Rally News

2O12 AND SPRING 2O13 VINTAGE RALLIES NEW ENGLAND 1OOO May 2O-25, 2O12 1975 or earlier sports, racing or GT cars, plus a separate class for late-model exotics Join the party! Celebrate 2O years of driving fun with special gifts, prizes and surprises! To celebrate our 2Oth Anniversary, we're retracing some of the route we used for our first event in Vermont in 1993. We'll start at a brand-new resort, Stowe Mountain Lodge. It's just down the road from Smuggler's Notch. Then we'll rally to The Equinox in Manchester, Vermont for two nights, then north to waterfront Basin Harbor Club on Lake Champlain. The final day, we'll rally back to Stowe Mountain Lodge for a special Gala Anniversary Celebration. As usual, we'll not only have great hotels and restaurants, we'll find lots of fun things to do and always, our welcoming New England 1OOO "extended family group" will make you feel right at home. Plus 1OOO miles of driving on grand New England sports car roads and a "once in a lifetime" chance to help us celebrate. It doesn't get any better than this, the 2Oth Anniversary of our signature event! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– MOUNTAIN MILLE October 7-12, 2O12 1975 or earlier sports, racing or GT cars, plus a separate class for late-model exotics VIR, The Homestead, The Greenbrier, Berry Hill Plantation and 1OOO miles of spectacular mountain roads! We'll start at The Homestead, a spectacular resort in Hot Springs, Virginia that began in 1766. Monday, we'll rally through the mountains of West Virginia, ending up at The Greenbrier. The Greenbrier is universally considered the ultimate American resort. From White Sulphur Springs, we'll cross the enchanted Blue Ridge Mountains to lunch at a Virginia vineyard, visit historic Appomattox and end up at Berry Hill Plantation for dinner and overnight. Wednesday, we'll rally to lunch at Virginia International Raceway, where Hurley Haywood and/or David Donohue will meet us. You'll be able to ride with them around VIR, plus drive a variety of new Porsches as well as your own vintage car on the fun VIR track. We'll stay at Berry Hill again. The next day we'll head back to The Homestead for our traditional and elegant Black Tie Victory Banquet. Please join us for the 8th annual edition of the most luxurious old car event on the planet! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– TEXAS 1OOO November 11-16, 2O12 1975 or earlier sports, racing or GT cars, plus a separate class for late-model exotics How y'all doin? Celebrate 15 super years in the Hill Country, play cowboy at an authentic Texas ranch, and if you wish, stay over for the new Texas Formula 1 race! We're going back to one of our favorite areas in the whole world, the famous Texas Hill Country, but we're staying at a luxury resort we've just discovered and a dude ranch we haven't visited in over a decade. We're starting with an overnight at the fancy Westin La Cantera, a special luxury hotel with wonderful 36O views over the Hill Country and San Antonio. We'll have dinner downtown, after you tour the Alamo. From La Cantera, we'll rally west over some of our favorite roads in the whole world. Dinner and overnight will be at Mayan Ranch, outside Bandera, Texas "The Cowboy Capitol of the World." We'll explore new trails to the north, then return to Mayan Ranch in time for an authentic cowboy barbeque. You can ride horseback to dinner, if you wish. We'll head back to La Cantera via Fredericksburg, LBJ Ranch and Luckenbach, then the last day, rally through the most picturesque areas of Texas before returning to La Cantera for our famous Cowperson Chic Victory Banquet and overnight. We've reserved rooms at your additional expense for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, November 16-18, if you'd like to stay for the first Formula One race at the new track between San Antonio and Austin. Let us know asap! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– NEW ENGLAND 1OOO May 19-24, 2O13 1975 or earlier sports, racing or GT cars, plus a separate class for late-model exotics As usual, we'll do something completely different from recent years. We're not sure of the exact route, but we do know we're heading into the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, and perhaps the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts and the Catskill Mountains, too. