over for the first time. Donna is hyperventilating, tears running down her cheeks, laughing uncontrollably, somewhere on the far side of hysterics. "Why didn’t you tell me to slow down?" I ask.
"I was too scared. Besides...I liked it!"

So. Is driving fast and scaring your friends what the New England Tour 1000 is really all about? Not hardly. The original idea was to take some very cool vintage sports cars that probably don’t get driven often enough, and let them stretch their legs where the roads are empty and the scenery spectacular. This is what Jean and I set out to do, and I think we’ve done it; but the Tour has also earned a reputation as the hardest driven, most closely contested vintage rally in the country. It gives people who want to focus on flat-out race stages and accurate rally navigation as much to do as those who are content to just soak up the scenery and sample some good wine after dinner. The Tour has become SCI’s unofficial road show since it began four years ago, and this emphasis on performance driving is a big part of the reason. Driving fast and scaring your friends just snuck into it around the corners.
That’s why at the end of the day, while the drivers and navigators are all still zinging from the adrenaline, we make sure everyone has a chance to cool down with the other couples who’ve just driven the same 250-mile stretch and have their own stories to tell. This group aspect, we feel, is very important. It lets you say to your passenger, "You think I’m crazy...you ought to try riding with him!"

Notebook entry #25: Donna and I are way up in the mountains of Maine, a landscape not all that different from the high valleys of Colorado. The road is a narrow 2-lane ribbon through a pine forest alternately skirting lakeshores and mountains, gently rising and falling. The turns are mostly fast sweepers, gentle and predictable, with good visibility.
We come blaring around a corner to find the Taubners’ Gullwing Mercedes and the Coadys’ Maserati parked by the side of the road waiting for an unpredictable female moose and her yearling to amble to the other side. Why does a moose cross the road? To bring traffic to a screeching halt, of course.
A moose is tall and long—a Ferrari 250 could drive between its legs—and probably as heavy as my race-prepped Corvette. By the end of the day, I’ve seen six .

This year the Tour had 35 cars, ranging in age from Peter Williamson’s 1929 Bugatti 35B to Leonard McNeeley’s 1968 Maserati Ghibli. The prewar exotics included a Type 57 Bugatti and an 8C2300 Alfa; the postwar heavy iron took in two Mercedes Gullwings, two Ferrari California Spyders and two 330GTCs. The small-car ranks brought out the Brickmans’ Alfa Giulietta Sprint Speciale, Tom Hamilton’s 190SL racecar and David and Teresa Spiwak’s Sunbeam Tiger. In addition to the New Englanders you’d expect, we also had drivers from Italy and England, a whole passel from California and Florida, a couple of Canadians and a bunch of Midwesterners who live along the Mississippi from Alabama on up.
One of the things I’m most proud of about the Tour 1000, however, is that even with this variety of cars in attendance, we’ve never had to break up cliques—a 356 Porsche or an MGB has just as good a chance of winning as a Bugatti or a Ferrari, and nobody’s been interested in looking down one nose at another. Despite some million-dollar entrants, Semi-pro rallyists Phil and Dallas Smith took the TSD honors and the overall winner’s cup in their MGB-GT, while Jim Gordon won the hillclimbs with his Curt Vogt-built, competition-engined Mustang.
The Tour’s four most important awards have nothing to do with zeroing checkpoints or blasting through corners. John Bentley and Lori Steele won the Vintage Motorsport Cup by traveling all the way from England and California, respectively, to drive the wheels off a priceless Alfa Romeo 8C2300. We awarded Jim and Jane Gordon the Vermont Governor’s Cup because not only did they have a great time in their Mustang GT, they made damn sure everybody else had one, too.
Bruce and Sandra Lustman won the Most Fashionable Award for their stylish drive in a black Ferrari 250GT California Spyder—it looked like it just left Luigi Chinetti’s showroom—and Patricia Cess was the most popular winner of all, taking the Best Sport title. She got a standing ovation, as I remember.

Notebook entry #64: John Whitney Payson goes storming up the Mount Ascutney Hillclimb in his AC Aceca, which is fresh from the restoration shop. When he nears the top, the rear end gets clogged with leaves, mud and lichen. John spins it on the nasty hairpin, and I think Oh, Christ. Payson goes off backwards, but he keeps the engine running and loses only a few seconds getting back on the track and finishing his run. He’s so wired up at the top I think we should anchor him to the ground like a Goodyear blimp. Then it hits me: I’ve never seen anyone so pleased about a shunt before.

In five days and 1000 miles you collect a lot of fleeting impressions. Impressions of breathtaking scenery, of quaint New England villages, of exquisite old cars, of startled old men and cheering kids. Bruce Lustman volunteered to be in charge of the weather this year, and provided five days of nearly uniform sun and warmth. Unlike last year, we rarely needed the fancy ski jackets Jean worked so hard to find.
Jo Bradley from Vermont’s Department of Tourism flagged us off from Basin Harbor and Nathaniel Bowditch, her equivalent number in Maine, did the honors at Sugarloaf/USA. Both states gave us bags of goodies and prizes, as did Hemmings Motor News. Every participant collected a subscription from our sponsoring pals at Sports Car International, of course, and we handed out jackets, shirts, hats, Aramis luggage, Armorall products and who knows what-all else. The ultimate awards were three large woodcuts by artist Stephen Huneck presented at a cocktail party in his Woodstock, Vermont gallery. Best of all, we were able to donate $11,000 to the Gary Gaboury Fund, a scholarship administered by the Vermont State Police. General Motors came through with GMC Jimmys and Cadillac Seville STSs for the crew, plus swank Oldsmobile Auroras as backups cars for the entrants.

Notebook entry #121: John Whitney Payson drove his AC Aceca on the Tour, but he also brought a brand-spanking new, 7-liter AMG Mercedes 600SEC as a backup. He let me drive it at Basin Harbor, and I know, from writing the Tour’s route instructions, that the Basin Harbor Club’s driveway is a little over a fifth of a mile long. When we passed the entrance sign going out, we were already doing 115+. The AMG is a 5000-pound machine so quiet you can converse in a whisper at 150 mph, and it’s faster than my Corvette vintage racer. To say nothing of safer, smoother, with nice air conditioning, swank leather seats...yikes.

We’re about to do it again. The 1996 New England Tour 1000 will run from Sunday, 19 May to Friday, 24 May. Entries will be restricted to 50 sports, racing or GT cars built in 1972 or earlier; registration costs $2995 and includes everything but fuel. Our main sponsor will be Oldsmobile, with Bravadas for the support crew and Auroras for anyone whose racecar gets sick. We’ll start and end at the Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain, with overnights at the White Mountain Hotel, Samoset Resort and the Sugarloaf Mountain Hotel.
The entire event will be run to TSD rules with special stages at Mt. Washington, Hale’s Hillclimb, Mt. Beatty and Burke Mountain. Add some great scenery, a museum or two, great food and resorts and a dip in the Atlantic Ocean. And entrants will even get a free SCI subscription—oh boy!
For more info, call or write: New England Tour 1000, Jackson Hill Road, Sharon CT 06069, (800) 645-6069

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