The Auto Channel--Sports Car International V11 I10

test

Cheap Seats

The California Historic Motoring Tour could have been the perfect $500 vintage-rally weekend, but then they invited Jay Lamm and Dave Gooley.

Inconveniently, I seem to be having a stroke. Contacts are in the right eyes, got a full ten hours of sleep and I still can't focus. As far as Monday morning excuses go this one's a lulu - "Sorry, Tom. Can't come in today. Cranial infarction, you know" - but it does seem a bit drastic. Also, I can't help wondering if this vision thing has more to do with the travails of the weekend than just my head springing leaks. Eight hundred miles over two days in a Lotus Seven can probably do that to you.

Back on Thursday night everything seemed so clear: Go to Mike Ostrov's place after work, pick up his '63 Lotus Seven America, kit the car out for 600 miles of the California Historic Motoring Tour and leave Point Richmond the next day in time to make a 7:30 a.m. drivers' meeting in Napa. But then somehow I fell behind; the next morning I had to rush my shower, repack my bag and spend a few minutes figuring out the right mix of choke and throttle to start the Lotus' sewing-machine engine. Had to miss breakfast to get on the road in time, had to wrestle with the racing harnesses to fish out a dollar for toll, and only made it halfway across the bridge - precisely halfway across - before I noticed the charging system seemed to be doing nothing of the sort.

Put in the clutch. Drop the 948cc Four to idle. Blip the throttle. Watch the gauge. Seemed to work fine; the needle was probably reading juice coming out of the regulator, not going in.

Relax, for crying out loud. Some people have to go to the office today.

Soon enough there I was, reaching the drivers' meeting with ten minutes to spare, just long enough to pour a cup of coffee down my shorts to stave off hypothermia. Photographer Dave Gooley and his '59 Alfa Giulietta il Duce had already arrived, navigator Wendy Schmidt was madly stuffing the organizers' free breakfast muffins into her backpack, and at last we were back on schedule.

Thus began the First Annual California Historic Motoring Tour, a mouthful of an event that's supposed to make historic rallying more palatable to the rest of us - we great unwashed masses with neat old cars stashed in our garages but neither the time nor the cash for a big-ticket event. The California Mille, New England Tour 1000 et al average about three grand per car and demand a week of your life - a perfectly fine concept for wealthy enthusiasts but pretty much out of the question for the rank and file.

Who else but Martin Swig and Kate Nyland - oh, come on...we haven't mentioned them in days - would be the first big-name organizers to test these waters? Granted, plenty of established car clubs do 2-day, 500-700 mile runs all the time, but by definition these rallies mean you have to hang around with a car club. Some brilliant San Franciscans also tried the purest form of prole positioning a few years back with the Dirtbag 500 - a 2-day event for "cars of no historic or technological significance whatever" - but bad luck sidelined their scheme in its infancy. Even Swig himself has been donking around with Mini Milles and 1-day tours for years now. It's all come together, however, in the Historic, an event intended to combine the slickness, camaraderie and organizational whiz-bang of a big-ticket run with the more welcoming - and affordable - scope of a club rally.

The drivers' meeting is simple: "You've got your routes," Swig intones, "and try not to get into trouble. Also, we've never done one of these before so we have no idea if it's going to work. Um.... Anything else?"

"Thumbs!" Kate pipes in.

"Oh yeah. Thumbs. Now there's no mechanical support this time, so if you pull off to, er, ah, well...to look at the scenery, just flash a thumbs-up if you're okay. If not, thumbs down; the next guy, stop and take a look."

This is the point during any rally at which people's expressions begin to reflect their cars. The Corvette and Shelby guys are utterly nonplussed by this laissez-faire approach to mechanical failure. So is Irv Gordon, who just drove 3000 miles from Long Island to enter his 1960 Volvo P1800 and plans on driving the 3000 miles back next week. The Alfa and Lotus contingents are considerably less sanguine, and the Ferrari guys haven't even shown yet: Ap-parently they're still finishing their tuneups.

Anybody who's ever driven an original Lotus Seven can tell you a thing or two about getting into one, which is a process alternately involving much time and effort or two sticks of butter. Ergo Schmidt and I, dairy-free, find ourselves the lastones out.