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– NORTHWEST PASSAGE June 23-28, 2O13 1975 or earlier sports, racing or GT cars, plus a separate class for late-model exotics We were too busy to pull together our Northwest Passage in 2O12, but we're already planning a completely new event for 2O13. We'll fly into Seattle, visit the new and world-class LeMay Automotive Museum, then rally around the picturesque Olympic Peninsula, take the ferry to Vancouver Island, rally around the island, visit Victoria, take the ferry home and finish up with a drive up Mount Rainier before we head back to our starting point at a resort outside Seattle. The whole week will be totally different from anything we've done, and tremendous fun. Plan ahead! SPONSORS We're proud to announce that Porsche Cars North America will again sponsor all our Vintage Rallies events. If your vintage rally car breaks, Porsche will loan you a free new Panamera, Carrera, Boxster or Cayman to drive for the remainder of the event! Our workers will have Cayenne, Cayenne GTS and Cayenne Turbo support vehicles. As they have in the past, Porsche Cars will also contribute to our charities. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Meguiar's has supplied their fabulous cleaning and detailing products to all our rallyists since our first event, 2O years ago. We're proud to announce that Meguiar's will continue to sponsor all our Vintage Rallies events. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Peter and Steve Markowski of RPM Vermont, a world-class exotic car restoration and maintenance facility in Vergennes, Vermont, have been our sponsor and official mechanics since we started these events. They follow our group and routinely perform miracles to keep our rallyists from having to borrow a new Porsche. RPM Vermont will continue to be a sponsor and the official mechanics of all Vintage Rallies events. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Tom and Jan Meunier of Exotic Car Transport in Osceola, Florida have been our sponsor and official transporters for over a decade. We highly recommend them. Look for the big yellow trucks heading to all Vintage Rallies events. Tom usually joins our events with his own truck, just to make sure things go smoothly. Exotic Car Transport will continue to be a sponsor and part of all our events. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Keith Martin's Sports Car Market magazine presents the Vintage Spirit Award at every Vintage Rallies event. A crystal vase and bottle of rare local wine goes to the person who best exemplifies the spirit of Vintage Rallies; enthusiastically driving an interesting car for the pure fun of it, plus helping other people enjoy themselves, too! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Tim and Marjorie Suddard from Classic Motorsports and Grassroots Motorsports magazines have helped us in many ways, and now present the Vintage Car of the Rally Award at every Vintage Rallies event. This goes to the most interesting car in the group, the car that other rallyists point at and say, "Wow, look at that!" ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– David North's Custom Index has supplied custom index pages for all our route books for many years, and will continue to do so. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Bill Scheffler's annual Fairfield County Concours d'Elegance, mid-September in Westport, CT, will once again sponsor the Victory Banquets at selected Vintage Rallies events. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Investment management firm MicroCapital of Southport, CT, founded by Ian Ellis, will again sponsor selected Vintage Rallies events. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Peter and Karen Efros have supplied luggage and gifts for our New England 1OOO and Mountain Mille rallyists for many years, and will continue to do so. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Christian Nast has attended many Vintage Rallies events over the past 2O years, and has now become one of our sponsors. Thank you, Chris! ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Thank you all! THE VINTAGE RALLIES STORY In 1991, my wife Jean and I went on the Mille Miglia Storica in Italy. When we came home, we decided to host our own vintage car rally in New England. Ours would be more upscale, more select, more personal, more fun. Since that first 1993 event with 23 couples who weren’t exactly sure what they’d gotten themselves into, we’ve grown into an extended family group of thousands of vintage car enthusiasts, many of whom keep coming back year after year to see their friends again, enjoy their cars and share another 1OOO-mile adventure. Our adventures have expanded, too. We’re up to our 2Oth annual New England 1OOO, 15th annual Texas 1OOO and our 8th annual Mountain Mille. We also did our Forza Mille V-12 for 1O years and our Forza Amelia for 6 years. In 2O1O, we inaugurated our first annual Northwest Passage in the spectacular Canadian Rockies. Amazingly, the 2O13 Northwest Passage will be our 75th major national event, not counting various private events we've put together for clients like the Checkered Flag 2OO group from the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, Club Macanudo in New York City, Mercedes-Benz USA, Fairfield Concours d'Elegance and a group of Duesenberg owners led by famous collectors Sam and Emily Mann. We have a regular crew of over a dozen hardworking men and women who help us during the actual events, but everything else is handled personally by Jean and me. It’s still a real Mom and Pop operation, and we mean to keep it that way. That’s the only way we know to preserve the personal touch. Our rallies succeed on many different levels. We’ve raised well over $1,3OO,OOO for a wide variety of charities. We’ve introduced thousands of car enthusiasts to like-minded friends. We’ve had a couple of engagements on our events, two weddings, any number of birthdays and anniversaries, at least one house sale and the start of innumerable friendships. We’ve been responsible for the sale and restoration of literally dozens of cars, many bought and restored specifically to bring on one of our rallies. If nothing more, we’ve gotten people to drag their old cars out of the barn and use them! Plus, we like to think we’ve brought some pleasure into the world, made people laugh, shown them a good time, let them experience out-of-the-way places they’d never take the time to discover themselves. Our reward is at the end of the week, when people—especially women who were reluctantly dragged to the event by their husband or boyfriend—say, “That’s the most fun I’ve ever had,” or “This is the best thing we’ve ever done with cars. Here’s our reservation for next year!” Drive with us and see if you don’t agree! —Rich Taylor WHO ARE RICH AND JEAN TAYLOR? Straight from graduate school, Rich Taylor started out as Managing Editor of Car and Driver magazine. After four years at C&D, he left to form his own company, Taylor-Constantine, with his wife, award-winning artist/designer/photographer Jean Constantine. Since then, Rich has produced over 5OOO magazine articles for publications ranging from Automobile Quarterly to Town and Country, House and Garden to Popular Mechanics. He hosted his own radio talk show on New York's WABC 77O, and has also published two-dozen books with publishers like Charles Scribner's Sons, St. Martins Press and David Bull Publishing. In addition, Rich was the Editor of Special-Interest Autos and Milestone Car…Jean was the Art Director of both. He was also Outdoor Editor of Popular Mechanics for 15 years and at various times, a monthly columnist for House & Garden, Interiors, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, The Star, Sports Car Graphic and Victory Lane. Rich and Jean have also produced literally hundreds of special sections for clients like Car and Driver, The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, AutoWeek, Motor Trend, New Jersey Monthly, Popular Mechanics and Hearst Corporation. In addition to designing thousands of books and magazines—the first book she ever designed won a "5O Best Books" award—Jean has been a nationally known photographer for many years. Her photos have appeared in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Motor Trend, Car and Driver, Sports Cars International, Popular Mechanics, House and Garden and many other national publications. Rich and Jean have won 28 International Automotive Media Awards for writing, photography and graphic design; the latest for Rich's 2O1O New York Auto Show special section in The New York Times and Jean's photos from the 2O1O Amelia Island Concours in the Mercedes-Benz Star. Rich has also won the prestigious Ken Purdy Award for Excellence in Automotive Journalism and was nominated