The Hemmings Motor News Great Race gets classic and antique cars out of garages and museums and back on the road.
“These are pieces of art. This is the Mona Lisa on wheels," said Jeff Stumb. He's race director who has roots in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of spectators lined downtown Lewisburg Wednesday to watch as the annual car race hit its halfway mark. The Great Race started in 1983. Drivers from around the world spend nine days on the road. The course changes yearly. Over 100 cars started this year in Kentucky. The race ends in Maine on Saturday with slightly fewer cars.
"It’s not a speed race, it's a time, speed, distance rally," said Stumb.
The winner does it the most methodically. Some have special clocks and a speedometer mounted to their dashboards.
“At different signs, they have to change speeds, they have to stop at stop signs for a certain amount of time … we have secret checkpoints," he said.
They mostly avoid highways and drive on the country’s scenic and rural roads.
“These are backroads that generally don't even have names,” said Stumb, whose family is from the Tafton area. “What you can do in your car in three hours, it'll take us 10 hours to do."
About half of the cars were built before World War II. The oldest is a banana-colored 1912 Haynes. It’s a two-seater with no roof.
"We have a lot of what I consider to be newer cars from the 60s," he said.
Erin Kaplin and her husband are competing in a 1966 cream-colored Ford Mustang.
It has an inline six-cylinder engine, instead of the iconic and powerful V8, typical in Mustangs.
"For this event, we have to do slow speeds, like 12 miles an hour. And so it's easier to hold 12 with a straight six than a V8," she said.
One of their friends tore an ad for the race out of the Hemmings Motor News.
"We said we need to ... check this thing out," she said.
Now they've been competing for 10 years.
The people they meet is one of the reasons they come back every year.
"And just to see this beautiful country of ours," she said.
T.K. Foulke is from the Doylestown area. He drove his dad’s 1953 baby blue Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It was his first Great Race. Foulke says it’s intense.
"It's not a get there as fast as you can type deal," he said.
The cars spent two hours in Lewisburg before heading to Binghamton, New York, overnight. After Binghamton they were headed to Montgomery, New York, then Rhode Island. The race wraps up Saturday in Gardiner, Maine.