I deem this wholly unacceptable, but with so many Shelby Mustangs, Chrysler convertibles and vintage Corvettes on the Historic this year's average entrant has roughly 33,545 horsepower. The Lotus offers two, perhaps three, and that's on a good day at sea level. Still, the Seven's stunning acceleration from 0-7.35 mph combines with considerable guile at the wheel and the overall dimensions of a Radio Flyer to catch us up with the pack in no time. "The Historic is not a race," Swig admonished at the start; "Good thing," I say. Those 289 and 427 Cobra guys are slugs.

Fifteen miles out we spy the first sign of trouble: A white '67 Alfa Duetto Gnocchi Alfredo sits by the road and greets all comers in a traditional Italian gesture of welcome. (Hood up, crankshaft rigid at attention.) I slow to assist.

"Got it figured out?" I ask.

Duettisti: "Uh, er.... Yeah, it's just the carburetor. I think."

Me: "Need help?"

Duettisti: "No, no... I don't think it's...."

Me: "Well, toodle-oo!" Figuring there are roadside voodoo stops of my own in the immediate future, I don't stick around.

Ten miles later Schmidt spies another Alfa Romeo - this time a red '63 Giulietta Pesce con Marinara - that's shot down the runoff area of a sharp, low-speed lefthander. It's not a place where you'd leave the road unless you really, really had to. And it's Gooley's car.

I change down to second expecting the worst. Just as we come into view, Dave dances out of the vineyard in an instantly recognizable one-leg-hopping pose - the universal sign of male relief. Big thumbs up. I don't stick around.

By Mile 85 and the tight, climbing ascent over the Coast Range we've finally worked our way toward the head of the pack. This has much to do with my superhuman car control and the Lotus' massive grip, but the fact that everybody else took a wrong turn about 15 miles back and is now hopelessly lost may also be a factor. Swig and his prehistoric Chrysler are chatting up a local on the opposite side of the road, but he gives a thumbs up and I continue. Five miles later it's Gary Moreland with a red '64 Corvette and a big, big, big thumbs down. I brake. Gooley is the next car, and he pulls in behind. The irony is lost on no one as a Lotus and an Alfa rescue Gary's Chevrolet, the victim of a broken main radiator hose. I go behind a tree to emulate Dave, then we're off again. Gooley doesn't stick around.

I'll spare you the print-media equivalent of a 5-hour slide show on someone else's vacation and get right to the salient points here: This year's Historic Tour took in everything from the ubiquitous run down Highway One to fantastic and treacherous old stage routes over the Coast Range. It ran more than 600 driven miles in all spread over two full days of travel with meals and driver changes adeptly handled by Kate's magic fingers. Don't let anybody fool you - Nyland is the power behind the throne here, and thanks to having more energy than a nervous chihuahua she keeps the food, the music and the party all flowing in uncommonly high style.

In all, only one person met with a real mechanical delay; restoration wizard Ivan Zaremba - Hah! - in Martin's old Chrysler - Guffaw! Swig plans on arranging chase support in the future, but I still think it'd be a lot less trouble just to make Ivan drive his own car next year.

Granted, magazines will always prefer to cover high-dollar events like the Copperstate, California Mille, New England Tour 1000 and Las Millas Encantadas. I mean, if the alternative is sucking up bugs in my own creaky sports car, stealing cranberry muffins from the drivers' meeting and laying me down to sleep at an EconoLodge, what self-respecting motoring hack wouldn't rather take a Testa Rossa up the Redwood Highway, dice with a Maserati-Devin over the pass into Reno and then drop off to dreamland in a 4-star resort, especially on Bob Lutz' nickel? These will always be the dream events, though in truth most people can scrimp and save enough to treat themselves once.

No matter how you figure it $3000 ain't bean sprouts, and as a regular proposition the turn to shorter, less costly vintage rallies seems inevitable. There's even talk of encouraging overnight camping in the future, which should knock the effective costs down to just about the $500 this year's participants paid for food, travel and trinkets alone. That ain't bad - I can blow $500 in two days without even leaving the house, and at least this way you get a tan.

Just remember: Don't take a Lotus Seven if you plan on going to work the next day. Pester Martin or Kate for details: (415) 357-1903.