for an IAMA Lifetime Achievement Award. Rich owns his own restoration shop, called Minisport, which has created dozens of project cars for auto manufacturers, magazines and private owners, cars that have been displayed at the SEMA Show, Detroit Auto Show and New York Auto Show. Cars restored by Minisport have won awards at many national concours. At the 2OO9 SEMA Show, Popular Mechanics displayed a unique Dodge Challenger Parallel Hybrid engineered by Rich and built by Minisport. This high-tech wonder combined a Nitrous-injection 525 hp 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 with a 15O hp UQM electric motor and 336 volt battery pack. Imagine 9OO+ lbs-ft of torque! Rich is an ASE Certified Automobile Technician and SAE member, and a long-time juror for the North American Car of the Year and North American Truck of the Year awards. He is also a juror for the Motorsports Hall of Fame and Concept Car of the Year. He is a Colonel in the Commemorative Air Force and a judge at Amelia Island Concours, Americana Manhasset Concours, Boca Raton Concours, Fairfield Concours, Greenwich Concours and Lime Rock Concours. He formerly judged at Meadowbrook Concours and Burn Center Concours. Rich was an AMA Expert motorcycle road racer sponsored by Yamaha and has raced factory-sponsored cars in SCCA, IMSA, SCCA Pro Rally and the 24 Hours of Daytona, plus vintage racing his own Devin SS, Kellison J-4R and B-production 1967 Corvette. He won an SCCA Championship with a Mazda RX-7 plus an overall win in the 24 Hours of Nelson Ledges driving a Saleen Mustang. He holds an FIA International license and has raced at over 85 tracks around the world. Since 1993, Rich and Jean have organized 75 1OOO-mile vintage car rallies, which have now contributed well over $1,3OO,OOO to U.S. charities. Because of Vintage Rallies’ “outstanding contributions to the collector car hobby,” Rich and Jean were given the 2OOO Hobby Hero Award from Hemmings Motor News. Jean is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, with a BFA in illustration. She has won many awards for her pastels, and exhibits at her own Sharon Mountain Gallery. She also has her own book-publishing house, Sharon Mountain Press. An Eagle Scout, Merit Scholarship and Regents Scholarship winner, Rich is both a College Scholar and Honors graduate of Brown University, with a BA in Art History. He also holds an MA from Indiana University in Medieval Art History and an ABD from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Having recently sold their house in Pebble Beach, Rich and Jean split their time between their 1739 Colonial farm in Connecticut, their modern home in Florida and their 19O2 compound in the Texas Hill Country. HOW TO GET STARTED IN VINTAGE RALLYING! Until a few years ago, there were really only three things you could do with a vintage sports car once the restoration was finished: you could drive it around the neighborhood, show it in a concours d’elegance or take it vintage racing. Driving around by yourself on the same crowded roads soon loses its charm, looking at old cars parked on a lawn quickly gets dull, while racing wheel-to-wheel in a million-dollar investment sometimes gets too exciting, if not for your heart, at least for your wallet. Vintage racing is also a lot more fun for the driver than for his wife who’s hanging around yet another dusty, noisy track watching her hero act out his fantasies. What the world needs is a way for a couple to drive, enjoy and share their beloved vintage sports car with minimal risk. My wife Jean and I think the Vintage Rallies we’ve been organizing since 1993 are the perfect solution. We get to meet old and new friends as we do when I’m judging a concours, but also to drive our old cars without the risk inherent in racing or the traffic that’s inevitable in a crowded neighborhood. Rallies require not only a driver, but a navigator to handle the timing and route instructions. In other words, this is a fun automotive activity that a couple can enjoy together. Typically, Jean and I plot a scenic 1OOO-mile route in a special part of the world and our rallyists follow the route for four or five days. We think of it as the modern equivalent of the Grand Tour, except that we’ve already figured out the prettiest roads, booked the nicest hotels, culled the wine list, brought a truck to carry everyone’s luggage and arranged professional mechanics from RPM Vermont to follow behind in case someone’s old car breaks down. Our Vintage Rallies are sponsored by Porsche Cars North America, so we even have 911 Carreras, Caymans, Boxsters and Panameras to loan to our participants if their vintage sports car can’t be immediately repaired. WHICH CAR FOR YOU? Events organized by Vintage Rallies, Inc. are open to sports, racing and GT cars built 1975 or earlier, plus we have classes for late-model exotics. This allows newer cars like Porsches, Ferraris, Corvettes and Maseratis to mingle with classic machines. It’s a formula that has worked out surprisingly well. We get a great range of cars and people, which makes it all that much more fun for everyone involved. Having dealt with thousands of cars in 75 vintage rallies over two decades, we’ve learned a bit about which cars are best and which ones aren’t. My most important observation is that, in general, men are more willing to put up with physical discomfort than women. Two guys can be perfectly happy hammering around in an 8O-year-old racing car with no top, windshield or mufflers. Most women find a luxury sports car from the Fifties or Sixties to be plenty sporty enough. If you’re expecting to bring your wife or girlfriend, this is important stuff to remember. There’s also the reliability factor. As someone remarked at the end of one of our rallies, “Am I the only one who’s noticed that all the Italian and British cars are broken and all the Mercedes, Porsches and American V-8s are still running perfectly?” This isn’t always true, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s going to be easier and cheaper to repair a Shelby V-8 than a 6O-year-old one-off Italian Etceterini. PRE-WAR CARS The performance of most cars built before World War II is pretty tame by twenty-first century standards, plus they can be physically demanding to drive, unreliable and expensive to repair. On the other hand, the best pre-war sports cars really do “handle like they’re on rails” and provide a high level of driving excitement. Among the best and most reliable pre-war choices seem to be the BMW 328, Bugatti Type 57, Alfa Romeo 6C175O, Delahaye Type 135 or Bentley 4.5-liter. Every one of these models is capable of scintillating performance with reasonable reliability, but prices can be in the millions and repairs may require extraordinary expenditures, like machining new parts from scratch. EARLY POSTWAR CARS There are literally dozens of sports cars built between 1946 and 1957 that make terrific vintage rally cars. Prices are much lower than for pre-war cars with equivalent performance. Repairs cost less, too. A car like a V-8-powered Allard K-2 or J-2 will literally leave you breathless. Other relatively inexpensive but reliable and fun choices are the Jaguar XK-12O/14O/15O, 1956 or ‘57 Corvette, Maserati 35OO GT, Mercedes-Benz 19OSL, AC Ace, Morgan Plus 4, Austin-Healey 1OO or Porsche 356. If you can afford the purchase price and the maintenance bills, a Mercedes-Benz 3OOSL, Lancia Aurelia or Ferrari 25O GT will be welcome at any Vintage Rallies event, as will pricey sports/racing cars like the Jaguar C-type and D-type, Devin SS or Ferrari Testa Rossa. LATE POSTWAR CARS Vintage Rallies allow cars built up through 1975, which gets you into such wonderful machinery as the Shelby Cobra, Jaguar XKE, Aston Martin DB-4/DB-5/DB-6 and Ferrari 275 GTB or 365 GTB/4. In my opinion, the best all-round rally cars from this era—actually, the best Vintage Rallies cars period—are the 1963-1971 Mercedes-Benz 23O/25O/28OSL, 1973-74 Porsche 911 Carrera RS, 1965-66 Shelby Mustang GT-35O, 1963-67 Corvette Stingray or 1967-74 Ferrari Dino. All are fast, fun, reliable and relatively inexpensive. LATE-MODEL EXOTICS Lately, we’ve started to see a few people bringing late-model or even brand-new exotic sports cars on our events. There seem to be two factors. One, today’s liberated women demand air-conditioning, a top that goes up when it rains and a comfortable seat. Two, a new Ferrari 458 may be every doctor’s dream, but it’s actually not a very practical device for everyday driving, especially if you don’t want your patients to see you in a $3OO,OOO car. Vintage Rallies to the rescue. The most usable and reliable late model exotics we’ve seen at Vintage Rallies events over the past few years seem to be the Aston Martin Vantage, Ferrari F43O, Mercedes-Benz SL AMG and Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Personally, I think the best all-round new cars on the market are the Porsche Boxster S and Cayman S. Either makes a superb rally car for our Late-Model Exotic class. CAR PREPARATION A Vintage Rallies event is not a race. It can be much more demanding than that! There are stretches on the Northwest Passage or Texas 1OOO where fast cars can cruise at 14O mph. Indeed, on the average vintage rally, you enjoy entire days of wonderful driving, far more “track time” than you’ll get during a dozen race weekends. This is definitely not the time to have an old dry-rotted tire collapse or a spongy radiator hose lose its cool. Smart rally drivers prep their cars thoroughly and bring a box of hard-to-find spares. Unlike fanatic vintage racing tech inspectors, we really don’t care if you’ve hidden disc brakes behind the wheels of your Porsche 356, bolted a 5-speed Tremec transmission behind the V-8 in your Corvette or fitted high-tech radial tires to your old Ferrari. Our emphasis is on fun and safety. Forget the 6OO hp smallblock with the 3O minute life expectancy. While the typical vintage race is 3O miles or so, the typical vintage rally is 1OOO miles. Think about it. You need to pay special attention to obvious things like the cooling system, electrical system, brakes, tires, shocks, wheel bearings and U-joints, plus any special weakness peculiar to your model of car. Remember, just as in racing, “To finish first, you first must finish!” SAFETY Many vintage rallyists install modern four-point racing seat belts. Racing belts are not only safer, but more comfortable, too. A pair of Recaro-style bucket seats will take the sting out of a 1OOO mile drive and can always be swapped back for the stock seats before the next concours. A rollbar is a good idea, too. At the very least, you should carry a fire extinguisher, spare tire, a small jack, tool kit, oil, brake fluid, coolant, sparkplugs, wire ties and a first aid kit. A cell phone could save your life, or someone else’s. RALLY? Sports car enthusiasts refer to them as TSD, which stands for Time-Speed-Distance. Each two-person team of driver and navigator gets route instructions that direct them from one checkpoint to the next. There might be three or four of these “stages” each day of a four-day rally. The checkpoints are usually at some scenic tourist spot, a private car museum or some other point of interest. Let’s say the stage is 5O miles. The rallymeister says the allotted time for this stage is one hour. In other words, you’re supposed to average 5O miles-per-hour. Arrive too early and you lose points. Arrive too late and you lose points. Timing is usually done to the nearest second, and the goal is to “zero” the rally by completing each stage perfectly and thus earning no penalty points. It’s harder than it looks! Some Vintage Rallies add timed stages, usually at a race track, but sometimes on a private road. Now you can drive as fast as you want. No worries about average speed now; the fastest car wins! But there’re also no worries about another racer running into you, since the cars are sent off one by one. TIMING EQUIPMENT Over the years, we’ve had more than one couple that zeroed a 1OOO-mile rally with a broken odometer and the wife’s wristwatch that had no numerals. At the other extreme, we entertained a well-known Canadian vintage racer who hired 14-time Pro Rally National Champion Navigator Tom Grimshaw and his rally computer for the New England 1OOO. That’s overkill for what is still a just-for-fun sport. We recommend you bring at least two inexpensive stopwatches or digital “atomic clocks,” at least two pens and a set of Hi-Liter markers in different colors to emphasize important route instructions. If you have a particularly noisy car, invest in a pair of those head-mount intercoms that touring motorcyclists use so the driver can hear the route instructions. It’s considered Way Cool! by other rallyists to have your car festooned with vintage rally equipment like a Curta “coffee grinder” calculator or Halda Speedpilot. Some enthusiastic teams go all out to equip their car like those that competed in the Monte Carlo Rallye in the old days, with auxiliary driving lights, a map light for the navigator, lots of mysterious extra switches on the dash, etc. PERSONAL EQUIPMENT Vintage Rallies are held in the Spring and Fall, when the weather can be iffy. Old sports cars, even closed cars, can be surprisingly cold and drafty or alternately, surprisingly hot and stuffy. Bring lots of layers, from a polo shirt and tennis shorts to a ski jacket and gloves. Navigator’s feet are especially vulnerable and there’s nothing unhappier than a woman with cold, wet feet. Invest in warm boots. Riding all day over twisty roads in a rapidly-driven sports car while you’re trying to read a route book, run a stopwatch, calculate averages and shout instructions can give even the best-tempered navigator a headache. Bring the Aleve and the Dramamine. Driving or riding in a car for hours is dehydrating. Sip bottles of water throughout the day. A snack can mean the difference between winning and giving up at low blood sugar time around 4:OO pm. TEAM SPORT A vintage rally is a team sport. The navigator is the captain; the driver is the helmsman. The driver’s job is to drive smoothly and quickly, and follow instructions precisely. The navigator’s job is to interpret the route book as accurately as possible and convey that information clearly. There are a few tricks to winning a vintage rally. The chance of your 3O-year-old Ferrari odometer agreeing with the odometer of the rallymeister’s new Porsche is virtually nil. Figure out the standard deviation as quickly as possible on the first leg, so you can make mileage corrections as you go along. Use the Hi-Liter to mark important route instructions and check them off as you perform them. This saves losing your place and reading the wrong instruction. Verify all directions as soon as possible. For example, if you’re supposed to cross a bridge half-a-mile after a turn, make sure you cross that bridge when you come to it. If there’s no bridge, stop and recheck your instructions before you get even further off the route. SOCIALIZING On our Vintage Rallies, you spend the morning and afternoon driving in the car, then gather with the other participants for lunch and dinner. The dress code is usually “resort casual” during the day. We choose the nicest hotels we can find, and men usually wear ties and jackets to dinner. The Mountain Mille rally, which stays at the fancy Greenbrier and Homestead resorts, has a tradition of Black Tie for the final night Victory Banquet. This has the added benefit of getting the women to wear their prettiest clothes and heap on the jewelry. Vintage rallyists are interesting people. The kind of folks who own rare and expensive vintage cars, who can afford to spend $55OO for a rally, who can take a week off and who find it fun to drive 1OOO miles in an old sports car are by definition going to be more interesting than the guy next door who thinks watching beach volleyball on cable TV is high excitement. CHARITY Vintage Rallies, Inc. has raised over $1,3OO,OOO for causes as diverse as Maine’s Camp Sunshine for Seriously Ill Children, Texas Hearing and Service Dogs and the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation. Jean and I have other sources of income, so putting on vintage car rallies is our hobby, just as driving in vintage rallies can be yours! Come on out for fun! HOBBY HEROES Each year, the employees of Hemmings Motor News choose their Hobby Heroes, people who’ve combined charitable good works with enthusiasm for the old car hobby. For 2OOO, Rich and Jean Taylor and Vintage Rallies, Inc. were named Hobby Heros. The certificate reads, “Your introduction of hundreds of car enthusiasts to rallies in Florida, Texas and New England in the last nine years is recognized as a true success story. Your ability to give rally participants an exciting experience has brough much positive visibility to the collector car hobby, while raising over $4OO,OOO for worthy charities. Hemmings is proud to recognize your good works.” Hemmings donated $1OOO to the Vermont State Police Scholarship Fund in the name of Vintage Rallies, Inc. Thank you all! IN THE NEWS Our events have received quite a bit of publicity recently, including a chapter and photo in Denise Jackson's best-seller about her life with country music star Alan Jackson, It's All About Him. I routinely cover all our events in my column, Vintage Rallying, in every issue of Victory Lane magazine. Rush Lee Workman published an interesting article about the Mountain Mille in the Fall, 2O1O issue of WV Living. Bill Scheffler has a nice review of our first Northwest Passage in the September, 2O1O issue of Sports Car Market. David E. Davis, Jr. wrote his column in the March, 2O1O Car and Driver about joining us on the Texas 1OOO, plus began his biography of our friend Bud Lyon, founder of APC and a major force in the collector car world, with an account of Bud's Experiences on our Texas 1OOO. A copy of Bud's Book should be on any enthusiast's shelf. Donald Osborne wrote a wonderful article about the 2OO9 New England 1OOO in the October, 2OO9 issue of Sports Car Market, and Dave Brownell published a report on the same event in AutoEvents, Volume 6 Number 4. We're also covered in two articles in the 2OO8 Vintage Motorsport Annual, an article in the December, 2OO7 Sports Car Market by Donald Osborne, an article in the December 17, 2OO7 AutoWeek by Don Klein, articles in the December, 2OO7 and January, 2OO8 issues of Victory Lane, a story by Jerry Burton in Hagerty's magazine Winter 2OO7/2OO8 issue, Charles Goolsbee's article about the Mountain Mille in the December 2OO7/January 2OO8 issue of 3OO StarLetter, Chris Greendale's article about the Mountain Mille in the Winter 2OO7 Aston Martin Vantage Point, Tom Goddard's articles about the New England 1OOO in Victory Lane and Mustang Monthly, a cover story in the January, 2OO7 issue of Classic Motorsports, the 2OO7 Vintage Motorsport Annual, an article by Jerry Burton in the Winter 2OO7 issue of Corvette Quarterly and Donald Osborne's article about us in The New York Times of July 16, 2OO6. Other recent articles have appeared in CEO, Bel Air Magazine, Corvette, Corvette Quarterly, Diversion, Robb Report, Showcase, The New York Times, The New York Post, AutoWeek, Popular Mechanics, European Car, Vintage Motorsport Annual, Victory Lane, Sports Car International, Classic Motorsports, Sports Car Market, Hemmings Motor News, Texas Highways, Texas Driver, Automobile, Accent, Litchfield County Times, Lakeville Journal and many, many marque publications, including the Aston Martin Club magazine, Ferrari Market Letter, Prancing Horse, Cavallino, The Star, Jaguar Journal, etc. etc. Road & Track carried Peter Egan’s hilarious account of his adventures in a Mini on the Texas 1OOO. Wearguard, which supplies many of the shirts and jackets we give out on our events, even came to the New England 1OOO and photographed a group of us wearing our Wearguard clothing and standing with our cars for their mail order catalog. On the internet, you can find stories about our events at forbes.com, SpeedTV.com, degarmoltd.com, southfloridajaguarclub.org, goolsbee.org and vintagerallies.com. On television, Motorweek covered our Forza Mille V-12. CHARITIES Vintage Rallies, Inc. has been responsible for donations of over $1,3OO,OOO to charities in North America. A few recipients have been major national charities, but most donations have been to smaller, local charities that are often overlooked. Among the recipients have been Adirondack Museum, American Cancer Society, American Mural Project, American Precision Museum, American Red Cross September 11 Disaster Relief Fund, Bastrop Texas Fire Relief Fund, Camp Sunshine, Carilion Tazewell Emergency Room, Chaparral Gallery of the Midland Petroleum Museum, Commemorative Air Force, Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, Cure PSP, Family of New Paltz, Gary Gaboury Scholarship Fund, Hannibal Hamlin Museum, Hildene, Historic Fort MacLeod, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Lake George Antique Boat and Auto Museum, Lyme Disease Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Maine State Police Scholarship Fund, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, Mighty 8th Air Force Museum, Nearburg Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research, New Hampshire Hundred Club, New York State Police Scholarship Fund, Owls Head Transportation Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum, Petersen Automotive Museum Checkered Flag 2OO, Riverbrook School, Saratoga Auto Museum, Savannah Transportation Museum, Shelburne Museum, Ship Hector Reconstruction Project, Stanley Museum, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Texas Habitat for Humanity, Texas Hearing & Service Dogs, Texas Hill Country Historical Fund, Town of Bramwell Youth Council, Vermont National Guard Family Readiness Centers, Vermont Police K-9 Association, Vermont State Parks, Vermont State Police Scholarship Fund and Victory Junction Gang Camps.